Pfizer Profit Triples; Kerkorian Dumps Ford; U.S. Bancorp Profit Nearly Halved; Oil Back Below $72; Avigen’s Drug Trial Mishap; OceanFreight Sails to Strong Dividend; Copper’s Costly Tumble; McClatchy’s Slack Ad Sales

Oil’s Big Rebound; More Deposit Insurance; Home Prices Continue to Collapse; Sovereign Soars on Management Change; Taking Midway Private; Pfizer’s R&D Refocus

Right before yesterday afternoon’s spectacular rally in US stocks, Andrew Snyder recommended investors buy oversold shares. In particular, he said Nortel (NYSE:NT), which was down 45% since the start of the week, didn’t merit the plunge and was due a short-term bounce. NT today is up by only a fraction of a percent. This means there’s time to get in on this trade.

Given the gut-wrenching financial turmoil of the last year, many investors are looking for more secure ways of investing.

Floyd Brown says one way of doing this is to rethink the “boring” image of dividend-paying stocks. These stocks can offer great returns and a steady cash flow.

Floyd says there are five pharmaceutical companies offering outstanding dividend yields in a growing sector. And with most negative sentiment already priced into the stocks, downside risk is limited…

Much has been written about the new drive by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to eliminate naked short selling of stocks. (Read the Mogambo Guru scathing criticism here.)

Rick Pendergraft in Investor’s Daily Edge has no problem in principle with the clamp down on naked shorting. But it may create more problems than it solves.

If hedge funds and brokerages suddenly have to settle all unsettled short sells, they will have to sell assets to cover their naked shorts. Blue chips with high institutional ownership are most vulnerable…

I walked into the University Place Branch of Bank of America on Saturday morning and was eyewitness to a shocking run on the bank. An unruly crowd had taken over the lobby of the branch. Every station in the normally deserted suburban banking center was full of customers.

Is it finally time to invest in stem-cell technology? Tech junkie Patrick Cox, writing in Penny Sleuth, thinks so.

The FDA recently banned stem cell company Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN) from going ahead with trials of its spinal-cord therapy. But great transformational investors have always bought when the public has given up hope on new technologies.

It now looks like there might be a breakthrough in heart failure prevention, says Patrick. Although they won’t go on the record about it yet, leading researchers expect a breakthrough to occur in the next five years…

A hectic week on the economic calendar is highlighted by the initial look at second quarter gross domestic product (GDP). Remember, a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth, so doomsayers have targeted this week’s release as confirmation of their pessimism.

Drug discovery is high-risk, high-reward. It takes about 10 years and $1 billion to bring a new drug to market. And only one of 10,000 new prospects ever makes it to pharmacy shelves. Those that do fetch monopoly-like margins and can bring in billions in sales.

Another strong play from medical stock expert Rob Fannon.

Rob says that although Big Pharma stocks are cheap right now – bellwether Pfizer (PFE) is cheaper than it’s ever been – drugmakers are racing off the side of a cliff.

This is because when patents expire drugmakers loose billions of dollars to generic manufacturers.

But biotech drugs can’t be copied easily. And the sector is in an uptrend. Rob recommends using a biotech ETF to play this trend.