U.S. stocks stayed above the threshold reached yesterday as a late-session buying helped offset weakness in banking and technology shares.  Financials dragged on stocks through the early afternoon even as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup reported better-than-expected profit reports.   However, the final fifteen minutes witnessed much of the activity as higher oil prices sent energy stocks higher and, in turn, helped the broader market.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed above the 10,000 level for the second-successive day, edging up 47 points, or 0.5%.  The S&P 500 index edged up 4 points, or 0.4% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite ended the day virtually flat.  The gains in the Dow average were led by Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) whose shares jumped 2.9%.  The Windows 7 is slated for release on October 22.

Among energy stocks, Chevron (NYSE:CVX) and ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) shares climbed 1.6% and 1.5%, respectively, as crude prices jumped to their highest

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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 ...

As traditional print media continues its steep declines in advertising sales and circulation, publishers are struggling to come up with new and creative ways to generate revenue.

Ad revenues in the newspaper industry plunged 16.7% last year to $37.8 million r, according to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). The 2009 take is estimated to fall another 17.3% to $31.6 billion according to Alan Mutter, a Silicon Valley executive who once lead the newsrooms of the Chicago Sun-Times and San Francisco Chronicle and now writes a blog titled “Reflections of a Newsosaur.”

Mutter’s estimate would put ad revenues at their lowest levels since 1965, when the industry took in $4.42 billion, or $30.22 billion when adjusted for inflation, the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) reported.

While the worst economic downturn since World War II has eviscerated the fortunes of print media companies like The New York Times Co. (NYSE:

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div style="text-align: justify;"My favourite call today comes from Cowen. They are downgrading span style="font-weight: bold;"Celgene (NASDAQ:CELG) /spanto Underperform from Neutral based on based upon concerns over 1) valuation, 2) the company’s ability to meet consensus revenue and earnings expectations and, 3) the potential for patent challenges to create an overhang on the stock. span style="font-weight: bold;"They expect CELG to underperform the market by 20%+ over the next 12 month/spanbr /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Can Revlimid Be A $5B+ Drug? /spanCelgene’s small molecule franchises have finite patent lives and its pipeline appears immature. Cowen's NPV analysis of the company’s oncology franchises suggests CELG shares are worth $45 assuming Revlimid sales reach $5B+ and the drug’s 2026 U.S. polymorph patent holds up to scrutiny. Sensitivity analyses indicate CELG might beworth between $22/share and $61/share depending on one’s assumptions for Revlimid’s peak sales potential ($2-8B) and patent life (2016-2026).br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"How Much ...

Green shoots are okay if you’re a gardener. But what if you’re an investor? Here  at Notes believe investors must realists about the markets. As we like to say: “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”

So today, we want to give you the other side of the green shoots story as told by underground investor James Dale Davidson. James is a good friend and one of the most farseeing investors we know – he’s been making money from economic collapse for over three decades. And he was one of the first to predict the current meltdown in his 1994 book,The Great Reckoning: Protecting Yourself in the Coming Depression.

We’re lucky enough to have James work with us on two paid-for investment research services, Strategic Investment and Crisis Strategy Alert. This means we’re one of the first to read James’s monthly reports on profiting in the downturn.

James has been dead

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Google, Inc. (GOOG) stepped up once again and beat the Street, posting earnings of $4.66 per share, 31 cents better than the consensus of $4.35. Revenue was also ahead of the mark, coming in at $5.52 billion against the expected $4.05 billion.

The solid performance builds on the recent trend of strong second-quarter earnings, giving the market a nice boost over the last 4 days and setting the stage for the first winning week for the major averages in the last month.

Google noted that it was able to expand its margins during the quarter, with operating income increasing to 34% of revenue from 29% last year. Paid clicks, another closely watched Google and search engine performance metric, were up 15%.

CEO Eric Schmidt also chimed in and added some bullish sentiment, saying that, "Google's business appears to have stabilized, despite the still weak economic environment."

Shares of

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Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), not satisfied owning the search engine market, yesterday (Wednesday) revealed it is going to assault Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) on the turf it has dominated for two decades: the operating system (OS).

In a blog posting, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company introduced the Google Chrome Operating System, which shares the same name as the web browser it introduced in September. Google expects the OS to be available in the second half of 2010, and it initially will run onnetbooks, or low-cost laptops designed for Internet access. The company is working with multiple manufacturers such as Acer Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and Toshiba Corp. to bring Chrome OS-backed netbooks to the market, Google said.

No. 1 computer seller H-P told the Dow Jones Newswires that it is “studying” the Chrome OS.

“We want to assess the capability it may

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US regulators are probing the hiring practices of large Silicon Valley players such as Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc. (GOOG) and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) to make sure they do not pilfer top talents from their rivals.

Google and Apple have already come under the Federal Trade Commission's scrutiny for the overlap of directors on their boards. The two companies shared Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. Again Art Levinson, the former chief of Genentech Inc. (DNA) also sat on Google's board.

However, such collusion in hiring is not uncommon in the technology sector. Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has accused Google for poaching its executives in the past. Earlier this year, IBM (IBM) sued Apple for swiping away its Vice President Mark Papermaster.

"AAPL" Free Stock Analysis: Buy? Sell? Hold?"GOOG" Free Stock Analysis: Buy? Sell? Hold?"YHOO" Free Stock Analysis: Buy? ...

Highlights include Apple, Inc. (AAPL), Google, Inc. (GOOG), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), IBM Corp. (IBM) and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. (DD).The press has reported that Apple, Inc. (AAPL) and Google, Inc. (GOOG) are under investigation on anti-trust grounds (violation of the Clayton Act) due to interlocking boards of directors. There is a very simple solution -- the directors in question (Eric Schmidt and Arthur Levinson) should resign from their questionable boards.However, Google is under fire on a number of counts, much as Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is, IBM Corp. (IBM) was years ago and Du Pont (DD) before that, merely because it has such a large market share in the eyes of the bureaucracy. It should be remembered that market dominance is not grounds for an anti-trust ruling. It is only when the company in ...

Against the backdrop of a possible launch of Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) new smartphone, federal regulators are now investigating if an overlap of directors on the boards of Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. (GOOG) breach antitrust laws.

The Silicon Valley giants share two directors on their boards, Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, and Arthur Levinson, former chief executive of Genentech Inc. (DNA). The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is examining if such connections thwart market competition in software and services.

Under federal antitrust law, "interlocking directorates" is not allowed if it decreases competition between two companies in the same sector. This law, or the Clayton act, is seldom used and difficult to enforce. The typical outcome of violation under the act would be resignation of the concerned directors from one of the boards.

While Schmidt has been on Google's

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