Waste Management (NYSE: WMI) really rocketed on Monday. Its shares closed up nearly 18% to a final price of $30.39. Volume was heavy. No doubt the company's preliminary earnings report helped get things going for the company that makes its money off ridding the world of trash.

For the third quarter, Waste Management is forecasting an increase in its top line of 3.6%. It should book revenues of $3.5 billion. For the bottom line, the company should do at least $0.62 per share, which is two pennies above Wall Street estimates. Even better, this represents a 15% improvement over last year's earning's performance. Not bad, I suppose, but was the 18% gain in the stock price truly reflective of an organic breakout? Keep in mind that the Dow rallied almost 1000 points on Monday. That obviously had a lot to do with the fantastic price appreciation. In addition, Tom Taulli covered how Waste Management dropped its bid for competitor Republic Services (NYSE: RSG). As Tom pointed out, Waste Management probably didn't want to rock the boat as far as its credit rating was concerned. So the traders probably also took this into consideration when placing their bids.

But why would I want to buy the stock now after its stellar one-day performance? I'd much rather take a look at the company after it pulls back. I'm just not convinced that all of the action in the stock was due to strong conviction on the part of investors. I'd have to watch how the price behaves over the next few days before making a decision. All of these bounces that we're going to inevitably see after suffering many days of hellish declines in the major indexes are to be approached with caution if you're looking for quick trading gains. Long-term investors can obviously have a different attitude going into certain stocks. In the case of Waste Management, I will give credit for its attractive yield. But you'll need to perform more due diligence beyond the yield to see if this is one you should look at or not.

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.

What an interesting time, my friends. Seriously, we're going to look back on this period and laugh about it (maybe, depends on how much you lost, I guess). Not only has the government become one huge hedge fund as the new cliche goes, but perhaps the oddest thing about this entire episode was the ban on short-sellers.

Well, they weren't totally banned. There was a list of stocks that couldn't be shorted, and they were tied to financial businesses. For instance, General Electric (NYSE: GE), a stock I own, was on the list. Why? You see, even though it makes everything from movies to healthcare equipment, a large chunk of the conglomerate deals with financial transactions. Now, the short-selling ban is gone, and financial stocks are once again subject to the whim of the trading technique.

I hated, absolutely hated, the restriction on short-sellers. It never made any sense (check out Tom Taulli's perspective on this subject).

Look, I can understand and appreciate the fact that the government had to get into the business of capitalism. At some point, there was no choice. If we all could choose, we would choose capitalism over helping a bunch of Wall Street goofballs who became intoxicated on noxious greed and who are laughing at us right now for being bleeding-heart enough to do it. We would. But, there was no choice, sad to say.

Well-known maker of peanut-butter and jelly products J.M. Smucker (NYSE: SJM) reported earnings for Q4 and the full fiscal year on Thursday. The market didn't like the report in the least. The stock closed down well over 8% at the end of yesterday's session.

Here's what happened. For the fourth quarter, net sales increased 20%, but that was little consolation to the bottom line, which dropped 11%, as earnings per diluted share came in at $0.67 versus $0.75 in the year-ago period. The top line also was the beneficiary of some inorganic growth based on acquisitions. If you adjust for certain items, bringing the earnings up to $0.73 per diluted share, the decrease in the bottom line improves to 3%, but a decline in this case is still a decline. Plus, earnings expectations were not met. The company came in five pennies shy of Wall Street's wishes, according to estimates posted at earnings.com.

For the fiscal year, J.M Smucker's top line increased 18%, also due in part to acquisitions. On both a reported and an adjusted basis, earnings per diluted share jumped 9% to $3.00. Margins really suffered during the quarter and the year. Input costs are inflating, and they're becoming difficult to manage.

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), an arch competitor of Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), reported Q2 earnings on Tuesday. Looking through the release, I see quite a few things to like about the H-P story.

Revenues increased 11% to $28.3 billion. This increase was aided by international sales and the weak dollar. On an adjusted basis, earnings per share increased 24% to 87 cents. Furthermore, the adjusted operating margin increased 100 basis points to 10%. Cash generated from operations was $4.8 billion during the quarter, which the release categorized as a record statistic. Cash flow is one of my favorite metrics, and I love it when it is doing well. In fact, according to the transcript of the conference call at Seeking Alpha, the six-month operational cash-flow figure had increased 92% over the comparable time frame one year ago, and free cash flow had more than doubled for the same period.

