Market Talk

As huge NY fans, we were ecstatic to hear our colleague Veronica Dagher had the opportunity to interview Super Bowl XLII MVP Eli Manning and the NY Jets’ newest running back, LaDainian Tomlinson.

At Gatorade’s G Series Pro launch event in NYC, Manning and Little LT (sorry, guy, you’re in New York now, there’s only one true LT in this town) discuss the season ahead, the business of the NFL and who to trust with your money. Check out Veronica’s interviews here.

US stocks finish strong to end another good week for the market, with major averages logging fresh multi-year highs.

Upbeat quarterly profit reports and positive economic data continue to help support a bid for equities. Part of the story today, however, is bubbly oil prices; Exxon and Chevron contribute roughly 20% of the DJIA’s gain.

Energy and materials lead sector gainers; consumer staples and telecom lag. American Express, Caterpillar and Merck among the other strong Dow Industrials.

Stocks shake off early choppiness, DJIA climbs 69.99 to 11204.28 and Nasdaq Comp adds 11.08 to 2530.15. S&P 500 ends 8.61 higher at 1217.28.

- Shouldn’t shock anyone that Greece finally folds, with Prime Minister George Papandreou saying it’s time for “support mechanism” to be activated. “The meltdown in their bond market this week made it an inevitability,” says Miller Tabak’s Peter Boockvar.

- As Greece requests for aid, keep in mind the yield on all the debt of weak eurozone governments widened yesterday while German yields fell. “The spreads show all you need to know: a very clear and large contagion risk,” Peter Boone and Simon Johnson write at The Baseline Scenario.

- Growing number of pundits suggesting SEC’s case against Goldman Sachs (GS) isn’t as strong as it seems, which puzzles Stephen Gandel. “The issue is not that Goldman got someone to place a bet with Paulson, but that that bet was rigged from the start,” he says.

- Apple (AAPL) shares hit yet another all-time high this morning, prompting LA Times’ Tom Petruno to wonder whether anything can stop the “Apple stock juggernaut.”

- James Altucher highlights why Apple’s (AAPL) stock could soar to $1,000. On the flip side, Brett Arends posts seven reasons Apple shareholders should be cautious.

- Barry Ritholtz tries to clarify any uncertainty pertaining to SEC’s fraud charges against Goldman Sachs (GS). “The aggressive SEC posture, the huge reaction from Goldie, and the short term market verdict all suggest there is more coming.”

- Palm shares get a boost on reports that Lenovo is a leading candidate to buy the company for $1.3B. But investors shouldn’t get their hopes up. “Logic dictates that Lenovo is an unlikely savior,” Larry Dignan writes at ZDNet.

- MarketBeat’s Matt Phillips offers an earnings season update.

- “In many ways, Netflix exemplifies the ‘jobless recovery,’” Josh Brown writes at The Reformed Broker. “Here is a company that has very few employees that benefits from a large population of people sitting around the house with nothing to do. Renting a movie is the very cheapest form of entertainment after crossword puzzles, no wonder that thing is on fire.”

- WSJ publishes its summer movie preview.

Madeleine Lim and Paul Vigna discuss Greece’s formal request for aid, the huge jump in new home sales and the durable goods report. It’s Tomorrow’s News Today.

Many assume Palm’s future is either buyout or bankruptcy.

Not so fast, says CEO Jon Rubinstein. In recent interviews with MarketWatch and Financial Times, he tries to paint a relatively rosy picture about Palm’s future. Sure, he acknowledges the difficulties facing the company, but he also claims to have the answers.

In the FT interview, he insists Palm could survive as an independent company, noting its strong product pipeline and potential to license its WebOS operating system to other companies to boost revenue. From Financial Times:

Palm’s revenue warning in February underlined how it is struggling to gain the scale necessary to survive in the highly competitive smartphone market, which is led by Apple’s iPhone.

Mr Rubinstein, however, said he was “bullish” about Palm’s long-term prospects. “I believe Palm can survive as an independent company,” he told the Financial Times. “We have a plan that gets us to profitability.”

He highlighted how Palm had a gross cash position of $592m at the end of its third quarter.

Continue reading…

It’s the simple things in life that matter, really; a child’s joy, a warm summer’s day, a meal out with the family, a 270% return in your massively-short-the-housing-market strategy. Okay, that last isn’t so simple. But you get the point.

What we’ve seen with some of the restaurant companies that have reported first-quarter earnings is that Americans are indulging once again in one of those simple pleasures, as we write about in today’s Upshot column:

From Brinker International Inc. to McDonald’s Corp. to Starbucks Corp., restaurant chains are serving more customers. That’s boosting bottom lines and increasing confidence that the worst is firmly in the rear-view mirror.

“Consumers are more confident today, dramatically more confident today then they were especially one year ago,” Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. co-Chief Executive Montgomery Moran said on a conference call Wednesday. “It looks like the consumer is out spending again.”

Nobody knows where things will go, what the economy will do in the second half, but this is a small, good sign of demand returning to the marketplace.

Greece has finally bitten the bullet and formally asked for a bailout, with the prime minister telling the Greek people in almost science fiction-like language that they’ve officially requested “from our partners the activation of the support mechanism.”

Back here on US shores, we’ve had plenty of our own “support mechanism” activations, thanks to Uncle Sam, so no snickering, citizens. One of those supports, the home-buyer tax credit expires next week, but we should see some of its positive effects on March new home sales, due at 10:00 a.m.

Before that, durable goods orders at 8:30 a.m. Microsoft and Amazon both lower premarket following quarterly reports late yesterday. Dollar index recently at 81.63. S&P futures up 4.60, DJ futures up 25 Ten-year lower, yield at 3.79%.