Jason Calcanis and others are out with posts talking about Ruport Murdoch's comments suggesting he will opt out of Google (GOOG) Search. Jason amplifies the comments and talks about doing a deal offering WSJ articles for a premium.

Every internet age (which last about 5 years) has a king. Right now it's Google, and it can be a difficult company to deal with. The bottom line for me, though, is that I love what Google does in terms of making the internet useful and interesting, especially for mobile users. I've been using Google Maps and Gmail for years and they are the best in class in terms of usability and usefulness.

Last week, Netflix (NFLX) started mailing out the discs that Sony PS3 users must insert in their console each time they want to stream a movie. While the disc is a temporary measure until there is a dedicated Netflix app for the PS3, the solution is very slow and painful. The disc takes about 20 seconds to load and once a movie is selected, it takes almost 30 seconds before the movie starts streaming. While the quality of the stream is good and looks the same to me when compared to streaming on the Microsoft (MSFT) Xbox 360, Roku or TiVo (TIVO), the controls that allow you to do things like fast-forward the video are also very slow.

For those PS3 users who have never streamed Netflix to any other device, they may not even notice or care. But for anyone like myself who has used one of the many other Netflix enabled devices for streaming,the PS3 experience really suffers when it comes to the user experience.

There are a lot of doom and gloom headlines around at the moment. Lots of development staff being laid off, games selling far less than expected, major publishers making massive losses and release schedules that look a little thin. What is happening here?:

Though this year has been dismal for advertising overall, local online advertising is expected to hit $14.2 billion by year’s end, a 12% increase over 2008, according to a report and five-year forecast from Borrell Associates.

Despite this growth, however, Borrell predicts that things will get tougher in 2010, when local online sales will hit only $14.9 billion, or 5% higher than 2009 figures. This slowdown will likely occur because the market is approaching saturation and "the wave many locally focused media companies have been riding for the past several years has peaked,” the report said.

In my last three blog posts, I listed some stocks which I would be willing to go long by selling the puts right before the stock reported earnings. Keep in mind, these were companies which I believed would have a positive reaction to the earnings. However, if the stock moved sideways on the number. this strategy would still likely return a gain the following day. This is because I am taking advantage of the increased levels of implied volatility factored into the option premium before earnings.

If you missed them, be sure to check out my October 19 blog post here, October 21 blog post here and my October 26 blog post here. So far this earnings season, the overall results have been very positive, even on eBay (EBAY), which sold off nearly 10% after earnings. I was able to purchase back the put options (closed the position) for a $4 per contract gain the following day. The best results are of course when the stock has a very positive reaction to the report and pops.

Back on December 5, 2007 I sent the following note to investors (economictiming.com):

The rate of change of economic data is worsening so it’s time to short the following group of downside leadership: Financial Sector SPDR (XLF) at $30.60, MGIC Investment Corp (MTG) at $23.75, Amabac (ABK) at $23.70, Countrywide Financial at $10.45, Freddie Mac (FRE) at $33.30, Beazer Homes (BZH) at $8.13, PMI Group (PMI) at $12.65, and Citigroup (C) at $33.40.

Windows 7 has only been out for a couple of weeks but sales so far have been “fantastic,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at a news briefing in Tokyo Thursday, noting that sales in the first 10 days have exceeded the initial sales of any previous release of a Windows OS.

A Bloomberg report looked at historical numbers and found that Microsoft (MSFT) sold more than triple the number of Windows 7 operating systems than it did with Vista and that revenue was 82 percent higher in that time frame. In addition, Microsoft is now more bullish on the PC market that it was earlier this year. At the news briefing, Ballmer said:

When Nintendo first introduced the Wii in 2006, they did so with a lower price point than the competition and a focus on capturing interest from all demographics. Demand for the Wii was so high that finding a Wii in a store was a rarity until earlier this year. Since then, Nintendo has dominated in sales of consoles leaving both the Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) and the Microsoft Xbox360 in the dust. In August, both Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT) lowered the price of their consoles to $300, but the PS3 came out victorious in September with monthly console sales surpassing Wii for the first time. Interestingly, Nintendo retaliated and lowered the price of the Wii to $200 in September.

