iPhones Carry Apple Past Wall Street Estimates; Coca-Cola Beats Estimates of Overseas Sales; CIT May Still Face Bankruptcy; TARP Czar Calls for Transparency; Caterpillar Stock Jumps on Brighter Outlook; BlackRock Beats Estimates, State Street Falls Short; Merck Considering Partner For Schering-Plough Consumer Health Operations; Yahoo Sales Down, Profit Up

In my column last week, I showed you how to use straddle options to take advantage of market/stock volatility when the direction is uncertain. This week, we hop over the fence to the straddle’s sister strategy – the strangle options play.

A more recent addition to my transformational technologies portfolio, Medarex (NASDAQ:MEDX), has scored a huge win. The company, along with Massachusetts Biologic Laboratory, will get $60 million upfront from Merck (NYSE:MRK) for license rights to a monoclonal antibody that apparently cures C. difficile infection. They are eligible for another $165 million in milestones as well as royalties.

Despite efforts by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to thaw the credit markets, normal lending remains hamstrung. This is a both a significant problem and an enormous opportunity.

Bellwethers Report Disappointing Earnings; Morgan Stanley on the Hunt for Regional Banks; NYT Reports Loss; Pentagon Computers Hacked; FDIC Ready to Replace Pandit; TARP Faces Fraud; Financial Institutions Lost $4.1 trillion; India Cuts Rates

While many analysts expect U.S. corporate earnings and overall economic data to remain weak by historical standards, there may well be enough of an improvement over the prior months and quarters to spark some optimism that there are better times ahead.

Is it a bull-market rally or a bear-market fake? It came right down to the wire, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day Friday with its first four-day rally since November, ending the week with a gain of 9.0%.

Talk about a winter of discontent… Over the past seven weeks, we’ve seen quite possibly one of the best examples of stock market fear in history.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is taking his sweet time to work out the details of TARP II.  But for all the uncertainty surrounding his plans, we know one thing:  Zombie banks will not be allowed to go under.

In the past few years, a strange new “defensive” asset has appeared in the market.

Investors use the “defensive” label to describe businesses that enjoy steady demand for their products – like food, cigarettes and electric utilities.