Market Talk

- 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.

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.

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