A federal judge has tossed out guilty verdicts against two salespeople who used late-night infomercials to tout their stock-trading abilities.

U.S. stock futures are signaling a lower opening Monday on Wall Street following modest losses overseas.

World stock markets were modestly lower Monday as investors look to this week’s Federal Reserve meeting for more clues about the strength of the U.S. recovery.

For the week that ended Sept. 4. DIVIDEND Quarterly unless noted Increased Bancfirst Corp .23 from .22 Frisch’s Restaurants .13 from .12 Verizon Commun .475 from .46 Extra/Special Medquist Inc $1.33 Omitted/Suspended DHT Marine Inc Reduced Ameriana Bancorp .01 from .04

For the week that ended Aug. 7. DIVIDEND Quarterly unless noted Increased Apollo Invest .28 from .26 Aqua America .145 from .135 Atrion Corp .36 from .30 Buckeye GP LP .37 from .35 Buckeye Ptrs LP .9125 from .90 Carlisle Cos .16 from .155 Church & Dwight .14 from .09 Dover Corp .26 from .25

For the week that ended July 10. DIVIDEND Quarterly unless noted Increased Walgreen Co .1375 from .1125 Extra/Special Soapstone Networks $3.75 Reduced Middleburg Fncl .10 from .19 Paccar Inc .09 from .18 Weyerhaeuser Co .05 from .25 STOCK SPLITS This Week Direxion Fin Bear 3x 1-10 rev

The Richmond Times-Dispatch has fine-tuned the stock listings published in the newspaper on the Markets & Money page Tuesday through Saturday and in the Moneywise section on Sundays. The changes took effect last week for the daily stock listings and today.

Investors placed small bets on stocks Friday as they remained reluctant to get too enthusiastic about economic data.

Wall Street got the news it wanted on the economy’s biggest problems — banks and housing — and responded with a rally that hurtled the Dow Jones industrials up nearly 500 points.

Editor’s note: Earlier this month, Jeffrey Goodstein wrote a guest Commentary column warning investors about the risks of always staying invested in the stock market. Many readers asked, “If not the stock market, where should I invest during a recession?“ Today, Goodstein offers some suggestions about the advantages and risks involved in a variety of investment opportunities.

Most Richmond-area companies couldn’t escape the stock market slaughter of 2008, posting large declines for the year. The Bloomberg-created index of the 20 largest publicly traded companies with headquarters in the Richmond area ended the year down 40.45 percent. That was worse than three widely used stock indices. The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index ended the year down 33.84 percent and 38.5 percent, respectively. The Nasdaq composite index fell 40.5 percent during 2008.

A growing fear of economic deflation helped take the air out of the stock market yesterday, and another white-knuckle final hour on Wall Street pushed the Dow Jones industrials under 8,000 to their lowest close since the financial meltdown began and to levels not seen in five years.

Wall Street tumbled again yesterday as investors worried that the global economy is poised to weaken even as parts of the credit market show signs of recovery. The major indexes fell more than 4 percent, including the Dow Jones industrial average, which finished off its lows with a loss of 514 points. Corporate profit forecasts, a jump in the dollar and falling commodity prices signaled investors are fearful that an economic slowdown will sweep the globe.

Most Richmond-area companies couldn’t escape the stock market slaughter of 2008, posting large declines for the year. The Bloomberg-created index of the 20 largest publicly traded companies with headquarters in the Richmond area ended the year down 40.45 percent. That was worse than three widely used stock indices. The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index ended the year down 33.84 percent and 38.5 percent, respectively. The Nasdaq composite index fell 40.5 percent during 2008.