DISH Network (DISH) may be facing more than just stiff cable competition these days.

A wholly-owned subsidiary of AT&T (T), Gateway Rivers Insurance elected yesterday to put $500 million worth of debt back on DISH. This is a clear signal that AT&T’s interest in a strategic partnership with DISH has possibly waned, and spells trouble for DISH.

Visa (V) shareholders received welcome news yesterday with the announcement of its first quarterly dividend. The company will pay a dividend of $0.105 to shareholders of record August 15th. In spite of the economic downturn and declining consumer sentiment, Visa revenues and profitability have remained strong since its IPO in March of this year.

It appears to me that consumers are turning to revolving credit cards to find liquidity since their home equity has shriveled to nothing. As long as interest rates stay low, consumers will pull out their Visa and MasterCard to finance purchases.

Yesterday, Qimonda AG (QI) and Elpida Memory announced that they have signed final contracts for a strategic technology partnership on joint development of memory chips [DRAM]. This is positive news for QI, but difficult to make a definitive analysis since no statements have been made concerning expected revenues from this partnership.

The only question for QI’s stock remains Infineon’s (IFX) next step with respect to their 76% ownership of QI stock. IFX has commented previously they are considering cutting their stake.

If you are thinking about taking a long position in Blue Coat Systems (BCSI), you may want to think again. If you already own the stock, consider buying some puts for protection or sell some covered calls to take advantage of the implied volatility pumped into the premiums currently. Well, here’s my personal take on the situation.

BCSI announced in an 8-K filed Tuesday that a previously disclosed SEC investigation of Blue Coat's historical stock option granting practices has gone from informal to a formal investigation. Further, the SEC has issued a subpoena to a former officer of Blue Coat.

Billionaire buy-out king Carl Icahn has been establishing a big stock position in Yahoo (YHOO) shares using options. The WSJ highlights Icahn’s position of 59 million shares of Yahoo stock that he created using only 9.9 million actual shares. “How can Mr. Icahn hold the rest without actually owning them?” the paper asks.

Well, this strategy might be news to most people, but to options traders it’s old hat. Icahn simply created 49 million shares of synthetic stock by buying 490,000 call options on Yahoo stock and selling 490,000 put options. If you caught the piece on the “Deals and Deal Makers” section, you might have noticed that the Journal incorrectly describes his trades as involving 49 million options. But to control 49 million shares of stock, you need only buy 490,000 option contracts since each option contract is equivalent to 100 shares of underlying stock. The paper obviously meant to say options worth 49 million shares, or something similar.

Now synthetic positions are how investors and traders can replicate the performance and returns of stock without owning any actual stock. Buying a call and selling a put, usually of the same exercise price and expiration, is equivalent to being long the underlying stock. The long call option grants the right to buy the stock at a certain price before expiration, if the stock goes higher. And the short put serves two purposes: first, selling the put helps pay for the cost of the call, and second, if the stock falls below the exercise price, or strike price, the holder of the short put position could be assigned and have the stock put to him. In other words, since he sold the right for someone else to be short the stock, if the long put holder decides to exercise their right, he will have to buy the stock at the strike price.