With the cost of U.S. movie tickets rising, one startup is looking to revolutionize the market by allowing theatergoers to buy tickets for 30 to 60 percent off. And theater owners are beginning to buy in.

Dealflicks , a San Francisco-based company, is looking to do for the movie theater market what Hotwire.com (EXPE) and Priceline.com (PCLN) have done for the travel sector. Dealflicks CEO Sean Wycliffe recently told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" that 88 percent of movie theater seats are left vacant - a void Dealflick hopes to fill.

You can be forgiven for thinking that you don't need to give a hoot about what's going on in Cyprus this weekend.

After all, it's just a little island somewhere in the Mediterranean.

But what's going on in Cyprus could actually matter--not just to the rest of Europe, but to the rest of the world.

Here's the short version of what's happening:

Cyprus's banks, like many banks in Europe, are bankrupt.

Cyprus went to the Eurozone to get a bailout, the same way Ireland, Greece, and other European countries have.

The Eurozone powers-that-be gave Cyprus a bailout--but with a startling condition that has never before been imposed on any major banking system since the start of the global financial crisis in 2008.

When you get into too much debt, eventually really bad things start to happen. This is a very painful lesson that southern Europe is learning right now, and it is a lesson that the United States will soon learn as well. It simply is not possible to live way beyond your means forever. You can do it for a while though, and politicians in the U.S. and in Europe keep trying to kick the can down the road and extend the party, but the truth is that debt is a very cruel master and at some point it inevitably catches up with you. And when it catches up with you, the results can be absolutely devastating. Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal all tried to just slow down the rate at which their government debts were increasing, and look at what happened to their economies. In each case, GDP is shrinking, unemployment is skyrocketing, credit is freezing up and manufacturing is declining. And you know what? None of those countries has even gotten close to a balanced budget yet. They are all still going into even more debt. Just imagine what would happen if they actually tried to only spend the money that they brought in?

Apple will announce plans for its cash hoard next month, according to Howard Ward, chief investment officer at investment firm Gamco. But if this rumor proves true, the most important question remains unanswered: How will Apple return cash to shareholders? Would the company be wise to take ace investor Warren Buffett's advice, and repurchase more shares?

Share buyback programs enhance shareholder value
Share buybacks offer corporations a tax-free way to build shareholder value by buying back their own shares and, in turn, increasing shareholders' ownership percentage per share.

Buffett has been known to criticize companies for buying back their shares, but it's never because he thinks share repurchase programs are inherently bad. Instead, he criticizes companies for overpaying for their own stock.

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As of right now, 3D printing remains a bit of a novelty. Sure, you can design your own shoes, pretend you're on "Star Trek," or dream up a three-wheel hybrid car, but 3D printing's practical implications for business have yet to capture the public imagination.

When will 3D printing start fundamentally changing the business landscape—or are we there already? We talked to Jochen Rode, who heads the digital manufacturing program of SAP’s research department in Dresden, Germany, about which industries this new technology affects most, as well as how long it will be before doctors start printing out our organs.

Last week the bond market continued to be put to the test, and if it could go wrong, it did go wrong. Across the board stronger than expected economic data, including Friday’s better than expected employment data, provided plenty off ammo for risk behavior that saw the yen make new lows against the dollar, pushing equities to new highs with the Dow (INDEXDJX:.DJI) making a new all-time high seemingly every day. The upward momentum was not lost on the mainstream media as on Thursday I heard CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelly refer to the announcement of a new high as sounding like “a broken record.”

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is the most popular stock owned by hedge funds, regardless of the size of the position during the fourth quarter of 2012, according to a report released by analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML).

American International Group (NYSE:AIG) and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) ranked second and third, respectively. Based on the report, 231 hedge funds held the stock of the iPhone maker, 216 hedge funds owned the shares of the insurance giant while 202 hedge funds held the insurance giant during the period.

The debate about whether Apple is still a great investment has reached a fever pitch in the past six months. There are plausible arguments for both bulls and bears. Simply pointing to Apple's P/E of 10 and its tremendous cash stockpile cannot win the debate for bulls. On the other hand, bears overlook the option value of Apple. What I mean by "option value" is the value of growth possibilities from new product lines that may or may not come to fruition.

