Twitter shares are down nearly 13% to $37 a share prior to the opening of the US markets after a disappointing earnings release last night. The shares are down from a high of $74 reached in December 2013 after its IPO in November.

Well, well….Nigerian focused oil producer Heritage Oil has announced this morning that it is recommending a 320p per share offer by Energy Investments Global Ltd (Bidco), a wholly owned subsidiary of Al Mirqab Capital SPC.

A merger and acquisitions frenzy going on right now with Pfizer somewhat surprisingly not taking no as an answer with its intention to tie up with AstraZeneca and news over the weekend that Ophir Energy wanted to merge with Premier Oil but was rebuffed.

I’ve always followed the shares of Caterpillar (CAT), the global construction equipment maker, since the company always gives an excellent insight into overall economic health around the world.

It was a big day for technology earnings in the United States after the market close last night with Facebook and Apple both reporting earnings. Apple’s shares rose nearly 8% to $564 on its fiscal second quarter earnings and Facebook rose 4.5% to $64 on first quarter earnings as both reported strong figures which helped reassure technology investors after the recent Nasdaq sell off.

Many investors are wondering whether this is the right time to start putting their money back into mining shares after an awful couple of years. The Blackrock World Mining Investment Trust is a good benchmark for performance of global mining companies with 11.6% of its assets in Rio Tinto, 11% in BHP Billiton and 9.7% in Glencore Xstrata.

Google has been at the epicentre of the internet revolution since its IPO in August 2004. Its market value has ballooned in parallel with internet usage, rising from $27.2 billion to a staggering $363 billion today.