With volatility off the charts lately, an investor's eyes naturally heads toward stocks in the health-care area. Now normally I never, ever recommend biotech stocks. Never. Ever. They're too risky, there's too much hype and too few profits. And due to licensing and patent laws, many biotech products are too easily copied and therefore they can't keep their pricing edge.

There is one exception, however, and that is Gilead Sciences (GILD). It has leveraged its research and marketing strength into an unblemished 10-year record of fundamental and investment strength. Their innovative business has risen above other biotech companies, making it a leader in the industry.

The biotech giant specializing in difficult infectious diseases like HIV, hepatitis B and influenza reported healthy quarterly results last week. Earnings came in at 45 cents per share, beating estimates of 42 cents, thanks to a strong performance out of its HIV products. Sales of the company's HIV lineup increased 2.9% to $806 million, driving total revenue to just over $1 billion. These are fantastic results.

The crown jewel of Gilead's HIV-fighting arsenal is a concoction dubbed Atripla. This drug combines one of Bristol-Myers Squibb's non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, or NNRTIs, with two of Gilead's nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, known as NRTIs.

All together, Gilead controls some 54% of the U.S. market for NRTIs, up from 45% last year, and Atripla makes up a large portion of these sales. For each 30-pill bottle of Atripla sold, some $780 goes to the company. During the third quarter alone, U.S. sales of the antiviral drug totaled $240 million.

But Gilead isn't just settling with great sales in the U.S. Recently, the company announced that Atripla was approved in Canada for use by adults infected with HIV. This gives the 60,000 people who have HIV and are living in Canada another treatment option for the deadly disease. Looking ahead, the European Medicines Agency is also set to approve the use of Atripla across Europe by the end of the year.

Dry-bulk ocean shippers like Genco Shipping & Trading (GNK) have had a heck of a week last week. As you know, it began last Tuesday when dry-bulk futures rates fell 13% for 2008 bookings on Capesize ships. This caused a chain reaction in other rate classes as stop losses were triggered. But the damage was kept to a minimum due to the overall strength of the market for dry freight. Even with the pullback, Capesize rates are still up 170% in 12 months.

The volatility in the freight futures, though, led to price volatility in the shares of the dry-bulk shippers, as late-coming momentum traders got spooked.

The most likely explanation for the erratic trading behavior in the freight futures market was some tough talk out of China. According to a spokesperson for the China Iron and Steel Association, China's steelmakers intend to resist price hikes on shipping iron ore going into next year due to declining profitability. This was bad news for dry-bulk freighters like Genco that have made a mint by shipping iron ore from Australia to China as demand has soared.

Normally, communist bureaucrats in China can dictate the terms on which their economy operates. But once they decide to participate in the global marketplace, they become supplicants to the same supply/demand pressures as the rest of us. No exceptions, regardless of your economic regime of choice. So unless the Chinese steelmakers are prepared to idle their factories, they will have to pay to ship in iron ore from faraway lands like Australia or South America. Furthermore, they will be subject to the 25% to 50% iron ore price hike expected over the next 12 months. Therefore, this recent blip shouldn't have a long-term effect on the dry-bulk shipping industry because emerging nations, like China, are going to continue to need commodities floated into their countries and will ultimately have to deal with any price hikes that arise.

Recently, software powerhouse Microsoft (MSFT) reported impressive fiscal first-quarter results. Revenue soared 27% to nearly $14 billion, beating the consensus estimate by more than $1 billion. Earnings moved 23% higher, to $4.3 billion or 45 cents per share. For a company of this size, putting up growth in the 20%-plus range is no easy feat, and shares have therefore responded positively to the report.

The company's crown jewels -- the Windows and Office franchises -- were both large contributors to the first-quarter's performance. Lingering in the market since January, some 28 million copies of Windows Vista were sold during the quarter, an indication that the new operating system is gaining traction after a disappointing launch earlier in the year. The premium versions of Vista have proven to be especially popular.

Much of the boost in operating system sales was due to double-digit increases in PC sales, which reflects not only the continued shift from desktops to laptops in the developed world, but also the rapid digitization of the emerging market economies. As large manufacturers of laptop computers are gaining market share in these areas, Microsoft will be better able to capture revenue with their operating systems.

Switching gears, the Entertainment and Devices division was the other large contributor to MSFT's quarter. This spunky business unit, responsible for the Xbox 360 and its portfolio of games, nearly doubled revenue year over year to roughly $2 billion. The release of Halo 3 had a lot to do with this, given that it was the largest entertainment launch in history, with sales of more than $175 million in its first day. The release also helped grow the customer base of Xbox 360s as we move into the holiday season, which will help drive strong sales in other Microsoft game titles moving forward. It also appears that Halo 3 gamers are avid users of the Xbox Live online gaming network, which is a boon to Microsoft since the service has very high margins.

The spectacular quarter was a huge contrast from Microsoft's performance in previous years. The future is bright for the company -- it looks like this tech giant has finally awakened.

Expeditors International (EXPD) shares were slammed down 12% following a downgrade by two major investment banks from buy to neutral last week. I've read the two banks' reports, which came a day after EXPD reported third-quarter earnings, and I believe that their complaints are fairly minor. However, the stock does trade at a very high multiple to its growth rate, as it always has, and therefore is always vulnerable to taking such a hit.

