Tucked among some of the earnings misses from stocks that recently reported was a large earnings beat from storied investment bank Goldman Sachs (GS). Goldman’s third quarter EPS of $4.57 crushed estimates of $3.22. The market’s reaction? Investors initially drove the stock slightly lower on the news .

The good news continues out of China. In the aftermath of the promising numbers from the recent HSBC Flash PMI numbers for November, the official government numbers have followed suit. The official manufacturing PMI was up to 50.6 from 50.2 in October, with the strong positive reading more confirmation that the economy is beginning to rebound. The slowdown in China’s economy has been showing signs of ending in the last couple of months, with each month’s data providing more evidence of a turnaround.

 

China Business News reported last month that ecommerce company Alibaba Group  was interested in buying a stake in Sina’s (Nasdaq: SINA) popular micro-blogging site, Weibo. While Alibaba declined to comment, sources for China Business News said that talks had reached “the final phase.”  Other sources suggested that Alibaba was interested in a 15 percent to 20 percent stake in Weibo. The Alibaba Group owns Alibaba.com, which has a subscription and advertising business model for its business to business commerce platform. Alibaba also owns Taobao Marketplace, a consumer e-commerce website.

The terrain of parts of the northwestern Mexican landscape in the state of Sinaloa is not particularly inviting, unless you happen to be into wandering barren soil, if you have a taste for the lonely, if you are an airy bird of prey, or if you’re a geologist. For miles you can look and see sparse vegetation, blue skies and rocks, which stretch to the edge of the Sierra Madre Occidental Range. The dirt you walk on the hard ground covers the sedimentary rocks from the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods which were cut by volcanic intrusions. Near one such large intrusion, the granite Sinaloa Batholith, is the Magistral Project and the El Gallo Mine. Geologists—modern prospectors—who criss-crossed the vast open acreage near an old, sleepy gold mine, found something they weren’t looking for: silver. The elixir of finding the precious metal goes a long way toward explaining the quest for gold and silver, and the appeal of the exploration and discovery that the emerging mining companies called junior miners do, is obvious.

 

When Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) made the deal to purchase Marvel Entertainment (NYSE: MVL) for $4 billion in stock and cash, it was automatically assumed that Disney had made another good move and that Marvel would be assimilated into the world of Disney properties without much trouble. But as investors looked at the deal, at least some questions arose.