TGIF

Morning News of Note:

• Gapping Up
  Gapping up on strong earnings/guidance: MSFT +5.9%, HYSL +8.1% (also Roth upgrade), BUCY +5.7% (also Stifel upgrade), CERN +5.3%, INFA +5.3% (also Goldman upgrade), SAY +3.2%, AMGN +3.1%, JCI +3.1% (also multiple upgraeds), COGN +3%, CAT +2.7%, SLB +2.2%, ACI +2%, GOOG +1%... Other News: PETD +15% (announces sale of property), TSRA +13% (enters licensing pact with Micron, raises guidance), CELL +7.4% (Deutsche upgrade), NANO +5.6% (bounces after recent weakness), NL +4.7% (recovers after 6% drop yesterday), LUB +4.4%, DENN +4.1% (positive CL King comments), AVCI +2.6% (extends yesterday's 34% move), CTXS +1.7% (Goldman upgrade), MT +1.6%, MOT +1% (added to Focus List at Merrill), EBAY +1% (recovers a bit after 5% drop yesterday).
• Gapping Down
  Gapping down on disappointing earnings/guidance: DELL -13% (down in sympathy: HPQ -4%, MRVL -3.2%, NVDA -1.9%, AAPL -1.2%, INTC -1.1%), HTCH -15% (down in sympathy: STX -1.4%), FFIV -12% (also Kaufman downgrade), PKTR -10%, SWKS -10% (also Piper downgrade), BRCM -10%, ACO -9.5%, BTUI -12% (also Needham downgrade), AMD -7.7%, SEPR -7.2%, COF -6%, PMCS -5.9% (also Stanford downgrade), VRSN -3.1%, MDCC -3.6%, AMLN -3.1% (Lehman downgrade), GILD -1.7%, ERICY -2.1%, HAL -2.1%, RSH -1.7%, LLY -1.4%, COGN -1.2%, Under $3: ZHNE -23%... Other News: GYMB -6.3% (chief creative officer retires), WTI -3.7% (prices offering), NTES -3.6% (JP Morgan downgrade), MU -3.5% (in sympathy with weak IFX qtr), WFR -2.5% (negative broker comments), ASML -1.7%, ATHR -1.3%.
• AAPL Apple Computer: iPod phone may ring in - NY Post (60.50 )
  NY Post reports the co may have a new product in the works to ring up sales: an iPod phone. The gadget, which would combine the co's popular portable music player with a mobile phone, has been rumored for months. The co is notoriously tight-lipped about new merchandise, but a top exec hinted earlier this week that the co is working on a mobile phone music player.
• SLB Schlumberger beats on the top and bottom line (61.66 )
  Reports Q2 (Jun) earnings of $0.73 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.10 better than the Reuters Estimates consensus of $0.63; revenues rose 36.7% year/year to $4.69 bln vs the $4.44 bln consensus. "The second-quarter growth patterns proved to be the opposite of the first quarter of 2006. Sequential growth in North America slowed as impressive results in US Land and exceptional performance in the US Gulf Coast were partially offset by a prolonged spring break-up in Canada. In North America some temporary slowing of natural gas drilling activity cannot be excluded though currently there are no clear signs of this."
• Cramer's 'Mad Money' Recap - TheStreet.com
  On Thursday's edition, Jim recommends buying bank stocks at this part of the business cycle. Reason No. 1 is that banks have stopped issuing stock and are beginning to buy back stock. Secondly, whereas banks used to have pretty bad credit card losses when people declared bankruptcy, now with the new bankruptcy law, it is tough to declare it, Cramer said. The third reason he gave was that banks are cheap. The final reason was that after 17 rate increases, when banks should be experiencing loan losses and mortgage problems, they actually have the fewest loan losses and mortgage problems they've had in years. Banks have created a slew of businesses that are fee-based by relying less on interest rates and more on fee-based business, he said. He predicted bank shares should move up 15% to 20% over the next 12 to 18 months.

Market Comments: Is it just me, or does all of this volatility make for some really long weeks. I guess having a new baby at home doesn't help, especially in the sleep department, but who's complaining?

The market opened under heavy selling pressure this morning, which looks like it could be related to options expiration today. I expect the early declines to moderate later in the session.

Oil and gold are trading higher, the dollar is lower, and bond yields are flat around 5.03%.

DELL's warning really didn't help things this morning, and is probably exacerbating much of the weakness in techland today. Funny that CDWC reported blowout earnings a few days ago. Where is the correlation?

AAPL has gone positive, and GOOG is trying hard to do the same. A rally today would really catch a lot of people leaning the wrong way. I'm just saying...

long AAPL, GOOG