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APPLE STOCK MARKET VALUE INCHES PAST SEARCH GIANT GOOGLE’S, BUT IT’S ‘AN APPLES-TO-ORANGES COMPARISON”

MercuryNews.com published an interesting news where they noticed that now Apple can add a little more swagger to its iPod shuffle.

On Wednesday, Apple became Silicon Valley’s most valued company, nudging out Internet behemoth Google (stock ticker: GOOG) by what amounts to pocket change among the tech giants.

For the first time since Google’s 2004 initial public offering, Apple (stock quote: AAPL)finished the day with a higher market value than the Internet search leader. The total value of Apple’s stock was $158.84 billion, a relative whisker more than Google’s $157.23 billion. That was enough to unseat Google as Silicon Valley’s No. 1 company.

It is just the latest milestone for the maker of Macintosh computers, iPods and iPhones. Both companies are in good spots, but Apple is in a better spot,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

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From Visa´s webpage, here is the 2Q 2008 earnings report:

• Company raises long-term outlook for adjusted operating margins

• Annual adjusted operating margin in the mid 40%’s range.

• Annual adjusted operating margin in the mid-to-high 40%’s range.

• Annual free cash flow (cash flow from operations plus cash reimbursements from litigation escrow less capital spending) in excess of $1 billion.

Last quarter, New York Stock Exchange suffered a big decline the day the multinacional conglomerate General Electric (stock ticker: GE) posted an unexpected 6% fall on their quarterly profits. GE stock fell 13% after this disappointment.

 Today, General Electric posted their 2Q 08 (second quarter) results, that matched the analysts´estimates. Profits from continuing operations fell 4% or 54 cents a share, reaching a profit of $5,61 billion. Sales rose 11% to 47 billion dollars, beating the expert´s expectations. This last fact will probably play favourably in today´s GE trading day; on early trading, General Electric Co. was rising 0,50% to 27,74.

Jeffrey Immelt, the company´s CEO, agreed to sell a consumer-lending operation plant in Japan for $5,5 billion, and said he was satisfied with Ge´s performance.

GE has a PER (price over earnings per share) of 12.5, quite an attractive figure for such an important company. Good margins, constant growth and tremendous background are some facts that makes GE a quite stable and trustworthy investment. Dividend yield of 4,5% is quite high for a big firm.

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Bankruptcy for General Motors (stock ticker: GM) is a real possibility if U.S. auto sales keep falling and the world’s largest automaker is unable to raise about $15 billion in cash to shore up its books, a Merrill Lynch analyst said. John Murphy’s estimate of what GM would need to raise before 2010 to cover continued losses is higher than what other analysts have suggested. Murphy said the recent drastic fall in auto sales likely will continue through 2009.

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Rumors are circulating that Facebook are fighting off the billion dollar acquisition offers and that they will present their IPO real soon. In case you don´t know, Facebook.com is social networking website with free access, and users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, region, etc to connect and interact with other people.

It´s 150 million dollar per year ad revenue is a promising start, but is still far away from reaching to the 1 billion dollar revenue of Yahoo! But Facebook has only two years of existence, and it is evolving rapidly; the social network has more than tripled the number of active members to 70 million from about 20 million in April 2008:

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Two months ago, most bullish investors believed that the financial sector is the one that offers a more attractive opportunity to make money; or at least they thought so.

Financials recovered from its lower values; particularlly, Citigroup (stock ticker: C), recovered since the March low of $17.99 to $29, but fell to $19.5 today.

The high of $55.55, almost 10 months ago, shows as that recession fears aren´t a joke; the world´s largest  financial company lost almost 70% of its market value.

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According to an insightfull article written by CNBC, cash-strapped Americans are ringing up more and more purchases on their credit and debit cards, and there could be a steep price to pay ahead.

Though the trend is a boon for the companies that issue the cards, analysts worry that there could be long-term problems not only for consumers but also for the anemic economy and the already-troubled banks that will be underwriting all that risky debt.

“Right now what we’re seeing is the US consumer losing their disposable income as they have to spend more and more on necessities because of higher prices for gas and food,” says Ron Ianieri, a market strategist and co-founder of the Options University investor education center. “Normally when you have a certain budget and you can’t keep up with the budget one of the easy steps is to extend that budget using credit.”

One of the main problems with that is US consumers—and their counterparts in Europe as well—already are delinquent on their credit card payments in numbers not seen in six years. The Federal Reserve last week said credit card delinquencies hit 4.86 percent in the first quarter in 2008, while revolving debt—or the type used in credit purchases—hit $957.2 billion in March, a 7.9 percent increase.

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