Today’s move is based mostly on strong iPad 3 pre-order numbers, but also in anticipation by investors that the company will give back some of its massive cash hoard later this year in its first dividend since Steve Jobs regained control of the company and eliminated its dividend program.

The new iPad 3 will officially hit stores this Friday, but sales orders are already coming in, and as in the past this product launch is going to be huge for the company. Apple reported that it has already sold all of its inventory that it set aside for preorders, but assured Apple fanatics that they would be able to buy them in retail stores this Friday (assuming you want to wait in line for hours to get one).

Apple continues to dominate the quick growing tablet market, and the iPad 3 is bound to be another big success story for the company.

In addition to expected strong iPad 3 sales, investors are expecting to see another monster rush for the new iPhone which will come later in the year, as well as the new Apple TV that is expected to hit the market towards the end of the year.

At its current rate, Apple is likely to accumulate around $140 billion in cash reserves by the end of the year, leading to widespread speculation that the company will pay, at the least, a special one-time dividend. The expected dividend is a big factor in the company’s recent strong upward move, which has resulted in the stock hitting an all-time high earlier in the day of $564.11.

Despite hitting a new record high, the stock is still a relatively cheap stock, trading with a P/E of just 15.2. With so many product launches planned for this year, and the expected dividend announcement, it is not too late to get into Apple, even at its current level.

The stock is currently trading up 2.1% to $563.49, up $11.49.

Disclaimer: The author is long in Apple stock

It is easy to understand why Google has been able to stay on top since so many manufacturers are able to use Android on their phones, but since the new iPhone 4S has hit the market Apple has been making up some of the difference, and now looks like it may be able to not only have the best selling smartphone, but also able to gain the top spot in terms of phones running its iOS operating system.

Before the iPhone 4S launched, Android controlled around 60% of the market, with the iPhone capturing a respectable, yet distant, second place with 26% of the market. That has drastically changed, and now iOS has 43% of the market, with Android sitting at 47%.  An impressive jump to say the least for Apple.

iPhone sales continue to dominate the market, and in November it held the top 3 spots with the iPhone 4S, 4, and 3GS.

Whether or not Apple is able to get the top spot in terms of operating systems remains to be seen. Based on the strong estimates for the number of phones it is expected to have sold during the holiday season, it could easily gain the top spot when December numbers are made available.

As you can also see, it has really become a two dog race in this highly competitive market. With two out of every three phones being sold today being iPhones, it is an important market to dominate. Research in Motion (RIMM) continues to suffer, with its market share falling down to just 6%, a far cry from a few years ago when it was the biggest player in the market.

Critics of the company blame its recent weakness to the company not having invested in remodeling its stores and to improve its customer services.

It is easy to understand where the critics are coming from. Walking into a Sears or K-Mart store just does not have the same feeling as you get when you enter into a Wal-Mart or Target store. Wal-Mart and Target understand that customers want a certain “feel” from their stores, and they deliver. Walking into a Sears and you get the feeling that the store has been there for 25 years without change (and in most cases you would be right).

The typically busy holiday shopping season was dismal for the company, and for the quarter-to-date, K-Mart stores have seen a drop in same store sales of 4.2%, while Sears stores have seen a drop of 6%.

The company stated that it had not yet decided which K-Mart and Sears stores would be closed, but that it would make the list public on its media website once the final list had been determined. It also stated that it was not sure at this point whether or not the store closings would lead to job cuts, but it is hard to imagine that the closing of 100+ stores would not lead to job cuts.

If Sears is able to absorb the criticism it has been given, and puts its focus on remodeling and vamping up its customer service then it may have a chance to get back to its glory days, but unless it is able to make serious changes, and make the quickly, then it is hard to imagine the retailer ever getting back on the same level as its major competitors.

Wall Street reacted as expected to the news, with the stock closing the session down 27.2%, down $12.47 to $33.38.

The following video on the subject is from MarketWatch:

The company reported that on December 12 it shipped more packages than any other day in the company’s history… around 17 million packages. That marks a 10% jump from its busiest day last year, and twice as many shipments as the company typically makes a day.

