Top Stocks

The question is not whether Blockbuster (BBI) will fold but when.

The Dallas-based movie-rental chain has struggled mightily against upstarts Redbox and Netflix, but Wall Street is openly predicting that the home-entertainment veteran is headed to the movie palace in the sky. 

• Find a new broker and trade online
  

Blockbuster recently made a list of brands that analysts think will vanish by the end of 2011, according to 24/7 Wall St.

By Jeff Reeves, Editor of InvestorPlace.com

Amazon.com (AMZN) slashed the price of its Kindle e-reader to $189 from $259 after the launch of the iPad in April. Thanks in part to the new low price, the company was overwhelmed by demand in recent months as consumers snatched up the innovative gadget. As a result of brisk Kindle sales, customers have been downloading record numbers of e-books from Amazon's online bookstore.

If a $70 price cut could fuel that burst in sales, just think of the demand Amazon will see by knocking an additional $50 off the price.

That's right -- a Wi-Fi-ready Kindle can now be yours for the low price of just $139. Preorder now, and you can get it by Aug. 27.  

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

The natural-gas act is about to go through, and nobody really believes it.

Last night on "Mad Money" I spoke to John Larson, the congressman from Connecticut and the man behind the House's thrust into natural-gas-powered trucks. Larson has been heavily influenced by Boone Pickens on this one, with Boone shrewdly pushing for the use of all domestic fuels -- natural gas being the only one we have in abundance.

With strong support in the Senate from Harry Reid and this push by Larson, it will be pretty impossible to stop a large rebate or tax credit for fleets to buy trucks that use cleaner, cheaper natural gas. And when I say "impossible to stop," I mean neither the coal lobby nor its president in the White House can seem to buck this one.

It's great earnings for the second quarter (announced Tuesday) versus long-term worries for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (TEVA) right now. 

With an assist from some selling on good news, long-term worries are winning at the moment.

For the second quarter, earnings climbed to $1.08 a share. That was an increase of 30% from the 83 cents a share in the second quarter of 2009. The Wall Street consensus had projected earnings of $1.04.

Although stocks have been sliding the past two days -- in what appears to be a typical pullback within a medium-term uptrend -- there are still plenty of reasons higher prices are likely over the horizon.

Company sales surveys conducted by the ISI Group rose by the largest amount in four months last week. Job gains look set to continue into the second half of the year. Business confidence is up in Germany. Employment is rising at a 3% annual rate in Taiwan. And exports are surging in Japan and South Korea.

I interrupt this summer rally with an important message to all investors: Market psychology has not changed despite heady gains in stocks.

A market that was grossly oversold has recovered nicely in July. The spark for the rally has been second-quarter earnings that have not disappointed investors and reinforced the idea that the market is cheap, at least in the short term.

Once the euphoria of positive earnings ends in late August, pessimism is likely to return. September is shaping up to be quite the vacuum in terms of news impacting stock valuations.

If Apple (AAPL) can sell more than 1.7 million iPhone 4 units in just three days in the U.S., it’s hard to imagine how long the lines will be when it hits the streets of China.

The People’s Republic is the world’s largest mobile phone market, and negotiations were finalized yesterday on a contract with a Chinese telecom provider to land the iPhone 4 on mainland China very soon.

With terms of its contract with telecom carrier China Unicom Ltd. (CHU) set to be announced on Aug. 1, things do seem to be lining up for Apple to expand its approximate 7% share of sales in the Chinese market ending the second quarter.

But AAPL shareholders shouldn’t uncork the champagne just yet.

It's getting increasingly difficult to escape the influence of Facebook. Every product you buy, from your non-dairy creamer to Dr. Scholl's insoles, invites you to become a fan on the omnipresent social network.

If any company can relate to Facebook’s virtual monopoly over a section of cyberspace, it’s Google (GOOG). The search engine has become synonymous with surfing the Web, with the verb "googling" actually enjoying a place in the Oxford English Dictionary.

• Check out hot ETFs

But Facebook better watch out -- because if Google has its way, "facebooking" will never have the chance to become a verb. That's because the Internet juggernaut is creating a Facebook competitor of its own and is looking to take over the social-networking scene.

Amazon.com (AMZN) and its groundbreaking Kindle e-reader have been overshadowed as of late by electronics juggernaut Apple and the sexy new iPad. Tech sites touted an iPad frenzy in Asia as the gadget went global last week, and rumors abound that demand is so high that iPad suppliers can’t keep up.

But if you think Apple (AAPL) and its iPad have killed the Kindle, think again. It turns out that a recent price cut to Amazon’s entry-level e-reader has been met with tremendous success. Sales were so strong that Amazon completely sold out of its $189 model!

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

They weren't Stone Walls, a la Jackson in the Civil War, but the banks hung in all day yesterday and acted well into the bell.

The strength was a marked improvement over what seemed to be an investible trend. Yesterday I took a stab at it, saying that a lack of bad press -- headline risk -- might be behind the stabilization. I think that's part of it. So is valuation; the rest of the market has moved a great deal while this group has done nothing.

But the thing that bothered me about it is that if you are rotating into Procter (PG) and out of PPG Industries (PPG), you are doing so because of market weakness. If you are buying Progress Energy (PGN), it’s because you think the economy in this country is poor and getting worse. If that's the case, you don't want to own banks.

If you're worried that the U.S. and global economies are going to slow in the second half of 2010, then McDonald's (MCD) on its second-quarter performance is the stock for you. (Of course, if you think the upswing of the past week isn't just a bounce, McDonald's isn't the stock for you. See this post for more on that.)

The company reported earnings last week for the quarter of $1.13, a penny better than the Wall Street consensus, and revenue of $5.95 billion, slightly above projections for $5.91 billion. Comparable store sales climbed 3.7% in the United States, 5.2% in Europe, and 4.6% in the Asia/Pacific, Middle East, and Africa business unit.

And that's without any big macro trends in its favor.