Bloomberg Smaller US stocks may be worth watching right now for both their relative performance and their technical picture. The Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks has fallen 1.5 percent since February 22, while the S&P 500 index, which tracks the biggest American companies, has risen 4 percent. And that difference could bode ill for the entire stock market, equity …

Bloomberg As merger talks between Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG appear to run into more obstacles, potential suitors are jockeying for a piece of the German banking market should government efforts to create a national champion fail. Commerzbank, the smaller of the two, is attracting the most interest, perhaps because it would be easier to digest. Dutch lender ING …

Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. is once again flirting with something that no major US bank has done in a decade: have a dividend yield north of 4 percent. The spike in the yield comes as the result of sliding shares rather than profit growth. Wells Fargo dropped as much as 1 percent in early trading after gaining 2.5 percent …