Shares in the larger mining stocks have been pretty volatile of late driven by concerns about China and commodity prices. However, there are signs that the era of big spending with expensive trophy projects is being curtailed with speculation that two of the largest global miners, BHP Billiton and Glencore could announce share buy backs this week.

Earlier today Gulf Keystone Petroleum released an RNS to try and calm nerves following the recent advances by the Islamist ISIS forces further into Northern Iraq. Unfortunately for GKP, Genel and others, reassuring words don’t seem to be working with the both companies shares down around 8%.

Africa focused oil and gas explorer, Afren (AFR) is currently down 28% to 107p and fell as low as 97p this morning on news that the CEO and COO have been suspended for ‘the receipt of unauthorised payments potentially for the benefit of the CEO and COO’.

Twitter shares rose over 30% after the market close night and are currently up 26% to $49 in pre-market trading, almost double the $26 IPO price of November 2013.

After the excitement of the failed Pfizer bid for Astra Zeneca and AbbVie’s successful deal with Shire, there was further interest for UK pharmaceutical businesses today from both GSK and Reckitt Benckiser.

I wrote about the obscure and infamous social networking company, CYNK Technology, back in mid-July following its suspension by the US SEC.

Facebook proved the doubters wrong again with a very strong reported second-quarter profit of $791 million, or 30 cents a share, compared with a profit of $333 million, or 13 cents a share, for the year ago period, an increase of 138%.

Apple issued its latest earnings report after the Wall Street close last night with strong sales in China helping offset weakness in other markets.

After months of trouble and strife at the UK’s number one supermarket group, Tesco, under the leadership of 40 year veteran Philip Clarke it was one profit’s warning too many this morning with the news that Clarke is being replaced in October.

It’s the end of the road for FTSE 100 listed Shire Pharmaceuticals as an independent company with U.S. drug maker AbbVie’s £32 billion takeover being agreed today.