On Friday, Bank of America (BAC) and Mattel (MAT) reported first-quarter earnings data. How do these two look after their respective releases?

Let's go with the financial business first. Bank of America is a solid brand in the money-services arena. Over the last year, the stock has risen very nicely, as the BAC chart clearly shows. Shares of the company were quite close to the 52-week high of $19.86 on Thursday before the Q1 numbers were sent to the market.

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) is a financial stock, and as such, you've got a right to be cautious about it, considering what's happened to the economy over the last couple years. Today, however, the equity, whose colleagues include Bank of America (BAC) and Citigroup (C), appears pretty appealing. Wall Street enjoyed the results of the bank's first quarter, expressing its opinion by sending in the buy order.

As of this writing, shares of the company are up well over 3%, on robust volume. The stock has been strong since its last downturn, which ended back in February, according to the one-year chart.

The securities business is highly competitive, probably the most competitive. The pressure to secure big clients and to bring the greatest trading profits is enormous.

Right now, Goldman Sachs (GS) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) lead the industry in trading. Goldman has high-speed trading, which generates the largest profits per trade on Wall Street. Naturally, clients are attracted to Goldman because they can give them the best executions and generate the biggest profits in their managed accounts.

Analyst Upgrades

• Citigroup upgraded JPMorgan (JPM) to buy from hold on valuation as it finds the risk/reward on shares attractive following yesterday's sell-off. Citi keeps a $48 price target on the stock.
• Oppenheimer upgraded International Game Tech (IGT) to outperform from perform as it believes fundamentals for slot suppliers will improve over the next two years. The firm has a $29 price target on the stock.
• SunTrust believes Perry Ellis (PERY) is now positioned to deliver stronger margins and significant reductions in charge-backs. Shares were upgraded to buy from neutral.
• Nordstrom (JWN) was upgraded to neutral from underperform at BofA/Merrill.
• Tyson Foods (TSN) was upgraded to buy from hold at BB&T.
• Consol Energy (CNX) was upgraded to buy from neutral at Goldman.

One of the true icons of finance, Goldman Sachs Group (GS), issued its Q4 report this morning. The stock has been weak off the numbers; at the time of this writing, shares were down well over 5%, and volume was very active. Looking through the press release, I didn't come away as bearish as the market. Then again, the session as a whole was rather choppy, so perhaps overall sentiment was exerting an influence. Still, a 5% sell-off is notable.

Let's look at some highlights. For the fourth quarter, Goldman, whose colleagues include JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Morgan Stanley (MS), made $8.20 per share. Last year at this time, the company reported a loss of $4.97 per share. Besides improving year-over-year, per-share profit increased over 50% on a sequential basis as well. According to Earnings.com, $5.20 was the number to beat.

Morgan Stanley (MS), one of the world's top investment banks, is scheduled to discuss its fourth-quarter 2009 financial results in a conference call Wednesday, Jan. 20, at 11:00 AM (ET), which will include CEO James Gorman. You can catch the live webcast of the call on the company's website.

During the three months that ended in December, the New York-based firm launched its Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management initiative, saw management changes and declared a quarterly dividend. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters are looking for Morgan Stanley to report earnings of $0.36 per share, compared to loss of $2.34 per share a year ago and earnings of $0.27 in the third quarter. Fourth-quarter revenue is expected to total $7.8 billion.

A rally that began last year has already run up the prices of some stocks, creating small bubbles across the market. Some investors might be pushing prices higher ahead of their time for 62 of the stocks in the S&P 500 index. These companies now have P/E ratios of above 70, up from 23 a year ago. Says Robert Maltbie of Singular Research, "We have to temper some of this crazy bullishness." He tells USA Today that when P/E ratios approach 70, a stock can begin to have problems.

So, why are some prices being run up? As usual, any hope of rational price drivers is the domain of dreamers. Investors have found their favorites and sometimes haven't allowed reality to become a constraint on their excitement. Take a look at five reasons below:

Last week, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) led off the coming parade of earnings from the big banks when it reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter and full-year earnings, though its revenue fell short of estimates.