Apple bears claim that the company has stopped innovating since Steve Jobs passed away. However, given Apple's legendary secrecy, there is no way they can know this is true. If -- contrary to the bears' expectations -- Apple manages to create another innovative and desirable product line, the stock could quickly return to its former glory. Thus, even if bears are right that the value of Apple's cash stockpile and existing product lines (principally iPhone, iPad, Mac, and iPod) are fully reflected in its stock price, Apple inv

However, Goldman economist Jim O'Neill is getting increasingly concerned that the stock market is getting expensive.

In the near-term, he thinks momentum could drive stocks higher. But we warns that valuations are getting rich.

From his latest Viewpoints note:

The strength of last week’s US data is leading the consensus to revise upwards their forecasts for 2013 real GDP. Having been notably higher than the consensus since autumn 2012, GSAM is rather pleased about that as a number of investment strategies have prospered from it. Of course, and as I discussed last week and in recent Viewpoints, this is despite the ongoing and sometimes unchosen fiscal tightening in the US, and is a marked contrast to Europe. Not surprisingly, all of the US bond, equity and currency markets are reacting accordingly. I am not that confident about what happens next and as to whether all these trends are going to continue, not least because May is now less than two months away and the infamous “Sell in May and go away, come back on St Leger’s Day” (which I am physically actually going to be doing post retirement, of course!). US equities seem set to strengthen further in the near term, given the momentum in the data, but as page 47 shows, they are hardly bargain basement these days from a CAPE perspective. As for bonds and the Dollar, the market is adjusting its future profile for the Fed and starting to think that the Fed will have to change its own views, but I am not sure, in light of the actual (and prospect of more) fiscal tighteni

Morgan Stanley (MS), owner of the world’s largest brokerage, hired CNBC’s Gary Kaminsky as a vice chairman in wealth management.

Kaminsky, who was the cable television network’s capital- markets editor, will work with Morgan Stanley’s financial advisers on client development, Greg Fleming, 50, president of the brokerage unit, wrote today in a memo to employees, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News. Jim Wiggins, a spokesman for the New York-based bank, confirmed the memo’s contents.

Kaminsky will continue to be a CNBC contributor, according to the memo. He previously helped manage an investment portfolio of more than $12 billion at Neuberger Berman Group LLC, where he worked from 1999 to 2008, according to the memo. Neuberger Berman was part of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which collapsed in 2008 amid the financial crisis.

Every time an IPO has a big pop on its opening day, the same tired debate gets reprised: did the investment banks leading the deal rip off the company raising equity capital? The arguments on both sides are well rehearsed — I covered them myself in no little detail, for instance, after LinkedIn went public, in 2011.

Back then, I had sympathy with the bankers:

If the large 7% fee does anything, it aligns the banks’ interests with the issuer’s. If the banks felt they could make millions more dollars for themselves just by raising the offering price, it’s reasonable to assume that they would have done so. I’m sure that the institutions which were granted IPO access are grateful to the banks for the money they made, but that gratitude isn’t worth a ten-figure sum to the ECM divisions of the banks in question.

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has made strong progress on the monetization front and completed its transition towards evolving into a mobile-based company in 2012. The stock hasn't been well received after year-end earnings and took a decent hit. Investors and analysts raised concerns about Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)'s near term operating expenditures owing to heavy investments in its business. However, Facebook's moat is ever increasing and has enormous upside in the long run.

The weak dollar has been seen as a key driver of the stock market recovery in recent years.

Since the early 2000s, "a weaker dollar brought higher EPS yet little inflation," wrote Deutsche Bank's David Bianco in a new note to clients. "S&P foreign profits increased to 40% of total profits from 20% in late 1990s. S&P EPS benefits from a weaker dollar through FX translation and usually higher commodity prices."

But in recent weeks, the U.S. dollar and the stock market have been moving in tandem.

And Bianco thinks this is good news. From his note:

The Dow made new highs this week, ending Friday at an all-time closing high of 14,397.07.

One of the most well-known stock market bulls is Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel, who is known for his long historical analysis of stock market returns.

