Starting to fill in nicely
Steve Harvey's latest column of quirky bits
Stocks open lower: Trading remains sluggish - Dow is down 20 points.
Groupon investors giving up: Some early backers have either sold out or significantly pared back their stakes. Groupon has lost more than three-quarters of its value since the IPO. From the WSJ:
Groupon's plunging stock price, and the swooning shares of Facebook Inc. and Zynga Inc., have rekindled memories of the dot-com bust in 2000. Unlike many dot-com era start-ups, the current companies have healthy revenue and in some cases are turning a profit--but their results aren't matching early expectations.
Facebook update: Stock is now below $19 a share.
Gas update: L.A. area prices barely moved over the weekend - an average gallon of regular is $4.118, according to the Auto Club.
"Tonight Show" layoffs: Between 20 and 25 staff members lost their jobs and host Jay Leno took a pay cut in order to prevent additional firings. From the NYT:
The cuts came as a surprise to some because "The Tonight Show" is the highest-rated of all the late-night talk shows on American television. On an average night this season, it has attracted 3.67 million viewers, about 20 percent more than "The Late Show With David Letterman" on CBS. But the show's budget was inflated by late-night standards. It increased when Mr. Leno was moved to prime time in 2009, and remained high even after the experiment failed a few months later.
Box office report: "Expendables 2" was tops in its opening weekend, at $28.8 million, and "Bourne Legacy" came in No. 2 in its second weekend, grossing $17 million. (THR)