So what really happened in the third quarter? Well, EXPD reported earnings of 34 cents per share, which was in line with analysts' consensus estimates. Revenue was up 14.6% year over year to $1.4 billion, which handily beat consensus estimates of $1.39 billion. Ocean freight costs were a little higher than many people were expecting during the quarter, but really the company showed terrific revenue and operating margin growth in a brutally competitive business.

I have little doubt that EXPD will continue to gain market share and beat peers for new business, again as it always has. The company has a unique culture of military-like, single-minded forcefulness and continues to run in the image of its founder and leader, Peter Rose, in Seattle. So in regards to the recent drop in share price, the thing that may have spooked investors was the company's statement about the Department of Justice's investigation of price-fixing in the international air freight forwarding industry. Management said in a written statement that they had retained an outside law firm to conduct a "very rigorous" self-review and was fully cooperating with the DOJ to determine if any anti-competitive behavior occurred. But knowing the super-competitive atmosphere that prevails at EXPD, it would be quite a shock if any cooperation with rivals were uncovered.

As the television writers' strike continues, the impact on television studios so far has been muted. That's a good thing for News Corp. (NWS), which has done a great job lately of pushing the envelope in the United States with its Fox Broadcast unit's programming. Goldman Sachs, in a note this week, observed that it is the "momentum story" in an otherwise difficult fall season for the networks. Fox is up 8% year over year in the key adults aged 18 to 49 category, and it jumped into second place among all contenders in the just-completed seventh week of the season. Its "House" franchise is gaining a lot of ground, with a 6.8 rating, up 10% from last week and 5% from last year, according to Goldman. Its "Bones" show, meanwhile, is gaining an audience that's up 23% year over year.

My 15-year-old son and I have been helping out by watching its "Prison Break" show, which just completed its fall season and left us on a cliff hanger until winter. Fox has had success with its dramas that have eccentric casts, strong production values, unusual plot twists and solid writing and acting, which is not something that you can say about all the networks.

So far this season, CBS leads in total households with a 7.2 rating that is actually down 10.5% from last year, while ABC and Fox are tied for second with 7.1 rating and NBC falls in last place with a 5.1 rating, down 21% from last year.

Elsewhere in Murdochland, the media conglomerate's first-quarter results beat expectations by 9% when released last week, with contributions coming from rising margins and revenue -- not just financial engineering. Filmed entertainment accounted for half of the entire company's upside surprise, while cable networks provided another 30%. A big contributor in the broadcast unit was Fox news channel's affiliate fee increase, although results were hampered a bit by the launch of the new Fox Business Channel. Also in the quarter, MySpace saw 137% revenue growth year over year, even amid an onslaught by newcomer Facebook.

Overall, I expect NWS to continue to push forward with its international media strategy, with film, SKY Italia and MySpace all contributing. And especially once the sting of the high price paid for The Wall Street Journal fades and the benefits of that purchase begin to pay off, the stock should find more favor.

After recovering from near-fatal flirtations with bad management and unfocused strategies, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) is once again perched atop the global personal computer marketplace.

As I'll soon explain, HP's healthy earnings results were driven by a marked increase in laptop sales and continued strength in its desktop printing business. The company easily beat analysts' expectations for the fourth quarter, with net income moving up 28%, to nearly $2.2 billion or 81 cents per share. Revenue was up 15% to more than $28 billion, beating estimates by $1 billion.

What an end to an impressive year for the Silicon Valley stalwart: Sales eclipsed $100 billion for the first time while net income came in at $7.3 billion, or $2.68 per share, up from $6.2 billion last year. A few months ago, HP unveiled a new ad campaign that focused on "making the computer personal again." Given the company's widening market share and financial performance, it sure looks like it struck a nerve with consumers.

Capitalizing on the ever-rising popularity of the portable computer, HP's laptop sales totaled more than $5 billion for the quarter, a 49% increase. Desktop sales moved up 15% to $4.2 billion. Combined, computer sales were responsible for approximately one-third of the quarter's overall sales. Operating margins increased too, by 1.5% to 5.8%, on lower component prices.

A much larger sales percentage was generated in the company's printing and imaging group, which includes its famous inkjet and laser printer lineups, digital cameras and, of course, replacement ink cartridges. These products are super profitable, and are fairly immune to the economic cycle since business and consumers don't want their expensive printers turning into paper weights over a $20 cartridge. This acts as a stabilizer on HP's earnings stream, which is especially important, given the ominous clouds hovering over discretionary consumer expenditures moving into 2008.

The continued unraveling of the mortgage debacle and the tightened availability of consumer credit will surely slow retail computer sales next year. Fortunately, the company is continuing to diversify its revenue base with sales increasingly sourced from emerging market nations in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. In China alone, which is now HP's third-largest PC market, revenue doubled over the past year as a newly minted middle-class discovered the joys of personal computer ownership. Look for this trend to continue, undeterred by the consumer-led slowdown that looks increasingly likely in the Unites States.

Finally, HP upped its financial forecasts for the current quarter. It is now looking for net income of 80 cents per share, which is three cents higher than the seers on Wall Street were expecting. It is also looking for sales near $27.5 billion, compared with the $27 billion consensus estimate. Locked in these estimates is a more conservative outlook for growth in the company's PC business. Nonetheless, the outlook was bright enough that the board authorized an $8 billion share repurchase allocation.