For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 20, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Apple Inc. (AAPL), KT Corp. (KTC), SK Telecom (SKM), China Unicom (CHU) and American Express Company (AXP).

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Here are highlights from Thursday’s Analyst Blog:

South Korea Welcomes iPhone

Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iPhone is finally reaching the hands of South Korean mobile users. The country’s telecom regulator Korea Communications Commission (“KCC") has granted Apple the license to sell the iconic handset in the domestic cell phone market. KCC has also lifted

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American Express Company (AXP) said on Wednesday that it will acquire Internet payment platform Revolution Money for about $300 million.  The deal is expected to close in early 2010. Following the closure of the deal, Revolution Money would operate as a subsidiary of AmEx. The founder and chief executive of Revolution Money, Jason Hogg, will continue as president and chief executive.  St. Petersburg-based Revolution Money was founded by AOL co-founder Steve Case’s Revolution LLC in 2007. Revolution Money provides payments through an internet-based platform and issues prepaid cards that can be used for offline payments or to withdraw cash from ATMs in the U.S. Additionally, Revolution Money offers MoneyExchange, a service to remit money by people using social and instant messaging networks.  According to AmEx management, this acquisition would keep AmEx at the cutting edge in terms of new payments products and platforms. The company ...

If You Thought the Housing Meltdown Was Bad… Doug Hornig, Senior Editor, (Casey Research):

…wait until you see what’s in the cards for commercial real estate.

That’s right, the next train wreck will be in commercial real estate. Couldn’t be worse than last year’s residential market crash? That remains to be seen. But it’s coming soon, probably as early as the second quarter of next year, and there’s nothing that can prevent it. The government will intervene, trying desperately to delay the day of reckoning, and may even succeed. For a while. But make no mistake about it, that train is going off the tracks no matter what.

Every part of the sector – from multifamily apartment buildings to retail shopping centers, suburban office buildings, industrial facilities, and hotels – has accumulated a huge amount of defaulted or nonperforming paper. It’s an impossible, swaying structure that cannot long stand.

Just ask Andy Miller.

Andy

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One company that is starting to gain recognition is Valley Forge Composite Technologies, Inc. With their headquarters in Covington, Kentucky, the Valley Forge has become a leader in Counter-Terrorism technology and has started to made major progress in the sales of their Momentum Wheel Products.

Within these lines of products, Valley Forge is a manufacturer and marketer of breakthrough cargo/baggage and people screening technologies. The company was proud to report the fruits of their efforts with the announcement that they have received an additional order of $2,700,000 for its momentum wheel line of products.

Leading the way at Valley Forge is their CEO Lou Brothers. Brothers is a Co-Founder of the company and has more than 20 years of experience in marketing, marketing support, product management and logistics. He has extensive international business experience having worked in Europe, Russia, and Japan. Brothers is a

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World leader in the telecom information and logistics sector, Global Capacity, Inc. (GC) announced this morning the launch of a new, global tariff pricing system, GCPrice.

GCPrice will give direct access to GC’s massive database of prices and logistical information, allowing customers to scope and range telecom tariffs for Leased Line and Ethernet services in a real-time, high fidelity data environment. This database represents 75 carriers in 67 different countries, inputting over 5,000 discrete tariffs. With geographic and telecom location data points in excess of 10 million, this database represents the most comprehensive quotation development and point-of-sale information aggregating resource available online, capable of generating detailed reports for GC’s customers.

GC has a great deal of experience crafting integrated supply chain management systems and managing complex distributed data architectures, and offers its customers a one-stop-shop approach to telecom information and logistics. This Chicago, IL- based company has operating centers worldwide to

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Are You Laughing or Crying About the Markets?

There’s no question about it, the markets can be very difficult at times. On the other hand, you can laugh all the way to the bank if you approach the markets in a systematic way.

I was looking once again at the S&P 500 and many people have said the market has gone up, not on the fundamentals, but on the perception that things are going to be better. Perception is one of the most powerful elements of the market. I would say that perception trumps both the fundamental and technical.

So what’s going to happen to the S&P 500? Is it going to continue going higher for the rest of the year, or are we close to a turning point?

In my new short video, I outline several key areas

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The Nevada Company Ormat Technologies announced that Ormat Subsidiaries Ltd., its Israeli subsidiary, entered into a Joint Venture Agreement (JVA) with Sunday Energy Ltd. Sunday is a private Israeli energy company and the agreement will be to construct and operate solar-photovoltaic energy systems with a total capacity of 36 MW throughout Israel.

According to the JVA, Ormat will now own 70% of each special purpose entity (SPE) with Sunday contributing the rights to all of its property and roofs required to develop solar energy systems above 1 MW to SPE’s.

The agreement between Ormat and Sunday will have major effects throughout the industry. Sunday is a leading developer in the Israeli PV market while Ormat has over four decades of experience in the development, construction, financing and operation of hundreds of megawatts of renewable energy projects worldwide.

The estimated capital expenditure for 36 MW of solar power systems is

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The big question is if crude oil is headed higher, how much of a price increase can the US economy afford and withstand?

Here is a raw commodity that is used by everyone and the US has no control over it. This key commodity to commerce just happens to be in areas that are hostile to the US. If we see a hiccup in the supply chain that changes this market dynamic, even for a short time period, we could see oil move back to the $100/barrel range in a heartbeat.

How will this affect the US equity markets? If crude oil heads back to the $95-$100 range, I expect that the economy will take a hit and that will send the major indices south. In this short video, which I made a few days ago, I share with you

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This is Part 2 of a guest contribution by David Kotok* and Bob Eisenbeis** of Cumberland Advisors. (Click here for Part 1.)

Note to Readers:  This is the second of our two-part commentary on the Fed’s exit strategy and the role the Fed has played in complicating its own operating strategies and ability to conduct monetary policy.

In their Wall St. Journal op-ed entitled “The BLOB That Ate Monetary Policy” (September 27, 2009), the Dallas Fed’s Fisher and Rosenblum use the movie metaphor of the BLOB to describe the “too big to fail” banks.  They argue that these BLOBs stood in the way of the Fed’s monetary policy’s low interest rates and thereby “gummed up” the “monetary policy channel,” which would otherwise be able to stimulate economic activity.

The op-ed doesn’t name names.  But we will.  If you examine the list of the Fed’s primary

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U.S. District Judge Denny Chin has given Google Inc. (GOOG), the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers until Nov 9 to submit a fresh proposal to address the concerns put forward by the Justice Department.   The original agreement for $125 million was announced in October last year in response to separate lawsuits filed by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.   The Justice Department has said that the agreement raises legal concerns with respect to antitrust law, reduces competition among publishers (if Google gets exclusive rights) and opens the door to price escalation as a result of Google’s monopoly.   The Judge did not set a deadline for objections after the new agreement was tendered. However, he stated that only objections related to the changes made in the new agreement would be considered, as the previous agreement had already been considered and ...