Siegel and his assistant Jeremy Schwartz (who is the research director at the ETF company WisdomTree, which Siegel is involved with) are the subject of a Barron's piece this weekend about how high the Dow can get in the next couple of years.

Their answer? 15,000 this year looks easy. The 16,000-17,000 range is also possible. And there's a 50/50 chance of Dow 18,000 by the end of next year.

How do they arrive at these numbers?

Every quarter, many money managers have to disclose what they've bought and sold, via "13F" filings. Their latest moves can shine a bright light on smart stock picks.

Today let's look at Tiger Global Management, founded by Julian Robertson in 1980. Robertson, a hedge fund pioneer, reportedly racked up average annual gains of more than 30% in the 1980s and 1990s, and today his fund mainly manages his own money. His style is to go both long and short on stocks, explaining: "Our mandate is to find the 200 best companies in the world and invest in them, and find the 200 worst companies in the world and go short on them. If the 200 best don't do better than the 200 worst, you should probably be in another business."

In the following video, Fool senior technology analyst Eric Bleeker looks at a question that could seem ludicrous given Berkshire Hathaway's traditional aversion to technology: Would Warren Buffett ever buy Apple?

In spite of Buffett's long stance that technology is either too complicated or lacks the right long-term competitive advantages for his investing style, recent evidence points to his having more interest in the space than he lets on.

For example, Berkshire took a position in Intel back in 2011. The deal was small enough that it was almost assuredly from potential Buffett successor Todd Combs. Also, in a surprising move that eschewed its traditional long-term focus, Berkshire sold the position within a year's time for healthy gains. Yet the fact that Berkshire would invest in something that competes on the most cutting edge of technology -- the non-stop march of semiconductor technologies -- was intriguing.

Appaloosa’s top pick at the end of December was Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), after having increased its holdings by 75% in Q4. American International Group Inc (NYSE:AIG) passed Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to become the most popular stock among hedge funds in the fourth quarter (find more of the most popular stocks among hedge funds) as investors increasingly worry about Apple’s margins. Wall Street analysts are bullish, with their forecasts implying that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s five-year PEG ratio is only 0.5. We think that the sell-side is being optimistic, but even if Apple keeps its earnings about flat it should be a good value.

Google already has five of the six most popular apps in America, with Google Maps, Search, Gmail, YouTube, and Google Play. But that is apparently not enough for the search-and-mobile-and-everything giant.

So the company is now extending Field Trip, the Android-based “guide to the cool, hidden, and unique things in the world around you,” over to iOS for both iPhone and iPad. And the app that was already awesome five months ago now has double the content partners.

Over the last decade, the Internet has seeped into that bedrock of the U.S. economy: the housing market. A group of growing and mostly profitable websites have sprung up to help guide consumers through what in many cases will be the largest and most nerve-wracking transaction of their lives. Four sites—Redfin and Zillow (Z), based in Seattle, and Trulia (TRLA) and Realtor.com, based in the San Francisco Bay Area—attract 61 million of the 67 million visitors to real estate websites each month in the U.S., according to ComScore (SCOR). They also generate hundreds of millions in revenue and have helped turn buying a house into entertainment—a spectator sport that can be enjoyed without darting surreptitiously into random open houses. Ninety percent of consumers now start their real estate journeys on the Web, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Four years ago, as a newly elected president began his efforts to rescue the economy and strengthen the social safety net, conservative economic pundits — people who claimed to understand markets and know how to satisfy them — warned of imminent financial disaster. Stocks, they declared, would plunge, while interest rates would soar.

President Obama’s proposal to increase the minimum wage and the health insurance employer mandate will combine to destroy job opportunities for young, unskilled workers in cities and towns across the country.

The minimum wage, currently set at $7.25 an hour, will jump to $9 an hour and be indexed going forward if the president gets his way. The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) is already the law of the land and its effects are being felt right now, even though the employer mandate doesn’t go into effect until next January.

Everyone wants to know what Warren Buffett is buying. As one of the world's most-followed investors, he has a track record that would make anyone jealous. Shares of his Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) have climbed from $7 per share when he started buying the stock in 1962 to more than $150,000 recently, making buy-and-hold investors rich over that half-century.