Honestly, it seems like H-P is managing itself very skillfully, leveraging its various brands in the PC sector to great effect. Guidance calls for adjusted earnings of $3.54 and $3.58. This means that, in my opinion, H-P's stock isn't too expensive. It's also trading away from the 52-week high, which is another positive. Of course, the big story surrounding the company at the moment is its announced acquisition of Electronic Data Systems (NYSE: EDS). As Tom Taulli has observed, the EDS buy is logical. Combining H-P's expertise at providing technologies to the PC world with the services portfolio provided by EDS will most likely make HP an even bigger force, and it could give a behemoth like IBM (NYSE: IBM) new challenges.

So the big news on Thursday was CBS' (NYSE: CBS) hefty $1.8 billion purchase of CNET (NASDAQ: CNET). Douglas McIntyre already explained why this was such a "weird deal" in an excellent article that you can read here. I'd like to expand on that thinking a bit by asking if it should have been Viacom (NYSE: VIA), as opposed to CBS, in the buying seat.

Remember "old Viacom"? Old Viacom was composed of CBS and "new Viacom", the latter being the Viacom of today. I know, confusing, but that's how things are when a big media conglomerate splits in two. Anyway, there was a general mandate given to both companies, one that basically stated the logic of CBS being an entity that focuses on cash flows and dividend increases while new Viacom would focus on acquisitions to promote capital appreciation of the company's stock. Sure enough, the yield on CBS tells the tale perfectly.

So, I have to ask, what gives? I mean, a check of CBS' latest 10K shows that the broadcaster generated $2.2 billion in operational cash flow in 2007. I think paying $1.8 billion for anything, let alone a questionable asset vis a vis CBS' core media competencies, might be too much given CBS' mission to return a lot of value to shareholders over the long-term in the form of dividends.

The New York Times recently made a case for investing in stocks to gain exposure to commodities:

But there is an easy way to get a shot at commodity-like returns, without investing directly in commodities or their indexes. Investors can buy shares of the natural resource companies that produce commodities.

However, investors need to be careful: just because a stock is in a sector related to commodities doesn't mean that it will move with the prices of those commodities. Other factors, including decisions by management, any hedging the company may have in place, and other company-specific factors, may cause their returns to differ from those of the underlying commodities. While it's quite true that, as the New York Times points out, natural resources stocks have outperformed commodities in recent years, that is not a trend that will necessarily continue.

There may be good reasons to buy these stocks, but if you want to make a bet on commodities prices, the best way to do that is with exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Back in his days at the Motley Fool, BloggingStocks contributor (who is the source for news and analysis for private equity, by the way) Tom Taulli wrote a nice piece about how to invest in commodities through ETFs.

If you really want to learn about ETFs, I recommend picking up a copy of Investing with Exchange-Traded Funds Made Easy: Higher Returns with Lower Costs -- Do It Yourself Strategies without Paying Fund Managers by Marvin Appel.

It's been an interesting week for me; that is, two global tech companies -- International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) and SAP AG (ADR) (NYSE:SAP) -- are concerned about my abilities.

OK, first I got an email from one of SAP's communications vice presidents, regarding a column I wrote titled, "SAP Still Not Serious About M & A."

He wrote: "You know, with a little research, the readers of the Motley Fool might have had a more clear picture about SAP's strategy on acquisitions, and how that successful strategy has differentiated itself from the so-called pressure you seem to think that Oracle is putting on SAP. The number of assumptions (many wrong) about SAP and Oracle in your column deserve some balance so that your readers are getting an accurate assessment of the market, and the relative performance of SAP (16 quarters of organic growth) and Oracle (questionable).... Your readers deserve some balance and some accuracy about SAP and Oracle, lest folks wonder who really is "the fool."

Ouch! Yes, it is true that I've been bullish on Oracle and bearish on SAP. For the year, Oracle is up nearly 50% and SAP is up about 11%. I responded to him and emailed: "Thanks for calling me a fool."

His response:

Tom Taulli's recent post about AIM Pages reminded me of my high school days.

My freshman year, the Air Force had a recruiting slogan that was two words: Aim High. They gave out book covers and bumper stickers and lapel pins sporting this short catch-phrase. Of course, the other students in my class -- unlikely candidates  for military service -- changed the words to read "I am High".

What does this have to do with the new AOL counterpart to MySpace, AIM Pages? Well, aside from the fact that it's ridiculously easy to make fun of as well, I fear that it will be as short-lived as the Air Force's "Aim High" campaign.

Why? Well, take a look at the average age and demographic of a MySpace user -- under 35 and Internet-savvy. Whereas the name AOL will be immortally associated with the "You've got mail!" set -- an over-35, less Internet-savvy crowd.

While I commend AOL for trying to reach out to a younger demographic, this is probably not the silver bullet it needs right now. To tap into this more youthful demographic, AOL (the folks who brought you "Parental Controls") is going to need nothing short of a revolution of the spirit .

Aim high, AIM Pages, aim high.