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.

Cairn Energy isn’t having much luck these days after the glory days of 1999-2004 in India’s Rajasthan area. It found large amounts of oil in the Guda field (1999), followed by Saraswati (2001), Mangala (2003) and Mangala fields (2004). Cairn sold 58.5% of Cairn India for $8.67 billion in August 2010 to Vedanta Resources, with the company selling $5.5 billion of shares.

Vodafone shares finished on Friday with a 3% gain to 236p, making it a 48% gain for lucky shareholders in this FTSE 100 company over the last 12 months. Verizon Communications revealed that it has completed the acquisition of Vodafone’s 45% indirect interest in Verizon wireless and rumours are swirling that the UK mobile phone group could be the subject of an acquisition.

Last summer I had some fun and games trying to trade gold miner, African Barrick Gold (ABG), and most of it rather unsuccesfully as its shares fell off a cliff. In June 2013 they went down below £1 and right now they are £2.60, an incredible recovery as a new management team has put in place new cost cutting measures to offset a weak gold price to boost profitability.