Apple computers (AAPL) announced solid results after market close yesterday. It reported a 36 percent jump in profit, topping estimates, on sales of Macintosh computers. The profit margin in the quarter and the forecast for the current period missed projections, sending the shares lower. We’ll see how do they behave today when market opens.

According to Bloomberg, The gross margin, or the percentage of sales left after deducting production costs, narrowed to 32.9 percent in the quarter. That missed the estimate of 35.8 percent by Bank of America Corp. analyst Scott Craig in New York. I had mentioned earlier, not matter what the net income and revenues are, gross margin is something that one should watch out specially for the companies where variable costs are low and they enjoy a fat margin. Any erosion in that simply means erosion of profits.

Apple has also agreed to buy P.A. Semi Inc., a privately held company that designs power-efficient processors.

Baidu (BIDU) will be announcing after market close. You may wanna keep an eye on that if you are looking for any large movement. Other notable companies that are announcing results are POT and CF. I shall surely be looking for guidance from POT to play IPI, if everything goes great.

Profitable trading, OP