Friday Morning Coffee with TradingMarkets

Good Morning!

Regional Banks Down in Pre-Market ... Stock Futures Pointing to Weak Opening on Friday ... Two Former Bear Stearns Hedge Fund Managers Arrested, Charged with Fraud ... United, Continental Form Pact, Stop Short of Merging ... Stocks Lower in Europe ... Crude Oil Marches Past $134 ...

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TradingMarkets 5 Business Stories You Need to Know

Handset Worries Drag on Motorola - Chicago Tribune
Rising competition in the handset market worldwide helped encourage traders to send shares of Motorola to new lows yesterday. Other cellphone makers such as Nokia were also lower.

Motorola is the Featured Stock in our TradingMarkets Up or Down Stock Contest. You have until 4 p.m. today to tell us whether or not you think Motorola will be up or down on Monday. Click here to register for free for your chance to win $1,000 by correctly guessing the direction of a stock!

Evidence Against Bear Fund Managers Revealed - Bloomberg
U.S. prosecutors begin to unveil some of the evidence against two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers who were arrested yesterday on charges of fraud.

About that Pound Pullback - Financial Times
A better than expected retail sales report in the U.K. was credited for a rally in the pound days after pessimistic comments on inflation from the Bank of England helped send the pound lower.

Yahoo After Microsoft - Wall Street Journal
Yahoo president Susan Decker helps plot a course for the online entity in the wake of the failed Microsoft deal and a search partnership with Google that has left many Yahoo shareholders cold.

Carnival Cruise Lines Beats Estimates - Reuters
Cost-cutting and higher prices helped Carnival Cruise Lines smash through analyst estimates - and offset rising fuel expenses in the process.

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:

• Rising medical costs sent healthcare stocks lower across the board on Thursday, with stocks like UnitedHealthGroup (UNH | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) losing more than 7%.
  

• Broadcom (BRCM | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) shares benefited from a positive analyst report out of Lehman Brothers that suggested sales of the Nintendo Wii video game console in the second half of 2008 would boost demand for Broadcom's semiconductor chips.
  
  
• A Goldman Sachs recommendation for investors to sell shares in both Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio (XMSR | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) sent both stocks reeling on Thursday.
  
  
• An analyst upgrade from Citigroup (C | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) put a "buy" rating on shares of American International Group (AIG | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating), which were up nearly 5% on Thursday.
  
  
• Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) beat analyst estimates by a whopping $0.18 per share this morning in its earnings announcement before the open yesterday.
  
  
• Concerns that Motorola (MOT | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) may have difficulties in its planned spin-off of its handset unit encourage traders to sell the stock on Thursday. Motorola lost nearly 6%.
  

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

TradingMarkets 5 PowerRatings Stocks for Today

TradingMarkets Tracking the Wizards

Learn to Trade Forex - TradingMarkets
Tune in to TradingMarkets.com at 1 p.m. on Friday for a free, live Conference Call with CNBC guest commentator and TradingMarkets forex specialist Mark Whistler. Will the dollar gain against the yen? Will the Euro continues its bull run? Find out the answers to these and other questions on the minds of FX traders today at 1 p.m. with Mark Whistler. Click the headline above to reserve your spot!

Chase the Gap or Wait for the VWAP? - TradingMarkets
TradingMarkets contributor Brian Shannon discusses gaps, trading in multiple time frames and how to use the volume weighted average price to take positions in fast moving markets.

5 PowerRatings Stocks for the Next 5 Days - TradingMarkets
Looking for stocks that are likely to outperform the average stock over the next 5 days? Our 5 PowerRatings Stocks for the Next 5 Days column is a great place to start!

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