The last five trading days Micron Technology Inc.(NYSE:MU) shares have been cursed with two Downgrades and losing 20% of their value.  Micron has been outcast by Wall Street, they are the new Gollum of the Semiconductors. Anytime you see back to back downgrades in the span of a week it makes you wonder if the analysts might actually be on to something, both UBS and Deutsche are down on Micron: Date Brokerage Firm Action From To Old New...

Highlights include Tessera Technologies, Inc. (TSRA), Infineon Technologies AG (IFX) and Micron Technology, Inc. (MU).Want to invest in Tessera Technologies (TSRA)? Get used to reading litigation reviews.Tessera's advanced packaging technologies have industry-wide applications. The firm has won 5 major lawsuits and now receives royalties from all of the big four in the DRAM market.Royalty growth has been spectacular, growing from $8.8 million in the 1st quarter of 2004 to $57.6 million in the third quarter of 2008. The royalty payments are expected to be a steady growing stream and the long-term revenue driver.Samsung and Hynix (both clients) are the 2 largest DRAM manufacturers and together control almost 50% of the DRAM market. The company has recently settled two separate litigation actions against Infineon (IFX) and Micron Technology (MU), the number three and four DRAM manufacturers, ...

Earnings season kicked off last week and the results were mixed. Alcoa disappointed investors and quickly dropped 13 percent in the ensuing days. J.P. Morgan (NYSE:JPM) beat estimates, but continued to fall thanks to ongoing concerns about the banking industry as a whole (I know Andy Gordon is planning an article for tomorrow discussing the continuing problems in the banking industry, so you won’t want to miss that).  Intel reported Thursday night and they met lowered expectations.

But that is old news.  You are here because you want a forward outlook, not a rehashing of what happened last week.  But I bring up the major earnings from the past week to make a point.  The expectations for Alcoa (NYSE:AA) were still relatively high and they dropped sharply.  Expectations for J.P. Morgan were pretty low and they beat, but got taken down by the industry (guilt by association).  Intel warned, came

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Taipan daily editor Justice Litle responds to some of his readers’ investment queries below. Is this the perfect time to get into the market, or is the market still a no-go zone?

In honor of this historic day – not to mention the risks of an unchecked majority in the senate – we’ll start things off with a little humor.

The inspiring message above is brought to you by despair.com, a tongue in cheek purveyor of de-motivational goods. If you’re getting ready to draw up your Christmas list, one of despair.com’s “government” plaques might be just the thing for the cranky libertarian in your life. (Nothing wrong with being cranky I might add.) Or if you work in a “progressive”

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Just when it looked like AMD was going out-of-business, BAM! AMD’s (NYSE:AMD) shares were up 31% at one point today thanks to Abu Dhabi investing $5.7 billion which gets them a 55% stake in AMD and half the board seats.

Another Abu Dhabi government company, Mubadala Development Co., will spend $314 million to increase its stake in AMD to 19.3 percent from 8.1 percent and gain a seat on AMD’s board, AMD said in a statement.

Today …