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Verizon sits on mountains of personal data about consumer habits and preferences. It's all dressed up with almost nowhere to go.

By acquiring AOL in an all-cash deal valued at roughly $4.4 billion, Verizon stands to be better positioned to leverage the data it collects on more than 100 million wireless subscribers, data that represent a veritable gold mine for prospective advertisers.

Rather than trying to add more Internet subscribers as Comcast (CMCSA) hoped to do by buying Time Warner Cable  (TWC) or AT&T (T) aims to do by acquiring DirecTV (DTV), Verizon is hoping AOL's sophisticated advertising platform will generate more revenue off its existing customer base. AOL has spent nearly $1 billion over the past three years building an automated advertising platform aimed at selling inventory on Web sites and television channels in real time.

"For Verizon, it's all about monetizing personal data," said Ken Doctor, media analyst at Newsonomics, an independent research firm. "The access that Verizon has to its customers' habits, preferences, their buying patterns is enormous, and with AOL it sees the opportunity to monetize those even better than it's doing right now."

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11

May

1. There’s a secret size that’s not on the menu: the 8-ounce “short” cup.

2. Starbucks owns Teavana.

3. The average Starbucks customer visits the store six times a month.

4. The original name was Pequod’s.

5. Starbucks has created more than 40 different kinds of Frappuccinos.

6. The round tables were created so that solo coffee drinkers would feel less alone.

7. The Chantico is the company’s biggest beverage flop.

8. There are over 87,000 drink combination possibilities.

9. More than 10 million people use the Starbucks mobile app.

10. And it’s the first brand to reach 10 million likes on Facebook.

11. The 30.9-ounce Trenta size cup is larger than the human stomach.

12. Starbucks has opened an average of two stores daily since 1987.

13. The company’s “10-Minute Rule” requires each store to open its doors 10 minutes before the posted time and close 10 minutes following the closing time.

14. A Starbucks cheese danish has 420 calories and 25 grams of fat, vs. a McDonald’s Sausage McMuffin, which will net you 380 calories and 22 grams of fat.

15. Starbucks spends more on health care for its employees than it does on coffee beans each year.

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This is a screenshot of our current trades from today just after the NFP annoucnement. As you can see, We're doing very well, with almost all of the trades winning.

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One poor U.S. jobs report is cause for concern. Two bad reports in a row is reason to panic.

For now, virtually no one on Wall Street or at the White House is panicking. Forecasters predict job creation in April will bounce back in a big way after a disappointing 126,000 increase in March that was the smallest in 15 months.

Economists polled by MarketWatch predict a healthy 245,000 gain in April, restoring the level of hiring close to the 2014 average. Last year the U.S. added the most jobs since 1999.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, is seen falling a tick to 5.4% in April. That would mark the lowest level since May 2008.

The April employment report is the only one that truly matters on this week’s economic calendar after a miserly 0.2% increase in first-quarter growth and the disappointing job gains in March. The big bet on Wall Street is that the economic slowdown early in the year reflects an unusually harsh winter and other temporary impediments that will soon fade.

A snapback in hiring would confirm that view. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in his new blog, asserts the pace of employment gains gives a much better sense of how the economy is performing than quarterly reports on the nation’s growth.

In other words, forget about the first quarter.

But all bets are off if the employment spigot in April is reduced to a trickle for the second month in a row—it would signal a broader softness in the U.S. economy.

The early signs are not exactly encouraging. Consumer confidence fell in April to the lowest level in four months, for one thing. And a survey of U.S. manufacturing executives indicates that they stopped hiring last month to cope with a sales slowdown.

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