Plenty more earnings from the financial sector are due out this week. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters anticipate fourth-quarter earnings growth from American Express Co. (AXP), Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BK), Hudson City Bancorp Inc. (HCBK), SLM Corp. (SLM) and US Bancorp (USB).

Now here's a story that's all about high finance. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) earned $11.7 billion last year and paid out $26.9 billion in compensation, up 18% from the previous year. Employees on average earn $129,000, while investment bankers earned on average $380,000.

JPMorgan said it hopes to restore its dividend to 75 cents or $1.00 per share by the middle of 2010. This means that if you're a shareholder and you were waiting for a dividend increase, forget about it. Your dividend was used up in the $26.9 billion that went to compensation.

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) has continued the earnings roll for U.S. banks. Friday morning, JPMorgan announced earnings of $3.28 billion -- thanks mainly to the company's investment banking and its trading business. Both of these segments benefited from the market's recent rally, helping the company make up for a continued weakness in the world of lending.

So, why was the stock lower in morning trading action? Total revenue checked in at $25.23 billion, which was an increase of 32%, but expectations were set at $26.81 billion. This revenue miss, along with the fact that JPMorgan did not hike its nickel-per-share quarterly dividend, served to push the stock lower.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), whose CEO testified before Congress this week, is scheduled to discuss its fourth-quarter 2009 financial results in a conference call Friday, Jan. 15, at 9:00 AM (ET). You can catch the live webcast of the call on the company's website.

During the three months that ended in December, JPMorgan completed the integration of Chase and Washing Mutual banks and declared a quarterly dividend. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters are looking for this New York-based financial giant to report that earnings rose 88.7% from a year ago to $0.62 per share, though that is 24.4% lower than in the third quarter. Fourth-quarter revenue is expected to total $27.0 billion, up 56.9% from a year ago, but down from $28.8 billion in the previous quarter.

The Federal Reserve's first Beige Book report of the year is due out this week. The report is a compilation of anecdotal information on current economic conditions from each of the 12 Federal Reserve Bank districts. The data comes from interviews with business contacts, economists, market experts, and other sources. The previous report, released in December, showed modest improvement in eight of the districts, while the October report confirmed that the economy was stabilizing after earlier declines.

Washington Mutual (WaMu) was the largest savings and loan company in the country. It was seized by the government in September 2008 and sold to JPMorgan Chase (JPM) for a piddling $1.9 billion dollars.

Now the company wants to investigate discussions between JPMorgan Chase, regulators,competitors and rating agencies it said led to the seizure of Washington Mutual according to a filing in bankruptcy court.

It alleges misconduct on the part of Morgan by "disclosing confidential information" in violation of the confidentially agreement to government regulators, rating agencies, media and investors in an effort to harm WAMU by driving down WAMU's credit rating and stock price.

Last year, the Treasury Department received warrants when it injected billions in JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM). JPMorgan received $25 billion in bailout money in October 2008 and paid the money back last June.

The government received 88.4 million warrants. They were sold at auction at a price of $10.75. The conversion price for the warrants is $42.42 a share. That means when the stock reaches that price, the warrants can be converted into stock worth $3.75 billion. The Treasury received $936 million from Thursday's auction.

Shares of Century Aluminum (CENX) caught a lift Friday morning, as analysts at JPMorgan Chase adjusted their price targets on a number of metals and mining issues. Century's price target was hiked from $9 to $13, representing a premium of 13.2% to the stock's closing price on Thursday.

In the first hour of Friday's session, CENX soared to a gain of 7.8% as traders cheered the upbeat note. Technical support from the stock's 10-week and 20-week moving averages also helped to add some lift; these two trendlines are now on the verge of a bullish cross. A finish above $12 would be a major development for the equity, since this level has capped all of CENX's weekly closes since August.