A big reason why FedEx is seeing such a busy shipping holiday season is the growing popularity of online shopping at sites such as Amazon.com (AMZN). Consumers are showing that they are still willing to spend, but perhaps they are shopping smarter, and spending more time online doing research and looking for the best possible deal before making their holiday purchases.

America’s other major shipper, UPS (UPS) also has reported that its shipping volume has grown compared to last year. UPS does far greater volume than FDX, and last year it had one day where shipments exceeded 25 million units. This year the company expects to see at least 5 days with such volume.

Whether or not the boost in shipments will relate to a strong holiday season for retailers remains to be seen, but it is definitely a positive sign.

The idea to spinoff the PC division was first proposed in August by former CEO Leo Apotheker as part of a sweeping overhaul he was trying to do to the company. This was one of the last proposals he made before being ousted from his position.

The decision to review the company’s PC business came as a result of a massive shift by consumers towards smartphones and tablet computers. HP launched its own high-profile tablet, th TouchPad, but it decided to discontinue the tablet just two months after its launch, doing a $99 fire sale on the tablets that techies gobbled up as fast as they could. HP said it would make one more round of TouchPads, some have estimated around 200,000 tablets, to try to make up for some of the high demand it saw during the $99 sale, but even the 200,000 additional units will not be able to keep up with the demand, and they too will probably sell out in a day or two.

HP is still the world’s largest PC seller, but revenues have been trending lower. During the quarter that ended in July, the company had PC sales of $9.59 billion, down from $9.92 billion during the same period last year. Despite this, HP feels as though it is still a very important part of the company and worth trying to save.

The decision to keep the company’s PC business is probably the best decision for the company. The PC business may be shrinking, but that does not mean that HP should abandon it. As Whitman stated, the goal is not to transform HP, but instead to take its incredible assets, and make them greater.

Whitman assured investors that HP was going to get back into the tablet business, but it is not going to backtrack on its decision to eliminate its WebOS operating system, but instead will focus on tablets running Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8.

Time will tell if HP is able to turn its PC business around, but for now its probably the right decision to at least allow Whitman the opportunity to try.

Netflix reported its third quarter results last night, which were actually above analyst estimates, but shares are tradign down over 35% in premarket trading as investors react to news of such a massive drop in the company’s subscribers, its first in years.

Earnings for the quarter were $1.16 per share, on revenues of $822 million. Analysts had been expecting to see the company report earnings of $0.96 per share, on revenues of $812.5 million.

Typically when a company reports such strong earnings and revenues its stock trades sharply higher, but investors feel as though the subscriber drop that Netflix saw during the quarter may not be over just yet. Netflix has historically been very good at understanding what its customers want, and that is the reason why it became the leader in DVD rental and streaming video, but a couple big blunders earlier this year have left its subscribers, and investors scratching their heads and wondering if Netflix has lost its ability to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to giving its subscribers what they want.

Netflix’s first big mistake was to raise its monthly fees. While this did result in a new record for revenues, the company paid for that with few subscribers, and in its highly competitive insdustry, subcriber numbers are the key to success. Following the decision to raise its rates, it made an even more dramatic blunder in its decision to split its streaming and DVD rental business. It later changed its mind and reversed the decision to split to the 2 businesses, but the impact the decision had on its customers was not so easy to reverse.

Has Netflix lost touch with its customers? It definitely did earlier this year, and while it has tried to correct its mistakes, you have to wonder if / when the next big mistake will come from the company’s management. Netflix still has a solid business model, but once a company loses its customers confidence, it is very hard to regain it, and we will just have to see if Netflix is able to get back on track, or if customers will continue to look for other ways to get their streaming media.

The stock is down 37%, or $44.00 in premarket trading to $74.77

Going into this afternoon’s earnings report, Apple was expected to report earnings of $7.38 per share, but actual earnings came in well below what analysts were expecting to see at just $7.02 per share. Revenues were also lower than expected at $28.3 billion, which do represent a 39 percent jump year over year, but below the $29.4 billion that analysts had been expecting to see.

