Monday morning headlines

And they're off: Lots of volatility in early trading. More encouraging earnings this morning (Verizon, HSBC), but continued worries about credit markets and the subprime fallout. Markets were higher in Asia, but lower in Europe. In the first hour of trading, the Dow was down, then up and then down again.

Nervous time: There were all kinds of assessments over the weekend about whether last week's market carnage was an overreaction or just the beginning of a nasty bear run. Nobody knows, of course, so everyone has an opinion. As explained in this morning's WSJ, there are basically two camps: those who focus on such fundamentals as corporate profits and interest rates are not that concerned, while the technical analysts or chartists who use weird data to predict market movements believe that stocks are headed downward. Both sides have been wrong in the past, so history won't necessarily be helpful.

Stocks top out one by one, often with a small band of highly admired issues leading the gains, until there isn't enough strength left to hold the indexes up. This usually happens when interest rates are rising, pressuring businesses and consumers. Money managers, reluctant to sell for fear of missing out on more gains, get caught in the declines. The market looked a lot like this before its peaks in 1987 and 2000, and at the end of other bull markets. Today, it has some, but not all, of these characteristics. Hence the fierce debate: Is this a hurricane or just a summer downpour?

Dow Jones finale?: Well, there’s a 5 p.m. deadline for members of the Bancroft family to decide whether to accept News Corp's $5 billion offer for the company (parent of the WSJ). While the Bancrofts control 64 percent of the shareholder power, the process of breaking that out into all the trusts and ownership stakes is mind-numbing. I’m still putting my money on a deal. (Reuters)

Cruise financing close: It's taken a while, but Merrill Lynch is in the final stages of a $500 million financing package for Tom Cruise's United Artists movie studio (owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). The deal should be ready to go public by mid-August, according to the NY Post, citing four sources. The appetite for film-financing is not what it once was, so most of the equity in the in the UA financing is being put up by MGM. The equity component is considered the riskiest part in film-financing deals because it gets repaid behind other debt.

Burkle still sniffing: Not for Dow Jones, but American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, Star and Men's Fitness magazine. The NY Post's Keith Kelly reports that accountants from Ernst & Young were looking over AMI's books on behalf of Bev Hills billionaire Burkle and Source Interlink Cos., which Burkle controls. AMI CEO David Pecker and President John Miller were locked in closed-door meetings all-day on Sunday.

More on Hilton deal: Retiring CEO Stephen Bollenbach stands to pick up $125 million once the Bev Hills-based hotel chain is sold to private equity firm Blackstone Group. The cash-out value of Bollenbach's vested and unvested stock options are $74.5 million, performance share units $13.3 million, and restricted stock units $2.2 million, according to a filing. He also stands to receive $34.7 million under a deferred compensation plan. (Reuters)