Steven Mallas
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But, I had been looking at various trading ideas and wanted to capture a shorter-term gain for a trading account. The market has been so tough this year. When the recent rally in the indexes started, I didn't want to become part of the group that was desperate to get in on the action, only to expose my portfolio to more risk than necessary. Believe me, when you're afraid of missing a rally, you just might end up with some bad timing.

Yesterday, Marvel, a company whose comic library competes with Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) and its own stable of superheroes, received an upgrade from JPMorgan. It now is in the Overweight camp. Before, it was merely Neutral. As you might expect, the stock reacted. There was no way the market was going to ignore this because, really, Marvel is one of those stocks that does show a lot of promise considering that the sequel to Iron Man is due out next summer. Shares closed over 5% higher on Wednesday in reaction to the headline. The professional traders must loved the action.

Well, as Boorstin rightly points out, CBS (NYSE: CBS), Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC, General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC, and News Corp.'s (NASDAQ: NWS) Fox do need to worry. These DVR technologies basically translate to a drop in the economic value of advertising. Let's face it: who watches commercials when they don't have to?

Sealy (NYSE: ZZ) is another one of those cheap stocks that's up big from lows achieved earlier in the year. When I say cheap, I don't mean value. I'm talking about a low-priced equity. The kind of equity that is priced below $5 per share. In the case of Sealy, its shares could be had, as of the close of trading on Tuesday, for $1.96.

But wait, you could have gotten it even cheaper in the after-hours session, because shares of the bedding manufacturer traded down to $1.82 on its Q2 report. I have to agree with the market. Although there were some positive elements contained in the release, overall, I wasn't impressed enough by the numbers to become a buyer.

H&R Block did pretty well considering revenues declined almost 3%. Earnings from continuing operations were flat at $2.09 per diluted share. This was enough to beat estimates of $2.05 per share according to this source.

As can be seen, if Stifel Nicolaus turns out to be right, then traders might have a winning transaction on their hands. But one thing that must be remembered is the arbitrage game going on here. Pepsi wants to buy Pepsi Bottling Group. The latter is, of course, arguing for a higher purchase price.

Well, Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen took command of the domestic box-office weekend. No surprise after observing what the film did last Wednesday when it opened. According to Boxofficemojo, Fallen, as of early estimates, grossed $112 million during the three-day period starting Friday. The film has taken in over $200 million so far once the days leading up to the weekend are added in. Excellent business. Especially considering that the sequel is doing better than its predecessor at this point, according to a comparison chart (this chart includes a comparison with Iron Man as well, so just focus on the Transformers franchise).

Growth. You've got to love it. I'm sure Viacom does. Disney (NYSE: DIS) isn't doing badly, either. Although not a huge hit, The Proposal did respectable business. It came in second with $18 million. It should eventually reach $100 million.

So, earlier in the week, I discussed Michael Bay and his freak-out with Viacom, Inc. (NYSE: VIA) over the marketing quality on his latest film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Turns out Mike had nothing to worry about.

This film is doing great. At the time of this writing, the film was estimated to have grossed over $60 million on its opening day, which was this past Wednesday. Now, I hate talking about the breaking of this record and that record. Hollywood loves to point out that Movie X achieved the highest gross for a film released on a cloudy day in late September when the moon was full and a new supernova was spotted in the constellation of Cygnus. I'd rather talk about how much profit was achieved, and how much return on capital was recorded (too bad media companies don't have to reveal such data). Nevertheless, I'll give Viacom and Fallen credit. It apparently scored the biggest Wednesday opening ever, and it should theoretically have a great weekend, assuming word of mouth is good. So far, I've only heard superlative things about this particular piece of celluloid, and I know of one person who immediately consulted her cell phone to schedule a time to see the picture with her friends when she heard how awesome it was.

Lennar (NYSE: LEN), whose colleagues include Toll Brothers (NYSE: TOL) and D.R. Horton (NYSE: DHI), reported earnings for the second quarter on Thursday. Since it is a homebuilder, you can expect that it would be a tough one to look at in many respects. There was a revenue decline of over 20%. And there was no profit. Lennar said it lost 76 cents per diluted share.

According to Michael Fowlkes and his earnings preview, Lennar did not satisfy Wall Street's outlook. Analysts were expecting a loss somewhere closer to 63 cents per share. That didn't stop the stock from going up, though. Lennar closed higher yesterday by over 17%. Volume was likewise incredible. Apparently, the market was focusing on the revenue beat.

The per-share profit compared very favorably to the 18 cents earned in last year's similar quarter. However, in terms of analyst expectations, the performance was relatively unimpressive. Earnings.com indicates that 41 cents is what the market was looking for.

Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD), which competes with Walgreen (NYSE: WAG), CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS), and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), saw a big increase in volume on Wednesday after it reported earnings for the first quarter. In fact, as Douglas McIntyre observed, shares of Rite Aid were up 5% at one point during yesterday's session. However, the shares ended up losing their green status by the close of trading. Rite Aid actually lost 3% when all was said and done. What does it all mean?

Well, Rite Aid did beat analyst forecasts by a wide margin. The call was for a loss of 13 cents per share. Rite Aid lost only 6 cents per share once adjustments are made. Revenues dipped a little over 1%, and same-store sales, after excluding the effect of the Brooks Eckerd acquisition, increased 1.5%. Interestingly, the mix of this increase is as follows: the pharmacy sales went up 3.1% on a comparable basis, and the non-pharmacy sales went down 1.4% on the same basis.

Sonic said it earned an adjusted 24 cents per share. This article reported expectations as being $0.20 per share, so management beat the bottom line by a nice amount. We'll throw that result on the positive side of the line.

I was wrong about Jabil Circuit (NYSE JBL). When I wrote about the tech company's last earnings report, I said I wasn't a buyer. I should have been. The stock rose quite a bit after I presented my thoughts to the world. In fact, the stock closed up well over 7% on Tuesday, settling out to a price of $7.12 per share. Volume was extremely active.

Obviously, investors were setting themselves up ahead of the Q3 release. Jabil earned, on an adjusted basis, 4 cents per share. According to Reuters, the market was only counting on 2 cents per share.

According to the earnings preview from Michael Fowlkes, Kroger was expected to deliver around 61 cents per share. Well, Kroger earned 66 cents per share. The number improved last year's performance by 8 cents. Revenues were essentially flat. Same-store sales increased a little over 3%. When you think about it, Kroger did pretty well.

World Wrestling Entertainment (NYSE: WWE) is calling on an old friend to help it bring in an audience beyond the media company's hardcore demographic. Donald Trump, who has worked storylines with WWE before (remember the battle between Trump and Vince McMahon, the one that saw McMahon lose his hair?), recently appeared on WWE's Raw television program. In fact, TVSquad.com discussed the high-profile promotion Trump's involvement received over this past weekend. TV Squad also covered the little controversy caused by Trump's "purchase" of WWE's famous asset (I honestly cannot believe that some investors actually sold the company's stock based on a storyline).

Using Trump isn't a bad idea. He's a pretty good performer, and he seems, at times, like a natural for the wrestling business. How should an investor process his involvement, however? Does it show that WWE is having a hard time developing engaging angles with its own talent roster?