With earnings season starting to wind down, investors are not anticipating many new surprises.

Exxon Mobil’s Profit Geyser; General Motors Cleans Up Its Act; Home Depot Boards Up 15 Stores; New $60 Billion City in U.A.E. Planned; Wheat Hits Five-Month Low; Brit Firm’s Silicone Valley Buy; Burger King’s “Whopper” Quarter; PharmaNet Plunges on Canceled Contracts.

52-Week T-Bill is Back; Sweet-Smelling Deal for FTD; First Family of Oil Calls for Environmental Focus; Garmin Losing Track; PepsiCo. Stocking up on Water; Bovespa Hits Record on S&P Rating; Kraft Profit Tumbles 13%; Kellogg Profit Sheds 2%.

Crisis, what crisis? An upbeat David Frost, director-general of the British Chamber of Commerce, reminds us there is commercial life beyond the hysterics of Canary Wharf trading screens.

Just imagine if gasoline cost $20 a gallon. You’d start by cutting your driving in half. Then you’d almost never go out to restaurants, because food would become so expensive. You’d probably pull the old bike out of the closet. America would scream bloody murder and lynch the CEO of ExxonMobil.

Stocks dipped lower today (Tuesday), as investor confidence about first quarter earnings remains low.

JPMorgan Makes Schwartz an Offer; Retails Sales Rise; Berkshire’s Brandon Resigns; Brazilian GM Plant; Hungary for Oil; Denny’s Reports 1Q Decline; Goldman Sachs to Cut More Jobs; Fremont Sells Assets to CapitalSource

The U.S. markets reversed course in afternoon trading, heading higher as commodities producers rallied and tech stocks got a boost.

US truckers have started an ad hoc protest across the country over recent hikes in fuel prices, reports AP.

Some truckers, on CB radios and trucking Web sites, had called for a strike Tuesday to protest the high cost of diesel fuel, saying the action might pressure President Bush to stabilize prices by using the nation’s oil reserves. But the protests were scattered because because major trucking companies were not on board and there did not appear to be any central coordination.