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Kapitall submits:Here is a list of 15 companies releasing earnings on July 26. We've sorted the companies by market cap, and have briefly discussed their earnings performance over the past 3 years.The charts show past earning performances against analyst estimates. The green markers indicate the company beating estimates, while the red makers represent the company falling short of analyst expectations. All data is sourced from Zacks Investment Research.Complete Story »

Leif Peterson submits:There are several indications for an oncoming bear market. First and foremost, the daily Ichimoku cloud indicator produced a strong sell signal (chart below, yellow box) for the SP500 (^GSPC on Yahoo) last Friday, July 2, 2010. You can also note from the Ichimoku chart that the SP500 is trading below the cloud, which indicates a bearish bias in the long term. In the intermediate and short term, the market is trading below both the Tenkan-sen (9-day turning line – “TL”) and the Kijun-sen (26-day standard line – “SL”). Thus, every indication from the Ichimoku daily chart is that the market is very bearish, so long traders should be cautious. Complete Story »

Jeffrey Walkenhorst submits:This is an update of our "How's the Economy Doing" periodic series and follows recent posts around economic data and divergent views. As a reminder, while our our investment strategy focuses on bottom-up analysis of individual companies, we think awareness of overall macroeconomic conditions is helpful since trends may impact certain companies or sectors.In recent months, we shared a number of headlines from the global shipping industry highlighting positive developments. Let's look at some hard data across other sectors:Complete Story »

Miriam Metzinger submits: Stocks discussed on the in-depth session of Jim Cramer's Mad Money TV Program, Friday June 18.CEO Wall of Shame: Tony Hayward BP (BP), UAL Corporation (UAUA), Annaly Capital Management (NLY)Complete Story »

Market Folly submits:(This post is part of our series on tracking hedge fund portfolios. If you're unfamiliar with tracking investments they disclose via SEC filings, check out our series preface on hedge fund filings.)Next up is Chris Shumway's hedge fund Shumway Capital Partners. Prior to founding his firm, Shumway was previously one of Julian Robertson's right-hand men at legendary hedge fund Tiger Management. As such, he joins the other successful Tiger Cubs and is included in the Tiger Cub portfolio created with Alphaclone for hedge fund replication. Shumway Capital Partners focuses on intensive fundamental research to drive their long/short equity strategy. Back in 2009, Shumway was listed in Barron's top 100 hedge funds for 2009 with a rolling 3-year annualized return of 28%. However, 2010 has proven difficult for the firm as its Sakkonet Fund was down 10% in May after it had gained 4.3% through April. Shumway received his MBA from Harvard Business School and his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia.Complete Story »

Frederic Ruffy submits: SentimentStocks suffered another round of losses, but the major averages are well off session lows late Tuesday. The stage was set for a rough day on Wall Street after Asian markets fell on worries about escalating tensions between North and South Korea. European benchmarks also suffered declines amid ongoing weakness in the euro and worries about the European sovereign debt debacle. Events overseas continue to overshadow domestic news and, with less than an hour left to trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down another 105 points. However, today’s decline was orderly and the industrial average has managed to climb more than 180 points off session lows. The CBOE Volatility Index (.VIX) is down .94 to 37.38, but trading in the options market remains defensive. About 7 million calls and 9.1 million puts traded so far.Bullish FlowPfizer (PFE) is down 22 cents to $15 and the top trade in the name so far is a block of 6750 Dec 15 calls on the $1.39 bid. Looks tied to 675K shares at $14.99 and part of a buy-write. Remember that a buy-write is the same as a “covered call” and one of the first strategies many options traders learn. In this trade, the investor simply buys shares and sells calls — selling 1 call for every 100 shares.Complete Story »

Phil Davis submits: That’s right, I said WIMPS! I have never heard so much whining and crying and complaining about a market drop as I have the past few weeks. Last week, I pointed out that we had only fallen 105 points from the prior week (10,172 to 10,067) and this week we fell ALL THE WAY to 10,012 to finish the week and you would think the world was ending (again) from the way the MSM has been acting.Complete Story »