After watching its shares plunge more than 20% over the past month, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) decided to embrace a different strategy with regards to its looming third-quarter profit report: It opted to get out in front of the flood of corporate earnings reports that are headed this way by providing Wall Street with a preview of its third-quarter results.

It takes big cojones to invest in the US banking sector right now. Barely a week passes without another financial giant hitting the wall. The sector has been one of the worst hit this year.

But are there firms that will benefit from the wholesale restructuring of the industry? Money Map editor Horacio Marquez says Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) “will jump from merely being one of the largest banks in the world to being a commercial-and-investment banking powerhouse.”

Horacio recommends using short-term volatility to buy BAC shares on market dips to gradually build up a long-term position by the end of the year.

The base metals were mixed in undramatic trading on Wednesday. Copper sank below $3.30 in the pre-dawn hours, but then rallied through most of the rest of the day, finishing with a modest gain at $3.3507/lb., up more than 2¾ cents. Nickel came off its pre-dawn lows to trade essentially flat through the day, closing at $8.7636/lb., down 3 cents.

Piracy Robs Microsoft; BlackRock Profits Rise 23%; Nokia Beats Expectations; Venezuela Lights Up U.S.; BOE’s Sentance “Struck”; Coke’s Earnings Hiccup; JPMorgan Earnings Surprise; Investor Outrage in Pakistan

We’ve been warning you since the start that the subprime crisis would have some real staying power.Indeed, every time optimistic prognosticators have predicted an end to this global financial debacle, we’ve had the same response: Don’t you believe it.

Barclays PLC (ADR: BCS), the United Kingdom’s fourth-largest bank, may get a $927 million cash infusion from Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. by the end of the month.

Crude Hits $133; Time Warner Spins Off Cable Unit; Boeing Jettisons 750 Workers; UBS Sells Assets to BlackRock; American Airlines’ Desperate Moves; Moody’s Big Mistake; DOJ to Sue OPEC?; BOE Holds on Inflation Fears.