Chris S

A consumer rights group that is lobbying Congress to pass legislation that would force airlines to let passengers off runway-bound planes sues Delta Air Lines (DAL), accusing Delta of hacking its AOL account in order to derail the bill.

true or not, thats the funniest thing ive heard all day

GE (GE +1.7%) gets another upgrade, this time from Goldman which ups its target to $18 from $15. "GE Capital risk appears manageable while Industrial continues to modestly outperform and valuation risk premium should wane as the economic recovery blossoms," analysts say.

all aboard the upgrade train! toot toot!

A Consumer Reports survey notes a wave of "Buy American" sentiment among car shoppers, with 81% likely to consider domestic cars vs. 47% for Asian cars and 46% European. So why did Asia rake in the bulk of the clunker cash?

Because talk is cheap?

The global search market is still all about Google (GOOG), whose searches grew 58% in July to 76.7 billion. Google's global market share is 68% - a giant lead against No. 2 Yahoo (YHOO) at 7.8% and China's Baidu (BIDU) at 7%. Bing (MSFT) searches were fourth but grew 41% for the month.

GOOG is the big boy, but there's plenty of room in the market for multiple players. All the big engines posted increases in search volume (minus AOL).

As appliance demand flags, Whirlpool (WHR +1.3%) says it's closing an Indiana refrigerator plant, cutting 1,100 jobs, less than 2% of its workforce. The production work will be shifted to a plant in Mexico.

green shoots for mexicans at least

Joe Weisenthal wonders: If Wall Street's smugly confident alchemists could be so wrong about the economy, how bad will it be when physicists really mess things up?

One of the dumbest articles I've read in a long time.

U.S. June Video Game Sales Tumble 31%

That's a really poor selection of games for consumers to choose from. I wouldn't expect a listing like that to perform well in any economy, much less this one.

Consumers are getting more picky. If a top franchise releases a new game, consumers will snap it up. But don't expect B-rated games to do as well as they did in boom times.

Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) have outpaced rivals' over the past year, but investors shouldn't cash out yet, writes Barron's Lawrence C. Strauss. The stock could climb another 25% in the next year.

Though in all fairness, Dayton might not be the best example. We've been hit pretty hard here.

On Jul 19 11:40 AM BPYHO wrote:

> Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure. THis guy obviously hasn't went to a local mall
> recently. I love these analysts who sit in their offices and dont
> do any real world research. I just visited a local mall in an upper
> middle class area of Dayton to pick up a new phone at AT&T.
> The AT&T store and the Food Court were the only places in the
> mall that were busy. The stores were all empty. BB&B as well
> as many other retailers will be lucky if they can stay afloat in
> the challenging economic climate over the next couple years...

Is Anyone Using Chrome?

Chrome, as much as I love it, is still stuck in the realm of techies and early adopters. Browsers might have low cost of switching, but most people don't really care what browser they use, even if they know which one they are using at all.

Feels like half the people I work with still use IE6. And they don't care, because as far as they can tell, it gets the job done.

Within the first week of Apple's (AAPL) new iPhone 3GS, YouTube reported a 400% increase in mobile video uploads. So are rumors that the next generation of iPods Touch and Nano will also have video cameras great news for Google (GOOG)? No: "These are precisely the videos that YouTube can't monetize, and that advertisers don't want."

This might not be great news for Google, but I don't really think they care either. The amount of traffic "mobile video uploads" gets is negligible compared to the streams that Google CAN monetize. And if allowing these streams keeps the users coming back, what's the harm?

The recession has bottomed and Q2 earnings will probably beat estimates, Laszlo Birinyi says, predicting the S&P 500 will soon resume its powerful ascent. Since Birinyi predicted S&P to 1,700 within 2-3 years in May, the index is down 0.5%.

I want some of whatever this guy is on.

What's With Google's Need for Speed?

Somehow, I highly doubt the scalability of GoogleBot is tied to the speed of individual websites. Call me dubious.

Less defensive retailers will begin outperforming Wal-Mart (WMT -2.6%) in H2 as investors rotate into non-staple stocks to take advantage of a recovering retail sector, Goldman says, downgrading shares to Neutral. Firm thinks discretionary retailers will easily lap year-ago margin comparisons, while WMT will struggle to outdo already stellar numbers.

So GS's logic here is that because last year was so horrendous for discretionary retails, they can't help but look good in comparison this year. Thus, they are superior to WMT because all WMT does is put good numbers up consistently.

WTF?

A case against using new intraday lows as a buy trigger.

It was more of a "rant" than a "case". Still entertaining though.

Will Natural Gas Be the Next to Rally?

Some amazing comments here that really put this into perspective.

I'm gonna have to agree with the folks that said to correct with ratio imbalance, oil needs to come down rather than nat gas going up.