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If you're a FedEx (FDX) investor, you're paying close attention to the company's workhorse: the cargo plane.

FedEx is making a huge investment in its fleet with new Boeing 777s, which is taking a bite out of the company's bottom line in the short term. But down the road, these new planes will give the company a smart edge.

The company has eight 777s in service and 32 on the way. And that brings good and bad news for investors, according to analysts at UBS, which recently spent three days hosting representatives from the company. 

Time to dust off that movie script you wrote in college.

Amazon.com (AMZN) has launched a new website for people to submit movie scripts and will pay millions of dollars for the best ones, Reuters reports.

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The company's studios division has partnered with Warner Bros. to receive the scripts and has set aside nearly $3 million for the best submissions received by December 2011. The winning scripts may get developed as feature films. (See more about the offer here.)

 

By Jeanine Poggi, TheStreet

 

Hulu is issuing a new attack on Netflix (NFLX), lowering its subscription fee by $2.

 

The Internet video company, which is backed by General Electric (GE), NBC Universal, Walt Disney (DIS), News Corp. (NWSA) and private-equity firm Providence Equity Partners, is cutting prices on its Hulu Plus service to $7.99 from $9.99, making it $1 less than Netflix's cheapest subscription.

 

Users already subscribed to the service will receive a credit.

 

By Dan Freed, TheStreet

 

Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.A) Warren Buffett toils in financial markets amid a sea of critics who bash the government from all sides, but going against the grain in the same way that has made him rich, he wrote a letter to Uncle Sam thanking the government for its work since the 2008 financial crisis.

 

When "businesses and people worldwide race to get liquid, you are the only party with the resources to take the other side of the transaction," Buffett said in an open letter to the U.S. government published today in The New York Times. "And when our citizens are losing trust by the hour in institutions they once revered, only you can restore calm."

 

Buffett singled out Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, former and current Treasury secretaries Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair for praise, saying they "grasped the gravity of the situation and acted with courage and dispatch."

 

By Jeanine Poggi, TheStreet 

 

Target's (TGT) third-quarter profit jumped 23%, beating estimates, as the company predicted a strong fourth quarter.  

 

The discount retailer earned $535 million, or 74 cents a share, compared with $436 million, or 58 cents, a year ago. Analysts were calling for a profit of 68 cents a share.

 

Target's sales rose 3% to $15.2 billion, while its same-store sales increased 1.6%. Wall Street predicted sales of $5.61 billion.

 

By Jake Lynch, TheStreet

 

Many people have heard of Ancestry.com (ACOM) through e-mail and TV ads, but few investors appreciate the unique quality and tremendous growth prospects of its service. Ancestry.com is based in Provo, Utah, and is the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world.

 

Ancestry.com has more than 5 billion records online. An easy-to-use platform and nearly zero competition have helped the company grow at a rapid pace. Ancestry's third-quarter revenue gained 39% to $57 million, boosted by 43% growth on its core Web site.

Outstanding marketing initiatives, including the airing of "Who Do You Think You Are" on NBC, deal-pending subsidiary of Comcast (CMCSA), have created buzz around Ancestry's network of sites. Subscribers increased 34% in the third quarter and 5% sequentially, but the churn rate rose to 4%.

 

By Ted Reed, TheStreet

 

What could have happened is that today, General Motors could be in the 15th month of its bankruptcy, with no end in sight and with consumers shying away from its products and tens of thousands of automobile industry workers either laid off or despairing for their futures.

 

Instead we have an IPO that is the talk of Wall Street, loans being repaid with stock sale proceeds, an auto company that makes money at the bottom of a cycle and new products that are widely applauded.

 

So it's a simple call. The Tea Party and its predecessors, who eschewed federal loans to GM, simply got it wrong, failing to perceive that a "bailout" can just as easily be called an "investment."

 

If you want to be negative, do not, I repeat, do not read the conference calls from this week's prominent retailers -- Lowe's (LOW), Home Depot (HD), Wal-Mart (WMT), Nordstrom (JWN), Saks (SKS) and Urban Outfitters (URBN).

 

Don't read them, because you will not be able to stay as negative as you are. You will have to lump in some dollops of Allied Irish (AIB) bonds, miserable cotton costs, some horrid congressional wrangling and a couple of Ben Bernanke-bashing editorials in order to stay as negative and pessimistic as you might be.

