Within the past couple of months the markets have been extremely volatile, as the global recession fears and concerns about the European debt crisis have shaken the investors’ confidence. The concerns over the slowing economy are also casting a shadow over the upcoming earnings season.

Several companies have lowered their revenue and EPS estimates for the rest of the year, which may signal a disappointing Q3 earnings season. Just in today’s premarket session, we saw The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (NYSE: SMG) and Natus Medical (Nasdaq: BABY) announcing lower estimates.

Today has been a pretty awesome day. There are a few remarkable things to be coming out soon. Some were announced to today; however, some have been known for sometime.

First of all, today, there was chatter on the Street saying Carl Icahn might file a significant stake in Research in Motion. I said that correctly. Icahn for RIMM. Obviously it caused shares to spike over 5% higher soon after.

Amazon is expected to Re-Kindle its tablet computer tomorrow. This is unconfirmed, but the chatter out there says that the new tablet will obviously be colored and 7-inches.

One question we often get from our new subscribers is what the benefits are of using the real-time audio feed. The answer is simple: speed and exclusivity! The audio feed provides important news and market updates faster than the text based feed and also includes quick alerts that do not always get posted to our streaming news feed.

Let’s take a look at a few examples. Last Friday we received an email from a new subscriber who had just made some very successful trades with the help of Benzinga’s audio feed.

Two of these stocks were DNKN and CCOI

Once everyone’s favorite movie service, Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) lowered its domestic subscriber guidance today pre-market. This announcement came two months after the company decided to raise the subscription fees and the investors drew their conclusions quickly, as the stock fell 16% in pre-market trading. The same trend has continued during the regular market hours and the stock hit new lows since November 2010 at $168 per share.

A French semiconductor supplier, Sequans Communications (NYSE: SQNS), has been rallying today and the stock has been up over 90% on the session. Benzinga Pro reported at 9:31 am that its LTE technology had been officially approved by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which is an entity focused on the regulation and development of China’s wireless industry.

The approval can potentially lead to major contract awards by the Chinese Government and private entities, which would significantly boost Sequans Communications’ top and bottom line.

Good afternoon, traders. Today on the news desk, Benzinga has been noticing the worsening condition in Europe. Frankly, get out of there! Greek debt is deteriorating, based on credit default swap spreads. Italy is probably going to be bailed out by China, and several French banks are starting to feel sympathetic to Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.

Traders everywhere are witnessing unraveling equity markets among looming debt concerns. European problems are not restricted to the continent, but are systemic and affect most countries in the world. Investors need to know what to do to protect their holdings in light of global troubles.

One of the easiest ways to hedge your portfolio is to short equities. Let's say you are invested in multiple pharmaceutical companies. In order to protect losses in each individual equity, you could short each of them. However, that would be fairly silly and you might as well sell off the shares owned.

The western hemisphere seems to be slowing down everyday. Even though there was no trading on Labor Day, the last four trading sessions have been volatile, responding to a barrage of macroeconomic news.

On Tuesday, the Swiss National Bank stated that it would attempt to cap its currency’s value against the Euro. Considered to be a safe-haven like precious metals, the Swiss Franc quickly drove down equity markets. Wednesday was a pretty quiet day and markets rallied slightly.

Good evening traders, what crazy markets we’ve seen. The summer has ended with a less than promising outlook. With equity markets unable to break August’s downturn, traders have become fearful about what the future holds.

It's been an eventful week.

The news was dominated on Thursday with Steve Jobs' resignation as the CEO of Apple, and Warren Buffett's decision to invest $5 billion in Bank of America.

Combined with intense uncertainty in Europe, markets have been rather volatile.