Ford Motor (NYSE: F) surprised Wall Street today by revealing that the company produced a quarterly profit and raised its 2011 outlook to "solidly profitable," sending shares up 5.7 percent in premarket trading. Ford is the only major U.S. automaker to evade bankruptcy in 2009 and stated that the third-quarter results were supported by cost-cuts, improved credit results and increased market share in North America and other important areas. Ford burned through $4.7 billion of cash in the first half of the year, yet reported $1.3 billion of positive cash flow in the Q3, its first positive cash flow since the Q2 of 2007. -Reuters

CIT Group (NYSE: CIT) decision to seek court protection will likely keep money flowing to bondholders and 1 million customers of the 101-year-old commercial lender. Shareholders and taxpayers won’t be as fortunate. CIT’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy may give bondholders new notes at 70 cents on the dollar plus new common stock, and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Peek said clients will be able to get funds. Common stock owners could be mostly wiped out, and the U.S. Treasury Department said it won’t recoup much, if any, of the $2.33 billion of taxpayer money that went into CIT, the largest firm to go bankrupt after getting a federal bailout. -Bloomberg

The 500 largest non-financial companies in the U.S. hold $994 billion in cash and short term investments, up about 8 percent from last year. Some of the largest tech companies like Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) have tens of billions on their balance sheets. There is nothing new about corporations holding high cash balances during a recession, since companies want to maintain a buffer against falling sales and earnings losses. But it raises the question of what will happen to the cash as the economy recovers. –Daily Finance

The euro and other higher-yielding currencies strengthened against the dollar in morning trading today, as improving global economic data countered some of the caution that prevailed in the markets last week. But currency investors were looking toward the 10 a.m. EST release of U.S. manufacturing PMI data to determine whether the small morning rally of risk-positive currencies would last throughout the New York session. –The Wall Street Journal

On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner cautioned that while there were some encouraging signs in the latest report on economic growth, the recovery will be choppy. "This is going be a different recovery than in the past because Americans will have to save more," he said in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press. "A lot of damage was caused by this crisis. It’s gonna take some time for us to grow out of this." -MarketWatch

Hamid Karzai will serve a second term as Afghanistan’s president after election challenger Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, dropped out of a runoff vote scheduled for Nov. 7, the Independent Election Commission announced in Kabul. Consistent “with the high interest of the Afghan people and to prevent uncertainty and a lot of challenges to stability and security,” the commission “declares Hamid Karzai as the next president of Afghanistan.” -Bloomberg

-Jutia Group