 

Given that two-thirds of this economy is based on service and spending, that's a lot of positives to offset the negatives of higher copper prices -- or is it lower copper we are worried about now, I forget -- and Chinese source-switching.

 

By Ted Reed, TheStreet

 

The excitement around the General Motors IPO is high, yet at its heart, the offering remains simply another opportunity to bet on the economic recovery.

 

In fact, buying either GM or rival Ford (F) means that "75% of what you are buying is a perspective on the economy," said Michael Yoshikami, chief investment strategist at Bay Area-based YCMNET Advisors, which manages about $1 billion in assets. "If you are seeing no double dip, no high inflation, unemployment drops, then these stocks are a buy.

• GM stock sale just gets bigger

"People buying into GM are late entrants in the consumer story," Yoshikami said. "If you already missed the boat on consumer stocks, this is a last chance to get in, because auto companies are the last to recover."

 

I’ve been looking to buy Aixtron (AIXG) on a dip to $32 or lower. 

Well, today I got my price. The ADRs of the maker of equipment for depositing the thin layers in chips, display screens and solar cells closed at $31.90 -- down 2.4%. That brings the total decline to 8.6% from the high of Nov. 8.

You can thank Cisco Systems’ (CSCO) disappointing guidance for part of the drop in Aixtron. Cisco’s news took down almost everything in the technology sector, whether they sold into Cisco’s markets or not. (See my post on Cisco here. )

 

The news is that China’s government is drafting policies to fight inflation. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said so on Monday from a supermarket in Guangzhou. The comments were broadcast on state TV, so they count as solid news.

The rumor is that China’s central bank is about to raise bank capital requirements (again) and increase its benchmark interest rates. The People’s Bank raised interest rates in October for the first time since 2007.

The news and the rumors have combined to hammer Chinese stocks -- and the shares of global commodity producers. The Shanghai Composite index was down 4% on Monday after falling 5% on Nov. 12.

 

By Hilary Kramer

Hot stocks, and in particular, auto stocks are in the driver’s seat in this week, and you can attribute the renewed interest in the sector to GM’s IPO.  The bailed-out automaker’s shares are expected to garner very strong investor demand when they go public on Thursday, as many people want to get in on the ground floor of the iconic, yet troubled automaker’s future fortunes.  The way I see, however, investors should be looking at rival Ford Motor (F) if they really want their portfolios to keep on trucking.

Over the past year and a half, Ford’s turnaround has been nothing short of stunning.  Just 18 months after reporting a $1.4 billion quarterly loss, Ford reported record earnings that blew away Wall Street’s expectations. The stellar earnings beat caused investors to put the pedal to the metal on the stock, as Ford’s shares surged some 15% the week it announced earnings.

 

How quickly the summertime bliss has passed. The rally that saw stocks climb more than 17% between Aug. 31 and Nov. 5 in a smooth, uninterrupted arc has ended with the major averages slicing through trend-line support. Various technical indicators are also pointing to continued losses.

 

Whereas the post-August rally was driven by two big themes -- the Fed's QE2 money-printing operation and the prospect of more "business-friendly" Republicans in Congress -- the latest malaise is being driven by three big stories: selling pressure hitting bonds as investors price in higher inflation due to QE2; fears over Chinese overheating; and concerns over another round of bailouts in Europe.

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Here's what you need to know. 

 

Google (GOOG) is getting into the personalized recommendations business, launching a new site that lets you review restaurants, barber shops and other places.

Hotpot isn't a huge business for Google, but it opens up plenty of new advertising opportunities and gives users a social service along the lines of Yelp.

Hotpot hooks up user reviews with data from Google Places, and those reviews will show up in Google search results. Google describes Hotpot as a way to find new restaurants by consulting other people's recommendations. 

By Dan Freed, TheStreet

 

Bank of America (BAC)'s home loan chief said the bank hasn't improperly taken over any homes despite its sloppy paperwork, according to a Bloomberg report Tuesday.

 

The report cited prepared testimony by Barbara Desoer, Bank of America's top home loan executive, to be delivered before the Senate Banking Committee today. David Lowman, who oversees the home loan business at JPMorgan Chase (JPM), is also scheduled to give testimony.

 

"Thus far we have confirmed the basis for our foreclosure decisions (has) been accurate," Desoer said, according to the report, though she acknowledged the bank has "not found a perfect process," adding "quite simply, it did not live up to our standards."