To get some insight into Buffett's latest thing, let's take a look at Berkshire's portfolio of stocks to find out which ones Buffett likes best -- and expects to buy more of in the near future.

1. Wells Fargo (WFC), $15.8 billion invested

One of the nation's largest banks, Wells Fargo held up re

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is a good stock to own but not for the June quarter. Analysts at Raymond James are out with a new report titled “Many Reasons to Own Apple, but the June Quarter Is Not One of Them”. Raymond James recently cut their price target for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). Further details below:

Recommendation from Raymond James: The analysts maintain their outperform rating on shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) based on the belief that the company should return to EPS growth following the June quarter. They have adjusted their earnings estimates for what they believe will be an earlier iPhone product launch this year than the previous two years. This will likely lead to weaker iPhone shipments in calendar 2Q as customers wait for the new model and as Apple trims channel inventories in front of the launch. However, it will likely lead to far greater September quarter shipments, with little change to annual iPhone shipment estimates overall.

And she’s not alone. In an unscientific survey of about 40 of Steed’s classmates at Briarwood Christian High School in Birmingham, Ala., only eight of the students listed Facebook as their most-used social network. For eleven of them, it didn’t rank in the top three (Instagram was by far the most popular). Other, more formal surveys have found that Tumblr might actually be the teen social network of choice now. In fact, Facebook itself even acknowledged the challenge of keeping teens engaged in its annual 10-K report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in February. In a list of the risk factors that could affect the company’s future success, Facebook stated:

You have heard of all sorts of bubbles in the financial world. There are instances like the housing bubble, a bond bubble, the dot-com bubble, the tech bubble, the private equity bubble, and on and on. 24/7 Wall St. wants to introduce the term “activist bubble,” where too many super-wealthy advisors get too unruly in trying to milk out gains from stocks by pressuring companies into unlocking more shareholder value. We might not be in an activist bubble yet, but the trend of activist investing is getting to the point that a prudent investor might have to wonder if we are entering a new phase called the “Activist Investor Bubble.”

Just a few years ago, the common themes were out-of-control finances and out-of-control corporate leadership with no accountability to shareholders (nor to any moral hazards). The pendulum has now swung the other way, and perhaps it is starting to swing too far. Perhaps. Now anyone with access to millions of dollars or billions of dollars can aggressively go after a company for corporate governance issues. This can be over executive compensation, how a company should be capitalized, what forms of stock it should have, what terms it should have for a merger, whether it should split the roles of CEO and chairman, anti-takeover provisions, retirement compensation and on and on.

Analyst Ivy Zelman was one of the few to correctly call both the top and bottom for housing (Tom Lawler and your humble blogger were also correct). Today, on CNBC, Zelman made several very positive comments on housing:

"I think we are in Nirvana for housing."

"I'm probably the most bullish I've ever been fundamentally [on housing], and I'm dating myself, but I've been around for over 20 years and I've seen a lot of ups and downs".

[We are in] "the first or second inning of the fundamental recovery that could be five to ten years in duration ..."

"I think home prices could go up for four to six years in duration ..."

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The 2013 proxy-voting season is about to begin, and activist investors are increasingly using the process to advance corporate environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, improvements. The movement to use shareholder resolutions to promote more sustainable business practices is small but growing, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for corporate boards to ignore.

Proxy what?
If you are a shareholder, you have the right to vote on certain corporate matters. Since most people cannot attend companies' annual meetings, corporations offer shareholders the option to cast a proxy vote by mail.

A new patent application published by the USPTO (via AppleInsider) today shows that Apple has been thinking hard about how it might be able to make it possible for users to resell or lend digital content they’ve purchased in the past. Amazon has worked on a similar problem with its own patents, but Apple’s solution carries provisions for making the lending or resales process much easier directly between users, without necessarily involving a marketplace intermediary.

Apple’s patent accounts for transfers that can take place either through the original content provider’s store (i.e., the iBookstore, possibly with a “used” section), or directly between users. In the method where an online store wouldn’t be involved, the user devices themselves determine when an item can and can’t be sold based on criteria put into place by the original publisher (i.e., movie X can’t be sold for at least 60 days after release, and must carry a minimum price tag of $5), and whether or not a percentage commission on the sale is transfe

Hedge-fund titan Bill Ackman has vowed to bring down Herbalife, the 33-year-old nutritional-supplement company, which he views as a pyramid scheme. With his massive shorting of Herbalife stock, the price plummeted, prompting two fellow billionaires—Ackman’s former friend Dan Loeb and activist investor Carl Icahn—to take the opposing bet on Herbalife. As the public brawl rivets Wall Street, William D. Cohan learns why, this time, it’s personal.

