Under The Radar News - Friday

Cramer pumps Microsoft. After Microsoft's (MSFT) $41.6B offer for Yahoo! (YHOO), Jim Cramer said that he would buy MSFT shares, calling the company 'unbelievably' undervalued.

eBay jumps on news. eBay shares (EBAY) are up 5% in pre-market trading after Microsoft's (MSFT) bid for Yahoo! (YHOO). Although it is unclear who might emerge as a bidder, almost any name that has been mentioned in the past could potentially make a move.

Bond insurer bailout. A source says eight banks, including Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), SocGen (SCGLY.PK), Wachovia (WB), Barclays (BCS), UBS (UBS) and Citigroup (C) have formed a consortium to consider a rescue plan for troubled bond insurers including Ambac (ABK) and MBIA (MBI).

U.S. debt still attractive. Foreign central banks were net buyers of U.S. debt last week, to the tune of $15B.

Greenspan: Don't look at me! Ex-Fed chief Alan Greenspan said Friday he did not believe the U.S. subprime crisis was his fault, noting he called for caution as early as 2004.

Chinalco says Rio stake not a spoiler. The president of Chinalco (ACH) says its stake in Rio Tinto (RTP) is not an attempt to foil BHP's (BHP) bid, but rather a business decision. He said the company is happy with its stake, and is not looking at taking over the firm.

Big Macs. Research firm Gartner says Apple's (AAPL) share of the U.S. PC market will double over the next three years to 12%, and that it will post similar gains in Europe: "Apple's gains in computer market share reflect as much on the failures of the rest of the industry as on Apple's success."

More Gartner predictions: • By 2012, 50% of traveling workers will leave their notebooks at home in favor of other devices • 80% of all commercial software will include elements of open-source technology • At least 1/3 of business application software spending will be as service subscription instead of as product license.

Micron, Intel first out of NAND gate. Micron (MU) and Intel (INTC) will announce today a five-fold increase in the speed of NAND flash memory chips. The companies believe they are the first to meet new NAND memory standards.

Hot chips. Users claim Intel's (INTC) E8400 chips' heat sensors are faulty, leading to potential overheating. Meanwhile, a shortage of E8000 chips has seen prices surge 20%.

Vendors adopt AMD GPUs. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Dell (DELL) are ready to adopt AMD's (AMD) latest discrete graphics-card solution for their high-end notebooks. The move will boost AMD's discrete notebook GPU market share to over 50% in Q2, up from 20-30% last year.

Facebook facts bared. A chatty Mark Zuckerberg spilled the beans after listening in to an all-hands Facebook meeting Thursday. 2007 revenues were $150M, with 2008 rev. estimated at $300-350M. 2008 CapEx: $200M. Cash flow: -%150M. Employees: 1,000 up from 450 in 2007.

Social network losing shine. The latest comScore numbers reveal a disturbing slide in the average time users spent on the three top social networks, Bebo, MySpace and Facebook: all were down in double digits.

Chevy Malibu: Game changer. Chevy's (GM) redesigned Malibu may indeed be the long-awaited Taurus replacement. Since its October debut, Malibu shoppers are up over 300% and currently hold over all domestic and imported rivals. During the same period, Chevy's website, Chevrolet.com, overtook Toyota.com for the first time in a year and a half.

Competitive advantage. During the holiday season, Amazon's (AMZN) new Kindle book-reader was the top result for users who searched Amazon.com for "sony (SNE) reader."

Quietly, many homebuilder stocks are up 100% from their lows.

Suing Trump for (more than) everything he has. Nights at Vegas Inc. is suing Donald Trump (TRMP) for $4B, saying he made it impossible for them to do business after disallowing them to use the name Trump in their ads. Trump's personal worth is half of that.

Comments

[firboy4]

I've read much better from Eli. This one didn't really didn't tell me anything new or important. I was hoping for some info on WB that might be helpful in buying or not buying WB on Monday.