Hardware

• With a stronger yen and sluggish sales of copiers and laser printers, Canon's (CAJ) quarterly operating profit might be halved from the previous year despite brisk sales of its recently launched EOS Kiss X3 camera and cost cuts. But reports said that Canon is unlikely to change its annual forecast despite having to grapple with a stronger yen than it first estimated. The company will gain 60 billion yen (US$657 million) in July-September. Canon has forecast a 60 percent fall in annual operating profit to 190 billion yen (US$2.1 billion).

As you can see from the table above, the top 10 companies on the list represent 53.51% of the Index , so for example if all those 10 companies have a terrible day and the rest of the 20 have a decent day, the DJIA Index will still show a large loss.

The month of October ended last Saturday. As many people analyze the performance of securities for the month, I’d like to look at sentiment and change in sentiment for the technology sector.

Sentiment is a measure of how people feel a stock will perform and is captured by a voting mechanism that indicates a strong buy, buy, neutral, sell, and strong sell. The value of sentiment is based on the ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ where the many will in most cases make better decisions than the individual. Higher sentiment stocks are considered higher quality stocks, while lower sentiment stocks are considered lower quality stocks.

NBC is gearing up for the 2010 Winter Olympics with some changes to its mainstay site, NBCOlympics.com, scheduled to go live Wednesday. (See screenshots below). Once again, just as it did with the 2008 Summer Olympics, NBC will be using a video player based on Microsoft Silverlight technology to offer full HD videos. Except this time, the video player will have DVR-like functionality, with the ability to rewind the video, highlight clips and save them.

When investing I look for PFCF below 15 times and FROIC above 20%+. When you are lucky enough to find a combination of the two you find a perfect balance of growth + value and you get capital appreciation through capital preservation.

The technology sector is seeing some major upheavals. Google (GOOG) has teamed up with Motorola (MOT) to create the Droid-Android phone – there is speculation that it could dislodge Nokia (NOK) from the top spot. Google also announced free GPS software - which the market took as a major negative for Garmin (GRMN) and TomTom (TMOAF.PK). Both share prices dropped sharply last week and their short bases have been rising steadily.

Nintendo (NTDOY.PK) reported disappointing sales for the Wii, which hit the share price; Sony (SNE) also reported earnings but the market took them well. There is some speculation that [Microsoft's (MSFT)] XboX and PS3 might be making a comeback.

Imagine a plain-vanilla stock that that trades at a forward P/E of 13 and pays a 2% dividend. Sounds kind of average, right?

Next, I tell you that the company is a software company. It has a 34% operating margin, a 37% return on equity, holds $33 billion in cash, and a history of being one of the leading companies in the world for the last 20 years. Your ears would perk up.

What a crazy month we had!

The Dow began the month of October at 9,712 and finished the month of October at EXACTLY 9,712. Now I don’t want to say the market is manipulated but… No, I’ve got nothing, there are no buts - the market is totally manipulated! Either that or you believe that the random outcome of tens of millions of traders around the globe trading hundreds of billions of shares of stock would just so happen to begin and end the month within .50 after going as low as 9,378.77 (on the 5th) and as high as 10,157.94 (on the 21st). So that is literally a 1 out of the 779-point swing coincidence to hit that 9,712 nail on the head.

At CGI Las Vegas I listened to a presentation by John Del Vecchio from Ranger Alternatives. John manages the Ranger short book and has a strong background in accounting forensics. Specifically, finding companies with low earnings quality before the market does and building “short” positions based on that information.

In his presentation he referenced some stats from a Blackstar Funds paper on the Russell 3000 index between the years 1983-2006.