With large purchases of iron ore, copper and oil, China has been taking full advantage of depressed commodities prices and excess production capacity. Now, the Red Dragon is making its presence felt in the natural gas market – landing two blockbuster deals in the past two weeks.

Is the U.S. stock market rally for real? Or have stock prices gotten a little ahead of themselves?  After more than eight weeks in rally mode, it certainly appears that stock prices are outpacing economic reality.

The death the the US investment bank is greatly exaggerated, says Lynn Carpenter in Investor’s Daily Edge. Raymond James (NYSE:RFJ), Piper Jaffray (NYSE:PJC), Canaccord Adams are still in business. Some of the others didn’t really disappear. They’re either now paired with a commercial bank, like Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER) or have turned themselves over the the Fed for regulation, like Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). This, says Lynn is no bad thing…

Thanks to soaring worldwide demand for PC chips, Intel Corp. (INTC) late yesterday (Tuesday) reported a 25% jump in second-quarter profits and provided a forecast for sales that exceeded analyst estimates.