Analyst upgrades:

• Goldman upgraded Aeropostale (ARO) to neutral from sell. The firm, which has a $34 target on the stock, cites the recent sell-off in shares for the upgrade.
• Janney Montgomery upgraded Consolidated Water (CWCO) to buy from neutral on valuation and on expectations the company's earnings will recover in 2010. The firm has a $15 target on the stock.
• Wunderlich upgraded Transmontaigne Partners (TLP) to buy from hold on valuation as it believes the sell-off on the company's Q3 results is overdone. The firm keeps a $26.50 price target on the stock.
• Mobile TeleSystems (MBT) was upgraded to buy from neutral at UBS.
• HSBC (HBC) was raised to buy from hold at Societe Generale.
• Redwood Trust (RWT) was upgraded to outperform from market perform at JMP Securities.

A lot of earnings reports were issued last week. The market was busy sorting them all out. I'm going to take a fast look at several of the issuing companies.

American Express (NYSE: AXP): Don't leave home without it. Good advice for the card, perhaps, but what about the company? Should your portfolio leave home and forget this stock? I'd say so. It's not that American Express lost the earnings game. On the contrary, Bloomberg reported a beat. American Express earned 44 cents per share from continuing operations, adjusted. This was six pennies ahead of forecasts. Okay, I applaud such performance. And shares are way off the single-digit 52-week low. Thing is, I'm in love with another card business. Visa (NYSE: V). As I've stated before, I enjoy the beauty of Visa's lower-risk model. It doesn't have to put up with loan risk. Yes, the situation at American Express might be improving, but I'm not going to buy this one.

Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT), the broad-based health care company that produces both Humira and Similac, is scheduled to discuss its third quarter 2009 financial results in a conference call Wednesday at 9:00 AM ET. You can catch the live webcast on the company's website.

During the three months that ended in September, Abbott Labs announced acquisitions of Visiogen, Evalve, and Solvay pharmaceuticals, as well as declared its 343rd consecutive quarterly dividend. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect this suburban Chicago company to report that earnings rose 12.2% from a year ago to $0.90 per share. Sales for the quarter are expected to be 3.3% higher to $7.8 billion.

Goldman Sachs upgraded the banking sector last week, and this coming week we'll get a chance to see whether Goldman and other big banks reporting third quarter results will live up to the expectations of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) looks set to be this week's earnings game winner. Analysts expect this dividend-paying company to report a third-quarter profit of $4.24 per share, which is 57.3% higher than in the same period of last year. Revenue for the period that ended in September is expected to be $11.0 billion. So far, the full-year forecast is for $17.74 per share on $44.6 billion.

One of my wonderful friends, Ms. P, asked me for some guidance on how she might allocate $50,000 currently earning peanuts in a money market account. Though she is decades from becoming a grandmother, after a brief discussion about her financial parameters, it became clear to me that she was looking for a "granny fund."

In reality, my recommendations would be suitable, and perhaps desirable, for many passive investors as well.

The $50,000 is a portion of money Ms. P has set aside to purchase a home, which might happen in six months, but could also be pushed out further, depending on the economy and her situation. Basically, she wants to cover all her bases because she might need the money at any time and does not want to be caught short, while at the same time she would like to generate some revenue without taking any big risks.

First, who are the Nobel Prize winners? Why is their research so important in the areas of aging and cancer detection?

Three Americans won the Nobel Prize for medicine. They are Elizabeth Balckburn, Jack Szostak and Carol Greider. Balckburn is with the University of California, San Francisco, Greider is with Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore and Szostak is at the Harvard Medical School.

"The Dogs of the Dow strategy has a long-term history of outperforming the Dow Jones average," notes technical expert Gerald Appel.

In his Systems & Forecasts, he explains, "The theory is that the highest yielding stocks are undervalued and should have the greatest change of appreciating." Here, he reviews the five highest yielders.

"In calculating a formal track record for the strategy, dividend yields are ranked on the last trading day of each year. However, there is no reason why you are limited to ranking stocks only at the end of the year.

"The current market climate appears favorable for using this strategy to garner investment income, since market risk appears below normal and investment income is getting hard to come by.

Analyst upgrades:

• Deutsche Bank upgraded Cemex (NYSE: CX) to Buy from Hold on decreased dilution risk following the company's successful refinancing and raised its target on shares to $15 from $11.20.
• Rochdale upgraded Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) to Buy from Neutral and raised its target to $65. The firm is positive on Wal-Mart's defensive characteristics, cyclical upside, and competitive position.
• JPMorgan upgraded Gartner Group (NYSE: IT) to Overweight from Neutral to reflect stabilization in IT industry spending and the stock's attractive valuation. The firm has a $23 price target on the stock.
• Cavium Networks (NASDAQ: CAVM) was upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Barclays.
• Borg-Warner (NYSE: BWA) was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at BofA/Merrill.
• Nanometrics (NASDAQ: NANO) was upgraded to Outperform from Perform at Oppenheimer.

