Friday Morning Coffee with TradingMarkets

Good Morning!

Google Tops Estimates... Citigroup Reports $5.1B Loss... Caterpillar Income Up 13%... Honeywell Income Jumps, Issues Upbeat Forecast... Schlumberger Profit Rises Less than Expected... AMD Loss Narrows... Xerox Swings to Loss.

Asian stocks down... European stocks up... Dollar strengthens... And the futures are pointing to a strong open.

Would you like to improve your trading? TradingMarkets would like to invite you to a private 30-minute conference call with TradingMarkets CEO and Founder Larry Connors on April 18, 2008 at 12:00 pm ET.

Larry will discuss the upcoming new TradingMarkets Swing Trading College (STC). STC is a 14-session, online course which will provide you with the latest trading research and strategies to professionally swing trade stocks, options, ETF’s, and e-mini’s and futures. Click here to sign-up.

TradingMarkets 5 Business Stories You Need to Know

Google Profit Rose 30%, Quelling Investor Fears - Wall Street Journal
Google's net climbed 30% despite slowing growth in the number of clicks on ads. Google said the weak economy hadn't hurt its business, and shares surged after hours.

Citigroup Reports Loss on $15 Billion of Credit Costs - Bloomberg
Citigroup, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, posted its second straight quarterly loss on at least $15 billion of writedowns and increased loan losses as customers fell behind on home, car and credit-card payments.

Caterpillar Net Income Climbs 13% - MarketWatch
Caterpillar says strong demand outside North America powered the bulldozer giant to a 13% jump in quarterly profit Friday, adding to bullish sentiment in the broad market.

Schlumberger First Quarter Profit Up but Misses Street - Thomson Reuters
Schlumberger, the world's largest oilfield services company, on Friday posted a first-quarter profit that fell short of expectations due partly to weather disruptions and lower income in its seismic business, sending shares down about 2 percent in pre-market trading.

Investment Banks Eye CDS Clearing House - Financial Times
Deutsche Bank and other investment banks are working on plans to develop a clearing house for the credit derivatives markets in an effort to allay growing regulatory and investor fears about "counterparty risk".

For more stories as they happen, go to our Breaking News section.

TradingMarkets 7 Stocks You Need to Know for Today

Here are 7 stocks for traders for today from TradingMarkets.com:

• Merrill Lynch (MER | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) reported a wider than expected loss of -$2.20 per share.
  
  
• Pfizer (PFE | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) reported first quarter results that missed estimates for both top and bottom line numbers.
  
  
• Shares of Nokia (NOK | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) plunged more than 14% after the company reported quarterly earnings that beat estimates by $0.02, but issued a gloomy outlook.
  
  
• After the close, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) reported earnings in-line with estimates.
  
  
• Meanwhile, shares of Google (GOOG | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) surged in extended trading after the company beat estimates by $0.32.
  
  
• Before the market open, Citigroup (C | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) reported a loss of -$1.02 per share, -$0.07 worse than expected.
  
  
• And finally, Schlumberger (SLB | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) missed estimates by $0.05.
  

For a list of today's highest PowerRating stocks, click here.

TradingMarkets 5 PowerRatings Stocks for Today

TradingMarkets Tracking the Wizards

The Last Good Trade: Google - TradingMarkets
Buying weakness and selling strength is the oldest--and wisest--way to make money trading stocks. And it's true whether you are betting on stocks to go up or stocks to down--as was the case of what we think was The Last Good Trade in Google.

Everything You Need to Know About Options Selling - TradingMarkets
As most people reading this know, there are two parts to option pricing; there is the intrinsic value, or real value, and there is the premium, or what I like to call the "fluff".

Free Report! The Only 3 Options Trading Strategies You'll Ever Need - TradingMarkets
There may be as many ways to trade the market as there are traders who want to do so. But the difference between the professionals and the amateurs when it comes to trading is that the majority of professional traders know that the edge lies in buying markets when they are weak and selling them when they are strong.

Click here to sign up for the Morning Coffee with TradingMarkets newsletter.