Diamond Foods (DMND) was on the upswing Thursday, as traders cheered the company's latest earnings report. Diamond said it banked a fiscal first-quarter profit of $14.2 million, or 64 cents per share. Excluding items, earnings arrived at 65 cents per share, while revenue increased 40% to $252.6 million.

The results comfortably exceeded Wall Street's expectations, which called for a profit of 60 cents per share on revenue of $239.8 million.

PepsiCo Inc. (PEP) is slated to take its turn on the earnings stage tomorrow morning, with Wall Street expecting the sultan of snack foods to report a third-quarter profit of $1.22 per share -- up from $1.08 per share in the year-ago period. PEP has a solid history on the earnings front, having exceeded analysts' consensus profit expectations in three of the past four quarters.

However, speculative investors seem skittish ahead of the event. During the past 10 days, options traders on the International Securities Exchange (ISE) have bought to open 1.59 puts for every call on PEP. This ratio ranks higher than 84% of other such readings taken during the previous year, marking a near-peak of pessimistically slanted option volume on the exchange.

Put volume skyrocketed Tuesday on Newmont Mining (NEM), with roughly 22,000 contracts crossing the tape within the first 90 minutes of the session. By contrast, NEM was only expected to see about 1,800 puts change hands -- so this surge represents about 12 times the norm.

The equity's November 60 put is far and away the most active. By 11 a.m., this out-of-the-money strike had already seen in excess of 13,200 contracts exchanged, with 59% of these puts trading at the ask price. Implied volatility on this back-month option has climbed by 2.6 percentage points to 35.2%, so it seems likely that buyers are driving the bulk of today's volume.

AutoZone Inc. (AZO) is scheduled to release its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings before the market opens Tuesday, Sept. 21. The retailer has a solid track record in the earnings spotlight, having exceeded analysts' per-share profit predictions in each of the past four reporting periods -- and AZO has managed to surpass Wall Street's consensus estimate by an increasingly wide margin in each sequential quarter.

Ahead of the report, analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters are anticipating AutoZone to bank a profit of $5.42 per share, up from $4.45 per share in the year-ago period. Sales are expected to arrive at $2.39 billion.

There's been no shortage of new highs on the New York Stock Exchange lately -- but the thing is, very few of those new highs have been actual common stocks. Instead, a glut of preferred stocks and various fixed-income securities have been artificially inflating the annual-high figures on the Big Board.

Against this backdrop, it's even more impressive that Silver Wheaton (SLW) tapped the latest in a string of new annual highs today. The stock cruised up to $22.84 earlier, marking an all-time peak for the U.S.-traded shares of the Canadian commodity concern.

Late Monday, Standard & Poor's announced that Dress Barn (DBRN) has been selected to join its S&P MidCap 400 Index (MID). The retailer will replace outgoing MID member Terra Industries (TRA), which is in the process of being acquired by CF Industries (CF).

Dress Barn is slated to join MID after the close of trading on Friday, April 9, when CF's exchange offer to acquire Terra is expected to be complete. Meanwhile, NorthWestern Corp. (NWE) will step into Dress Barn's former spot in the S&P SmallCap 600 Index (SML).

On Thursday, the shares of Crocs, Inc. (CROX) shuffled to a new 52-week high for the second time in as many sessions. The equity topped out at $8.47 on an intraday basis, marking its best price since July 2008. But with the stock hovering near a 20-month peak, can the shares continue to climb -- or are they due for a pullback?

If today's drop of more than 2% is any indication, it seems that CROX's positive momentum is cooling. The stock's Relative Strength Index (RSI) stands at 63, not far from overbought territory, so this modest retreat isn't terribly surprising.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) soared to a new annual high Thursday morning after the chipmaker settled its antitrust case against rival Intel (INTC). Under the terms of the agreement, Intel will shell out $1.25 billion to AMD, and will abide by a new set of rules for conducting business. The pact also includes a renewed cross-license agreement between the two chip titans.

In prepared comments, AMD CEO Dirk Meyer called the settlement a game-changer. "We are optimistic that it will usher a new era for our industry," he said. "We recognize that it will take time for people to understand how the operating conditions in the processor business have changed. But make no mistake -- they have changed."