Steven Mallas
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News Corp.'s (NASDAQ: NWS) new computer cartoon, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, had a strong domestic debut this past Wednesday. It opened with $13.8 million on that day, which represents a record-breaking performance for an animated feature released in the middle of the week. Now, just recently, I mentioned how I hate it when Hollywood promotes the breaking of a record. It tends to be very qualified. This situation is no different. Still, I'll give credit where credit is due. Dinosaurs is doing well so far.

We'll have to see how the weekend ultimately treats the new feature. The competition is stiff. It's the July 4th holiday, and Viacom (NYSE: VIA) is out there with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Thankfully, News Corp. won't have too much to worry about from Disney's (NYSE: DIS) Pixar cartoon Up. As can be seen by a Boxofficemojo chart, the excitement surrounding Up has faded. News Corp. was naturally counting on this to happen by this point in time.

Disney (NYSE: DIS) programmed a new movie recently on one of its prime media assets. The film, titled Princess Protection Program, debuted on the Disney Channel and stars a young actress named Selena Gomez. The casting choice was no accident. Because Disney tries to be as synergistic as possible (the company is generally good when it comes to the science of synergy, although there are certainly opportunities for it to be even better), the Mouse made sure to use Gomez since she is the popular star of another Disney Channel program called Wizards of Waverly Place, a project meant to capture at least a little of the Harry Potter magic.

Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD), a retailer whose competitive colleagues include Target (NYSE: TGT), Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), wants to improve its brand equity and find a new path to growth. As such, it's willing to employ all kinds of initiatives, especially ones that will form a nice image with the consumer during this dreadful economic contraction.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Sears is trying out a program that offers protection against the risk of investing in an expensive appliance during a time when job security is not as secure as it used to be.

The program will run for a specified time period beginning next week, and the basic gist is this: buy an appliance priced $399 or higher on a Sears credit card and, and if you lose your job, Sears will credit one twelfth of the cost every month. Still no job after one year? Keep the appliance, your debt will be forgiven.

But, I had been looking at various trading ideas and wanted to capture a shorter-term gain for a trading account. The market has been so tough this year. When the recent rally in the indexes started, I didn't want to become part of the group that was desperate to get in on the action, only to expose my portfolio to more risk than necessary. Believe me, when you're afraid of missing a rally, you just might end up with some bad timing.

Yesterday, Marvel, a company whose comic library competes with Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) and its own stable of superheroes, received an upgrade from JPMorgan. It now is in the Overweight camp. Before, it was merely Neutral. As you might expect, the stock reacted. There was no way the market was going to ignore this because, really, Marvel is one of those stocks that does show a lot of promise considering that the sequel to Iron Man is due out next summer. Shares closed over 5% higher on Wednesday in reaction to the headline. The professional traders must loved the action.

Well, as Boorstin rightly points out, CBS (NYSE: CBS), Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC, General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC, and News Corp.'s (NASDAQ: NWS) Fox do need to worry. These DVR technologies basically translate to a drop in the economic value of advertising. Let's face it: who watches commercials when they don't have to?

Sealy (NYSE: ZZ) is another one of those cheap stocks that's up big from lows achieved earlier in the year. When I say cheap, I don't mean value. I'm talking about a low-priced equity. The kind of equity that is priced below $5 per share. In the case of Sealy, its shares could be had, as of the close of trading on Tuesday, for $1.96.

But wait, you could have gotten it even cheaper in the after-hours session, because shares of the bedding manufacturer traded down to $1.82 on its Q2 report. I have to agree with the market. Although there were some positive elements contained in the release, overall, I wasn't impressed enough by the numbers to become a buyer.

H&R Block did pretty well considering revenues declined almost 3%. Earnings from continuing operations were flat at $2.09 per diluted share. This was enough to beat estimates of $2.05 per share according to this source.

As can be seen, if Stifel Nicolaus turns out to be right, then traders might have a winning transaction on their hands. But one thing that must be remembered is the arbitrage game going on here. Pepsi wants to buy Pepsi Bottling Group. The latter is, of course, arguing for a higher purchase price.

Well, Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen took command of the domestic box-office weekend. No surprise after observing what the film did last Wednesday when it opened. According to Boxofficemojo, Fallen, as of early estimates, grossed $112 million during the three-day period starting Friday. The film has taken in over $200 million so far once the days leading up to the weekend are added in. Excellent business. Especially considering that the sequel is doing better than its predecessor at this point, according to a comparison chart (this chart includes a comparison with Iron Man as well, so just focus on the Transformers franchise).

Growth. You've got to love it. I'm sure Viacom does. Disney (NYSE: DIS) isn't doing badly, either. Although not a huge hit, The Proposal did respectable business. It came in second with $18 million. It should eventually reach $100 million.

So, earlier in the week, I discussed Michael Bay and his freak-out with Viacom, Inc. (NYSE: VIA) over the marketing quality on his latest film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Turns out Mike had nothing to worry about.

This film is doing great. At the time of this writing, the film was estimated to have grossed over $60 million on its opening day, which was this past Wednesday. Now, I hate talking about the breaking of this record and that record. Hollywood loves to point out that Movie X achieved the highest gross for a film released on a cloudy day in late September when the moon was full and a new supernova was spotted in the constellation of Cygnus. I'd rather talk about how much profit was achieved, and how much return on capital was recorded (too bad media companies don't have to reveal such data). Nevertheless, I'll give Viacom and Fallen credit. It apparently scored the biggest Wednesday opening ever, and it should theoretically have a great weekend, assuming word of mouth is good. So far, I've only heard superlative things about this particular piece of celluloid, and I know of one person who immediately consulted her cell phone to schedule a time to see the picture with her friends when she heard how awesome it was.

Lennar (NYSE: LEN), whose colleagues include Toll Brothers (NYSE: TOL) and D.R. Horton (NYSE: DHI), reported earnings for the second quarter on Thursday. Since it is a homebuilder, you can expect that it would be a tough one to look at in many respects. There was a revenue decline of over 20%. And there was no profit. Lennar said it lost 76 cents per diluted share.

According to Michael Fowlkes and his earnings preview, Lennar did not satisfy Wall Street's outlook. Analysts were expecting a loss somewhere closer to 63 cents per share. That didn't stop the stock from going up, though. Lennar closed higher yesterday by over 17%. Volume was likewise incredible. Apparently, the market was focusing on the revenue beat.

The per-share profit compared very favorably to the 18 cents earned in last year's similar quarter. However, in terms of analyst expectations, the performance was relatively unimpressive. Earnings.com indicates that 41 cents is what the market was looking for.

Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD), which competes with Walgreen (NYSE: WAG), CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS), and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), saw a big increase in volume on Wednesday after it reported earnings for the first quarter. In fact, as Douglas McIntyre observed, shares of Rite Aid were up 5% at one point during yesterday's session. However, the shares ended up losing their green status by the close of trading. Rite Aid actually lost 3% when all was said and done. What does it all mean?

Well, Rite Aid did beat analyst forecasts by a wide margin. The call was for a loss of 13 cents per share. Rite Aid lost only 6 cents per share once adjustments are made. Revenues dipped a little over 1%, and same-store sales, after excluding the effect of the Brooks Eckerd acquisition, increased 1.5%. Interestingly, the mix of this increase is as follows: the pharmacy sales went up 3.1% on a comparable basis, and the non-pharmacy sales went down 1.4% on the same basis.

Sonic said it earned an adjusted 24 cents per share. This article reported expectations as being $0.20 per share, so management beat the bottom line by a nice amount. We'll throw that result on the positive side of the line.