The official figures for Microsoft's fourth quarter of 2010 are out which is 16.04 billion US Dollars. With the announcement by Apple last Tuesday, it was expected in several quarters of the country that Apple would over take Microsoft in the net revenue generation and that would be the first time in the recent history. But Microsoft proved most of them wrong. Though Apple had reported 15.7 billion US Dollar last quarter, Microsoft crossed that with ease at 16.04 billion US dollar.

Apple Inc (APPL) Has a Record Quarter

The analysts were telling us that the quarter coming from Apple Inc would be very good with their regular increases in earnings estimates but the street was surprised at how good the quarter turned out to be. For the third quarter ending in June, Apple reported revenue of $15.7 billion and a profit of $3.25 billion. This beat street estimates by 12.5%. The company’s fifth quarter in a row of surprising to the upside on earnings.

The popularity of Apple products is increasing everyday. With the release of the iPhone 4 from At&t the demand is now higher than ever to have this fancy cell phone. However, news broke that there was a slight defect in its network. Apparently there is a limit on the amount of data uploads in certain areas. Users will now have to wait longer to send video, pictures, and other content.

Goldman Sachs Groups and Morgan Stanley have earned billions in profits utilizing fixed income trade procedures over past year or so, but this engine of profits may be stalling in the 2nd quarter as turbulence comes to bond markets.

Earnings estimates for these two investment banking firms have been slashed by analysts recently, due to misgivings regarding fixed income trades, and also merger advisory revenues and stock trades. The two banking firms are due to give reports of their results at the end of this month.

Markets Move Higher Looking Forward to Earnings Season

According to an article today by the NY Times, the American recovery is in full affect for US corporations and the upcoming earnings season should display some of this good news throughout business sectors. Profits among businesses in America will be some of the best numbers ever seen according to the news source. This positive feeling about corporate profits has already has brought the major indexes out of a downward movement and into a short-term rally. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has bounced off a nine month low of 9595 up to 10225 over the past week.

Stocks Fall Under Global Slowdown Concerns

Fear gripped the markets today as investors sold heavily in the morning and shed additional shares near the close. If you have been reading FastSwings.com, then you know that I have been on hold since publishing the article ‘Stocks Recover But The Trend is Down’. The positive is that interest rates are falling to even lower lows, so refinancing for Americans is very affordable on automobiles and homes. Trading the market is a little less exciting during this time.

Interest Rates Staying in Place

The Federal Reserve finished a two day meeting and left interest rates in place instead of adjusting them upward to ward off possible inflation. The Fed board seemed to be more concerned about growth in the US than they had previously been when reporting their findings last month. European debt issues have stalled the US recovery to some degree and inflation is not a concern of the Fed at this time.

Sketchers USA (SKX) Breaking Out

Sketchers, the footwear manufacturer, has been printing money as of late and the stock has rallied nicely over the past 12 months. Most recently, it has traded in a range near its 52 week high but looks to be breaking out once again. Set to release an earnings report towards the end of July, the stock price of Sketchers USA (SKX) could move higher will improved expectations and a moderate price to earnings ratio.

VMWare Inc (VMW) stock has been on a nice run over the past year from a low $26.12 a share on July 8, 2009 to a recent high of $70.71. The company develops, markets, and sells the very popular software product by the same name that allows enterprises world-wide the ability to better utilize computer server space by partitioning the resources into separate virtual servers.

SanDisk Corp (SNDK) Moves Higher

In addition to great stock performance and solid earnings and revenue improvements, SanDisk (SNDK) today announced new improvements in flash memory devices while Gartner predicted rising chip sales. The flash devices of SanDisk are now moving into PC applications as replacements for hard drives and allowing netbook makers to design even smaller portable devices. The performance of the new memory products along with reliability and storage capacity make the devices ideal for many application according to reports.