Top 10 News Items 7/23-7/27: Apple Can't Win 'Em All; Facebook Investors Sell Despite Inline Results; Draghi Giving Markets Hope

Here is a recap of the top news items from this week on Wall Street:

1. Shares of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) fell more than 4 percent on Wednesday following a rare quarterly miss from the revered company. Apple reported Q3 EPS of $9.32 on sales of $35 billion. The Street was expecting quarterly earnings of $10.36 per share on sales of $37.18 billion. Apple sold 26 million iPhones, 17 million iPads, and 4 million Macs. The company is looking for Q4 sales of about $34 billion and EPS of $7.65. This was well below the Wall Street consensus of $38 billion and $10.22, respectively.

2. Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) reported its first quarterly results since going public on May 18th. The company posted inline Q2 EPS of 12 cents on sales of $1.18 billion, better than the $1.15 billion analysts were expecting. After initially moving higher during Thursday's after-hours session, Facebook shares plunged nearly 12 percent on Friday. The stock finished this week at a closing low of $23.70.

3. Comments from the ECB's Mario Draghi pushed US stocks higher on both Thursday and Friday of this week. On Thursday, while the regulator avoiding discussing any specific monetary easing, he did make a pledge to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. On Friday, word Draghi discussed new possibilities for ECB action with Bundesbank's Jens Weidmann push the Dow to levels not seen since early May.

4. Merger Monday!: CNOOC (NYSE: CEO) for Nexen (NYSE: NXY) at $27.50/share, Genesee & Wyoming (NYSE: GWR) for RailAmerica (NYSE: RA) at $27.50/share, DigitalGlobe (NYSE: DGI) for GeoEye (Nasdaq: GEOY) in a $900 million deal, Joh. A. Benckiser for Peet's Coffee & Tea (Nasdaq: PEET) at $73.50/share, and VMware (NYSE: VMW) bought Nicira for $1.05 billion in cash plus some assumed equity wins.

5. Other important earnings this week: McDonald's (NYSE: MCD), AT&T (NYSE: T), Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX), Ford (NYSE: F), Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX), UPS (NYSE: UPS), RadioShack (NYSE: RSH), Boeing (NYSE: BA), Zynga (Nasdaq: ZNGA), 3M (NYSE: MMM), ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), Sprint (NYSE: S), Deckers (Nasdaq: DECK), Western Digital (NYSE: WDC).

6. Shares of Amarin (Nasdaq: AMRN) sold off this week despite FDA approval for its Vascepa (formerly known as AMR101). The stock was up 5 percent on Thursday ahead of the approval, then fell nearly 12 percent on Friday as the stock resumed.

7. The first reading of Q2 GDP came in at up 1.5 percent on Friday, better than an expected rise of 1.4 percent from the Street's economists. The final Q1 reading was revised from 1.9 percent to 2.0 percent.

8. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) announced the acquisition of AuthenTec (Nasdaq: AUTH) for $8/share, or about $356 million, on Friday. Shares of AuthenTec jumped more than 66 percent following the news.

9. Late Friday, AT&T (NYSE: T) announced its Board authorized the addition of 300 million shares to its current buyback program. The company currently has about 5.8 billion shares outstanding.

10. In an effort to end a downward spiral in asset prices, Spain's stock market regulators took the extreme measure to ban short selling on all stocks, including derivatives. The ban will last three months. The ban impacts all shares and indexes, including operations, derivatives in organized markets or OTC derivatives.

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