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What's slightly bigger than an extra-large pizza and weighs as much as a refrigerator? The world's largest gold coin, which sold Friday in Austria.

The 2007 maple-leaf coin (pictured) weighs 220 pounds and is 21 inches in diameter. It was up for sale at the Dorotheum auction house in Vienna, reports The Associated Press.

• Is gold the latest bubble?

As the gold frenzy hits a fever pitch, Spanish precious-metals company Oro Direct bid $4 million to win the coin. No word on what the company plans to do with its prize.

High-yield dividend stocks are in favor on Wall Street right now as investors look to insulate themselves from recent market volatility. But what happens when these stocks actually end up losing you cash instead of protecting your portfolio?

If you’re losing a significant amount of money as the share prices of your income stocks dive, then it might be time to pull the trigger and sell these dividend duds. After all, there are a host of high-yield stocks out there, so why should you settle for one that offsets your quarterly dividends with regular losses in share price?

To help you identify which dividend losers you should cut loose, here are three high-dividend stocks that just aren’t worth holding on to right now:

Written by Douglas Estadt

Adam Warner, our go-to options guy and the author of "Options Volatility Trading" and dailyoptionsreport.com, joins us to discuss alternative ways to invest in VVUS (VVUS) prior to the July 15 panel review date of the company's new weight-loss drug.  The stock is currently in the $10 range for common shares, and it stands to rise substantially if the panel review is positive.

• A bullish approach—buying  calls on the 10s and selling 15s, could triple your money if the panel’s review is positive

• A bearish approach—buying a put spread (buy 10s, sell 5s)

By Jonathan Blum, TheStreet

Don't count struggling Motorola (MOT) out of the cell phone wars just yet: Its new Droid X smart phone from Verizon (VZ) packs a punch.

Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), HTC and the rest of the cell phone mafia might as well rechristen the end of spring as smart phone season. In the past few weeks, the new KIN ONE from Sharp, AT&T's (T) new iPhone 4 (made by Apple, of course) and Sprint's (S) EVO all splashed into the cell phone market with gusto. And last week, Motorola took its turn on the smart phone high dive and dropped its new Droid X ($199/plan).

I've been testing the unit over the past week or so and had several briefings from company execs. And though the Droid X isn’t the ultimate tool for business users, the unit offers real value in the suddenly crowded uber-phone market.

Stocks had a tough week last week, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 4.3% from its high on Monday. That's the bad news. The good news is that there is evidence that the sellers have exhausted themselves, clearing the way for stocks to move higher over the medium term.

Market breadth data shows that Thursday's action was one of those overwhelming extreme sell-off events that tend to set short-term bottoms. It was a session in which 89.3% of all volume was on the downside, following a 90% down day on Tuesday. But the advance-decline issues measure was far less negative, as down issues accounted for 75% of all issues.

As a result, the Arms Index, which is based on the relationship between these two measures, closed above 3.0 for the second time this week. Extreme readings on the Arms Index tend to mark short-term lows because they represent a blow-off event as sellers pitch out their positions in fallen stocks while at the same time contrarian buyers quietly start snatching up bargains elsewhere. I know this is all very conceptual, so allow me to illustrate with a few examples.

Last week, Ken Feinberg, the administrator of the claims fund, told Bloomberg that no claim has been denied. Sounds orderly. However, I think we've seen only the claims of the smallest of businesses, the first to be wiped out.

It's in no one's interests to file claims right now, other than the most desperate people who need the money and are thinly capitalized. Any big business with tourism on the line would be nuts to put in a claim, knowing that the spill hasn't even hit the resort areas yet.

High-end clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) is testing the adage "sex sells" to see if that’s true even in periods of weak consumer spending. After suffering yet another drop in sales in May, the company is once again rolling out a racy magazine-style catalog that will sell for $10 in ANF stores to consumers age 18 and up.

The move is sure to raise temperatures, and not just of the teenage girls flipping through the magazine. Abercrombie abandoned the catalog in 2003 after harsh criticism that the magazine was a horrible influence on young people. As the head of Concerned Christians of America said in 2001, "The exploitation of sex and young people in A&F's catalog is not only atrocious but also a psychological molestation of their teen-age customers."

If the catalog isn't toned down, it could be another PR disaster for Abercrombie. Then again, with ANF shares suffering in 2010 and weak consumer spending holding back sales, the store might not think it has that much to lose.

The lesson is clear: Never, never underestimate the ability of banks to beat back the regulators when it really counts.

You might have thought that the international regulators in charge of formulating a new set of rules called Basel III would have had the upper hand after the global financial crisis. You might have thought that putting rules in place to require banks to increase the liquid funds they hold so that they'd don't go belly up in a crisis would be an easy win for the regulators.

You would have been wrong.

After a lengthy period in which stocks moved dramatically and in near lock-step -- first plunging downward in late 2008 and then surging upward after the March 2009 low -- the market's high level of correlation has faded in 2010. Some sectors, like media, consumer services, and financial services, are up between 4% and 10% this year, according to Morningstar; others, like healthcare, energy, and utilities, are down between 4% and 10%. Large-caps, meanwhile, have lagged their smaller peers -- large-cap growth stocks, for example, are down about 5%, while small-cap value picks are up 5.6%.

This sort of climate should favor stock-picking over macro-economic calls. And over the past week or so, several of the market's most successful strategists have offered insight into how they go about picking stocks -- and where they are finding the best values right now.

• Check out my Buffett-inspired Top Stocks tracking portfolio at Wall Street Survivor
  

Take Tom Forester, whose Forester Value fund was the lone stock fund to make money in 2008.

Big movie studios won their fight early Friday morning to include a ban on movie box-office futures trading in the final version of financial reform legislation.

The move could end up leaving to the courts the question of the trading’s final fate.

• Related: Media Derivatives Chief Pushes on Congress, Attacks MPAA 

A House-Senate Conference Committee decided to adopt language that was in the Senate’s version of the financial reform bill banning the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from approving futures contracts based on box office revenues.

Apple's (AAPL) new iPhone is getting into the hands of eager users this week, and already a mysterious problem with the antenna's reception is being reported.

The new phone has received enormous praise because of an engineering coup: The metal band around the edge of the phone acts as an antenna, which allowed designers to make the phone slimmer. It was also supposed to offer a stronger signal.

• AT&T or Verizon: Make the call

But some early users report that touching the band can mess with the reception. Even picking up the phone causes the reception bars on the screen to drop. One user even filmed a video demonstrating the problem.

Starbucks (SBUX) has been on a resurgence in 2010, with its stock up 16% year to date and the successful launch of several new products, including its Via instant coffee and a rebranding of Seattle’s Best as a low-priced coffee alternative.

Now Starbucks is looking to keep up its growth with a trendy Seattle location that is being billed as a “coffee theater” that brings customers closer to the staff, offers plush seating and even a wine and beer menu.

• Which is the stronger stock: Starbucks or Green Mountain?

Starbucks is hoping this brave new push into a new atmosphere and a new beverage menu will allow the company to tap into bigger sales and reconnect with customers. But will it work, or is it just an ill-advised gimmick?