American Express Company (AXP), with the market cap of $71.41B, is the most profitable closed-loop credit card network in the U.S., providing credit and travel services to affluent customers. Although AXP missed the revenue estimates for Q1, AXP continues to improve its bottom line.

Q1, 2013 Earnings

For Q1, 2013, revenue increased nearly 4 percent to $7.88B from $7.61B a year ago, which missed the estimates of $8.03B. However, net income increased 2 percent to $1.28B or $1.15 per share, beating analysts' estimates of $1.12 per share. EPS grew faster than net income due to share buybacks, which had reduced the outstanding shares by 5% year-over-year.

Performance

Despite one less day compared with Q1, 2012 (Leap Year), billed business came in at $224B, which grew 6% on a reported basis and 7% on an FX adjusted basis. Cards in force grew at 5% while proprietary cards grew at

After a 10-year bull run, gold is now falling steeply. At the time of this writing, gold has fallen back to August 2011 levels. Gold ETFs (exchanged traded funds) are seeing an exit of investors. What are some of the reasons for this fall? How can you protect yourself from this drop?

Source: Kitco charts

In each of the past 6 months, the monthly returns for gold has either been negative or has stayed close to zero.

Source: Zingfin: Gold Profile Analysis

Here are some of the primary drivers of this trend:

1. Pause in Quantitative Easing: Gold is generally used as an hedge/protection against inflation. This is the primary reason for gold's rise in the 2003-07 period (when commodity prices as well as real estate markets pushed up the inflation in the supply side) as well as in the 2009-11 period (when unprecendented amount of new money was created).

Wells Fargo & Co (WFC) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) are two large-cap bank stocks with strong cash flow, which comes at an attractive price (P/CF below 8). Both stocks also have stronger ROE and lower P/E compared with peers. WFC and JPM will be reviewed fundamentally and technically in this article. Investing strategies will also be presented.

Wells Fargo & Co

WFC was up 0.24% and closed at $37.30 on March 26, 2013. WFC had been trading in the range of $29.80-$38.20 in the past 52 weeks. WFC has a market cap of $196.60B with a beta of 1.36. WFC remains a great long-term buy with its solid fundamentals and inexpensive cash flow.

Analysts' Calls and Estimates

On March 13, 2013, BMO Capital initiated coverage on WFC with a market perform rating and a price target of $40.00. Analysts currently have a mean target price