Stocks are rising in early trading as investors await key reports on manufacturing and housing. A surprise profit from Ford Motor Co.

Let’s get our bearings here. What is short-selling? NYU Professor of Finance Steven Figlewski can explain: “You sell the stock with the expectation, the intention, that you’re going to buy the stock later


 
 The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit alleging insider trading Friday against the former chief financial officer of a San Francisco private equity fund and six others. The suit claims that Chen Tang, of Fremont, Calif., gleaned nonpublic information through his job at an unidentified private equity fund and from his brother-in-law at a hedge fund that he and others used to reap illegal trading profits of more than $8 million. “As the CFO of a private equity firm, Tang was entrusted with highly confidential and material information, and he violated that trust by misusing the information to generate enormous illegal profits,” Rose Romero, who heads the SEC’s Forth Worth, Texas, office, said in a statement


 
 BrightScope, a San Diego, Calif.-based 401(k) data and analytics firm, announced on Monday a partnership with Target Date Analytics LLC to launch the BrightScope On Target Index. Effective today, plan sponsors and advisers who sign up to use BrightScope’s online tools to compare their plans’ performance to others will now also be able to benchmark the target date funds within their plans. BrightScope, which rates 401(k) plans, went live in January and now has more than 16,500 plans in its database

DEARBORN, Mich. — Ford, the only Detroit automaker to dodge direct government aid and bankruptcy court, surprised investors with net income of nearly $1 billion in the third quarter and forecast a “solidly profitable” 2011. The automaker said Monday earnings were fueled by U.S


 
 State-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC said Monday that European Union regulators will require it to sell more assets sales than originally expected, part of an industry shakeup announced by the government this weekend. Treasury chief Alistair Darling on Sunday said all three banks rescued by taxpayer money — Lloyds Banking Group, Northern Rock Plc and RBS — would divest units.

Call it the Great Cash Hoard. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that in response to the financial crisis companies are hoarding more cash than they have in the last 40 years. Among these corporate cash-savers are banks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, two institutions are holding onto funds “as if another financial crisis were on the way,” reports Bloomberg .