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) never wants to make low end products according to analysts at Barclays. However, Apple will need to convince investors that 35% margins will be the floor. Earlier we covered part of the new report from Barclays regarding the company’s ecosystem, which the analysts believe is solid and has room to grow. However, Barclays has slightly lowered their price target on the tech giant. Below we look at the margin issue and price target math.

Can Apple Make an Argument for 35-40% Gross Margins Long Term?

Barclays believes that margins are the biggest concern for investors. While Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) understands the market concerns, they do not believe that management is ready to give a long-term target. However, it doesn’t seem to them that Apple “ever wants to make low-end products” – and will always strive for premium devices that offer a more complete experience.

With Amazon's same-day delivery under way, and Google Shops reportedly next, the clock is ticking on traditional retailers who'll need new ways to lure customers.

E-commerce sales will reach $327 billion by 2016, according to Forrester Research. Consumers will be purchasing everything from $12 shampoo to $3,000 handbags -- maybe even cars -- online.

But speed of ordering and delivery is what will prompt consumer consideration.

Same-day-shipping services are changing consumer behavior -- and fast. Last year, Amazon opened a gaggle of new shipping centers near major metropolitan areas so that it could quickly get products to its Amazon Prime customers, often within the same day. TechCrunch has reported that Google is preparing to launch a competitor to Amazon called Google Shopping Express. It'll serve as a semi-universal cart that offers same-day delivery from stores in a consumer's area, including Walmart and Target.

The notion of too big to jail just got very serious as the nation’s chief attorney agreed with the idea that financial institutions are too large to prosecute.

US Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill today, and discussed the lack of criminal cases against financial institutions in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

That’s been a point of irritation and frustration for many in Washington and across the country who feel big banks that were partially responsible for the credit and housing bubble yet went unpunished. Instead, they were given billions in federal bailout money because they were deemed too big to fail. And now while their stocks recover the rest of the economy is barely trudging along.

Nasdaq and SharesPost announced a joint venture on Wednesday that will offer wealthy investors a new way to trade shares in companies before they are listed publicly, as the weak performance of Facebook (FB) and other young tech firms encourages startups to remain private longer.

The new exchange, to be called Nasdaq Private Market, is scheduled to be launched later this year and will be based in San Francisco. Brokers and “accredited investors”—basically, people that the Securities and Exchange Commission deems to be wealthy or “sophisticated” enough to take losses in shadowy investments—will be able to pursue the risky buying and selling of private company shares, this time under the aegis of Nasdaq (NDAQ).

Carl Icahn throws a wrench into the Dell buyout.

FORTUNE -- CNBC is reporting that Carl Icahn has acquired a 6% stake in PC maker Dell Inc. (DELL), which has agreed to be taken private for $24 billion by CEO Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners.

If true, it would be a massive outlay -- currently valued in excess of $1.4 billion. It also would make Icahn the company's third-largest shareholder, behind Michael Dell and Southeastern Asset Management. And, if CNBC is correct that Icahn opposes the buyout, then the company's three largest outside shareholders are planning to vote nay.

I thought Ron Johnson was an excellent hire when he took over as CEO of J.C. Penney . I never bought into the idea that he was the savior of retail, but I didn't think the company needed one. J.C. Penney just needed a change. And since he was coming from Apple, I thought his winning persona was going to be one additional asset to the company. Unfortunately, one year later, investors are still waiting for that winning formula to take shape.

How much worse can things get?
Not much was expected from the fourth-quarter report. The Street was still hoping to give JCP the benefit of the doubt in some areas. However, in every aspect, the company managed to answer: "How much worse can things get?" Same-store sales, or comps, the most important retail metric that tracts sales performance of stores opened at least one year, dropped roughly 32% year over year. This was 6% worse than Street estimates.