Although earnings for Merck (NYSE: MRK) were down in the last quarter, the stock is gaining momentum.

The pharmaceutical giant reported a 3% decrease in sales to $5.9 billion from $6.05 billion in the year-earlier period. Earnings were $1.56 billion or 74 cents per share, compared with $1.77 billion or 82 cents per share in the same quarter a year ago.

A strong dollar and lower sales for cholesterol and vaccine drugs contributed to Merck's decline this quarter. But investors were cheered by the fact that Merck reaffirmed its annual earnings forecast of $2.84 to $3.09 per share.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the plunge in China overnight is being blamed on the industrial metal, so expect some carry-over.

It turns out copper was the metric. Drats, I thought it was the dollar or oil. I thought we were supposed to buy the cyclicals on earnings being better than expected. I thought we might be buying the minerals and the steels and the oils off the morning proxy of the Baltic Freight Index, known as the Baltic Fright Index in the days when it kept going down, and kept us out of the Freeports (NYSE: FCX) (Cramer's Take) and Vales (NASDAQ: VALE) (Cramer's Take) and Union Pacifics (NYSE: UNP) (Cramer's Take) and U.S. Steels (NYSE: X) (Cramer's Take).

Silly me.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says health care has never been this cheap relative to the market in its history.

Health care's not done rallying. As President Obama prepared himself for claiming a great political victory, we are all recognizing that the single-payer, socialized medicine covering cradle-to-grave, 100% paid for by the rich, the fear that left all things health care in the P/E dustbin, is dead. That's not going to happen.

That leaves us with the biggest bargains the market has to offer.

Health care has never been this lowly valued relative to the market in its history. Remember, 98% of the time it trades at a meaningful premium. I think that many believe some of these moves (like the Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) (Cramer's Take) move) is because of gigantic new drug finds. In fact, I think they just got too cheap and the only thing really meaningful about the Celgene rally came because one of its Revlimid studies was stopped for good results, actually a predictable event given how well the drug works on many different kinds of cancers.

Here are some highlights from last week's earnings coverage from BloggingStocks:

• Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) met Q2 earnings estimates but fell short of revenue expectations.
• Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) lower Q2 results beat expectations, lifted by strength in non-cola beverages.
• Continental Airlines Inc. (NYSE: CAL) reported net loss was accompanied by a job cuts announcement.
• Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) surprised with a Q2 profit due mainly to a huge gain from debt reduction.
• Hasbro Inc. (NYSE: HAS) posted better-than-expected Q2 earnings due to Transformers and G.I. Joe toys.
• Hershey Co. (NYSE: HSY) posted strong numbers for Q2 and also raised its full-year guidance.

Pharmaceutical company Merck (NYSE: MRK), whose colleagues include Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), issued its Q2 numbers earlier in the week. Quite frankly, I found them to be boring. Of course, maybe boring isn't too bad these days, right? It's a lot better than an exciting ride on a profit-decline express.

Well, actually, Merck did see a decline in its bottom-line profit, but it wasn't an outrageously awful drop or anything like that. Merck made an adjusted 83 cents per share compared to an adjusted 86 cents per share in the comparable period. Three less pennies isn't the worst thing in the world on a relative basis. Plus, revenues increased 3% if you exclude currency effects (including them gives a decrease of 3%).

Today's news boiled down to two issues. First was that five DJIA components reporting earnings this morning, with details on three components. The second issue was Ben Bernanke testifying that inflation was not a huge concern because the economy is likely to stay frail for some time. The markets were mixed to down most of the day until a late day rally saved shares.

Here were today's unofficial closing bell levels:

Dow 8,911.71 +63.56 (0.72%)
S&P 500 954.10 +2.97 (0.31%)
Nasdaq 1,914.13 +4.84 (0.25%)

Top 10 Analyst Upgrades/Downgrades

Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), a pharmaceutical entity whose colleagues include Merck (NYSE: MRK), Novartis (NYSE: NVS), and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), will be reporting first-quarter earnings Tuesday. As one has come to expect, the market believes that the company will be experiencing a decline in bottom-line income. The call is for 49 cents per share versus 61 cents per share in the year-ago period.

That's a drop of 20%. That might not sound so hot, but the good news is that Pfizer has a solid recent track record when it comes to beating earnings expectations. So shareholders might be justified in feeling confident about that aspect of the game.