One of the company’s strongest product lines is the iPhone, which was weak during its fiscal fourth quarter. With the new iPhone 4 release just around the corner, iPhone buys put off buying a new phone until this month when the 4S became available. Apple sold just 17.1 million iPhones during the quarter, down from 20.3 million during the previous quarter.

On a brighter note, Apple did issue better than expected first quarter earnings forecast. Apple typically low-balls its forward guidance while analysts forecast higher earnings, but not this time. Apple forecast that it would report first quarter earnings of $9.30 on revenues of $37 billion. Analyst have previously forecast that the company will have Q1 earnings of $9 per share on $36.7 billion in revenues.

After hours traders are selling off the stock pretty sharply, pushing shares down 6.6% to $396.80, down $27.86.

Going into this afternoon’s earnings report, analysts had been expecting to see Google report third quarter earnings of $8.74 per share, but actual earnings came in well above estimates at $9.72 a share.

Revenues during the quarter were $9.7 billion, higher than the $7.22 billion that Wall Street had been expecting to see.

In addition to strong ad revenues, Google also has seen nice growth in revenues stemming from its highly successful mobile operating system, Android. Last year the company saw annual revenue of $1 billion from its mobile business, but says that it is currently on track for $2.5 billion as Android continues to gain in popularity and is now the #1 mobile operating system on the market.

Google also shed some light on the strength of its new social network, Google+. The company announced that it had 40 million users sign up with the service, with 3.4 billion photos being uploaded so far to the network. The numbers are greater than analysts had expected, and a good sign that Google is making some progress in its competition with social media giant Facebook.

The company also announced that it had added an additional 2,585 employees during the quarter, lifting its total workforce to 31,353.

Google’s dominance of the U.S. search market continues to grow. As of the end of last year, the company controlled 74% of U.S. searches, and by the end of this year that is expected to grow to 76%.

The stock is currently trading up $35.61 at $594.60 (+6.4%) in after hours trading.

Going into this afternoon’s earnings report, analysts had been expecting to see Alcoa post earnings of $0.22 per share, but were disappointed to see earnings come in under expectations at $0.15 per share.

Despite missing its earnings estimate, the company was able to post better than expected revenues for the quarter of $6.4 billion, above the $6.2 billion that analysts had been expecting to see.

Alcoa’s CEO, Klaus Kleinfeld, blamed the lower than expected earnings numbers on falling aluminum prices, and uncertainty in Europe, which resulted in a tough environment for the company. Despite the lower than expected earnings, the company did maintain its growth forecast for the remainder of the year.

Since Alcoa is the first major company to report earnings, and since it makes aluminum for a wide variety of industries, it is viewed as a bellwether stock, and investors tend to place a lot of importance on its earnings reports. Just because Alcoa disappointed this afternoon does not necessarily mean that the rest of the earnings season is going to be weak, but it definitely does not paint a pretty picture either. We will get a better idea of what to expect during the remainder of the earnings season later this week with JP Morgan and Google report their quarterly numbers.

The stock was up a little over 2% in today’s session, but has dropped 4.2% in after hours trading.

Insurance companies win on one hand because they will have to pay out less in damages than they had anticipated, but they also win because the media hype was enough to give them an opportunity to raise rates next year on all types of property insurance.

Most of the damage incurred during the hurricane was flood damage, and unless you leave very near to the coast, chances are you do not have flood insurance on your property. Experts have estimated that damages due to Hurricane Irene would be around $2 billion, which is far less than the $6 billion in damages that the area experienced when Hurricane Isabel hit back in 2003.

Here is how a few insurance companies fared on the day:

• Allstate (ALL): +$2.06 to $26.30, up 8.5%
• Aetna (AET): + $0.93 to $39.16, up 2.4%
• Progressive (PGR): +$0.65 to $18.89, up 3.6%

The DOW finished the day up 2.2%, the NASDAQ was up 3.3%, and the S&P 500 was up 2.8%