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

I promise. Alexander Green and I are not in cahoots about the coming boom in corporate takeovers… We both researched the possibility separately. Unprompted, I might add. And yet, armed with different evidence, we arrived at the same conclusion. If you ask me, such a convergence of analysis in a narrow space of time shouldn’t be ignored. So today, let’s move on from why a takeover boom is imminent and focus exclusively on three takeover targets you can profit from…

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.

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.