* Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) shares dropped nearly 5% in after hours trade following its fiscal first quarter report and second quarter guidance. Ex-items the Blackberry maker earned 98 cents a share, beating estimates of 94 cents, on inline revenues of $3.42 billion, up 52.7% year-over-year.  However, the company said it expects second quarter earnings of $0.94 to $1.03, inline with estimates, with revenues of $3.45 billion to $3.7 billion, at the low end of projections.  Shares have since rebounded in early trade this morning on positive analyst comments

* Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) reported in a filing that its May machine sales plunged 57% from a year earlier, as the drop in its retail machine sales accelerated

* Goldman Sachs' (NYSE:GS) added Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) to its conviction buy list with an increased price target of $29, citing better sales drivers and cost management

* UAL (NASDAQ:UAUA) said its second quarter traffic numbers may drop

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Highlights include Caterpillar, Inc. (CAT), Manitowoc Co., Inc. (MTW) and The Boeing Company (BA).Next Friday we will get the first revision to the first quarter GDP report. I am not expecting any major changes to it. The economy slowed at a 6.1% annualized rate, or an actual decline of 1.6%, following an almost identical decline in the fourth quarter. Those back-to-back declines were enough to make the unemployment rate jump from 6.2% in September to 8.5% in March (and 8.9% in April).Pretty ugly, but it could be worse. We were actually one of the best-performing major industrialized economies in the first quarter. The old Axis powers had a particularly rough time of it, with Japan down 4.0% or at a 15.1% annual rate, while Germany dropped 3.8% or at a 14.4% annual rate and Italy fell 2.4%, or at a 9.3% rate. The ...

First-quarter earnings season nears an end with Hewlett-Packard (

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pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/-Gb4DZlL6YZX8HuZFSHh8L-dwjU/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/-Gb4DZlL6YZX8HuZFSHh8L-dwjU/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pLast week you noted that consumer and a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);" href="http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/03/consumer-pessimism-receding-investors.html"investor confidence were up significantly/a. But taking a closer look at the data reveals just how significant the confidence bounce was.br /br /In fact according to the archive of a href="http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/indexes/rasmussen_consumer_index"Rasmussen Confidence Index data/a, it only took five days last week for a href="http://legacy.rasmussenreports.com/rasmussen_index.htm"the daily index/a to make up almost all of the ground it had slowly lost over the past five months. (Click to enlarge chart)br /br /a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jlRX6zR7UgM/ScG_xpHp-aI/AAAAAAAAAUU/MAYFqHcJ4Oo/s1600-h/5days.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 398px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jlRX6zR7UgM/ScG_xpHp-aI/AAAAAAAAAUU/MAYFqHcJ4Oo/s400/5days.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5314739894846355874" border="0" //abr /You've seen how a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);" href="http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/03/retail-growth-is-indeed-leading-us-to.html"consumer spending drives recovery/a. Here's just one more data point leading us out of the winter doldrums into a much a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);" href="http://mast-economy.blogspot.com/2009/02/evidence-points-to-recessions-end-by.html"cheerier spring and summer./adiv class="blogger-post-footer"div/div No Gloom here. Only Good ...

The markets continued to rally as the Dow Jones ended up 1.23% at 7486.58 while the S&P and NASDAQ closed up 2.09% and 1.99% respectively. The 10 year saw yields shrink as news that the Fed will increase its open market purchase pushed prices up. Yields closed around 2.55%. Gold and oil settled up at $49 and $929.50 as investors pushed funds into these commodities.

Big news from the tech sector today as International Business Machines [IBM: 91.95, -0.96 (-1.03%)] is in talks to purchase the ailing hardware maker Sun Microsystems [JAVA: 8.89, +3.92 (+78.87%)].  The two Companies have not outright stated anything, but sources close to both sides say an agreement is fast approaching. Could this be a strategic maneuver for IBM as competitors are beefing up their offerings in the data center space?   After all, CEO Palmisano did say he is now on

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March 7, 2009 ndash; The markets are in terrible shape, arguably, the economy is in worse shape. This week we saw a pickup in job losses, higher unemployment rates across the nation and as a whole, heightening concerns that the government really has no answer to solve the financial marketrsquo;s crisis while the markets reacted in turn, moving to levels we havenrsquo;t seen in 12 years. Here is the dismal prognosis for the week: middot;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The Markets ndash; The DJIA and Samp;P fell to 12-year lows. The DJIA has dropped nbsp;more than 20% since inauguration day (this is a spurious factoid, we think but one that dickheads like Rush Limbaugh are trumpeting on the airwaves so we might as well acknowledge it) . The DJIA closed at 6,626.94 on Friday, down 6% on the week, down 24% year-to-date and down 50% since the economists and lsquo;expertsrsquo; acknowledged back in January, ...

by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /blockquote“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”br /Tolstoy/blockquotebr /Well this strongis/strong an interesting little fable of modern family life, even if all the families involved may not be ones which many of my readers would normally wish to belong to.br /br /As is now reasonably well know Russian private oil company Lukoil is currently making a bid for the shares in Spanish energy company Repsol which are owned by the deeply indebted Spanish property company Sacyr Vallhermosa.br /br /Shares in what is Spain's fifth biggest builder, and which currently occupies the somewhat ignominious position of being Spain's worst-performing stock this year, jumped the most in two years last Thursday (20 November) on reports they were about to sell their 20 percent stake in Repsol YPF to the Russian oil company OAO Lukoil. Sacyr, which said last week it ...

by Edward Hugh: BarcelonaSpanish house sales dropped sharply again in May for the fourth month running, official figures showed on Monday, and talk of price declines is now becoming much more general. House sales fell by 34 percent year-on-year in May and mortgage borrowing was down by 40.4 percent from a year earlier, according to the latest data from Spain's National Statistics Institute. The result is rather a shocker since many had obviously been clutching at straws following April's better-than-expected year on year decline in new mortgages of only 7.8%. Reality is, unfortunately, now starting to sink in.Sales of resale properties appear to be suffering the most, down 44% to 25,280, compared to the 21% fall (to 24,890) in the number of newly built properties sold by developers. This figure is misleading, however, as the INE’s figures are ...