You ready for a good ol’ 1960s rock n’ roll flashback, courtesy of four lads from Liverpool?

Amid a buzz of publicity, yesterday was the day that many Beatles fans had eagerly waited for, with the release of a new video game in the band’s name – “The Beatles: Rock Band.”

If you’re not familiar with the “Rock Band” concept, it’s a bit like karaoke, except you play music in addition to singing. Gamers follow along with their favorite musicians/songs, using an electronic drum kit and guitar, and sing the songs, too.

The game is enormously popular, having generated over $1 billion in revenue. And gamers can download individual songs, albums, or catalogs of groups like AC/DC, The Who and The Grateful Dead. So far, they’ve paid for and downloaded over 40 million songs…

Both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were part of the creative process and have endorsed the game in the

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A New Wave of “Beatle Mania”… Four Ways to Profit From The Beatles: Rock Band

by Marc Lichtenfeld, Advisory Panelist

You ready for a good ol’ 1960s rock n’ roll flashback, courtesy of four lads from Liverpool?

Amid a buzz of publicity, yesterday was the day that many Beatles fans had eagerly waited for, with the release of a new video game in the band’s name – “The Beatles: Rock Band.”

If you’re not familiar with the “Rock Band” concept, it’s a bit like karaoke, except you play music in addition to singing. Gamers follow along with their favorite musicians/songs, using an electronic drum kit and guitar, and sing the songs, too.

The game is enormously popular, having generated over $1 billion in revenue. And gamers can download individual songs, albums, or catalogs of groups like AC/DC, The Who and The Grateful

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – September 2, 2009 – Zacks Equity Research highlights Amdocs (DOX) as the Bull of the Day and GameStop (GME) the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Merck (MRK), Schering-Plough (SGP) and Citigroup Inc. (C).

Full analysis of all these stocks is available at http://at.zacks.com/?id=2676

Here is a synopsis of all five stocks:

Bull of the Day:

We maintain our Outperform recommendation for Amdocs (DOX) following its strong results for the fiscal third quarter of fiscal 2009. The company has industry-leading technology integration products for large transformational projects and managed services.

Long-term fundamentals for Amdocs remain firm due to the transition of telecom service providers to converged and consolidated solutions. Amdocs maintains a very strong financial position with healthy order backlog.

Recently, the company has won a series of large

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The video game industry, which surged ahead for a number of years, is now grappling with the recession. Heavy job losses and reduced access to credit markets have led to lower discretionary spending.

This has resulted in lower demand for video game consoles and new software. This unfavorable backdrop was evident from GameStop's (GME) dismal recent results. Despite the weak environment, management expects the release of popular titles in the second half of 2009 to stimulate sales.

We maintain an Underperform rating on the stock until we see an upturn in the company's growth trajectory. Zacks Investment Research

div style="text-align: justify;"Goldman Sachs is upgrading span style="font-weight: bold;"GameStop (NYSE:GME) /spanto Conviction Buy from Neutral this morning with a $28 price target.br /br /Firm believes valuation has fallen below their industry growth framework, and earnings expectations, for a long time aggressive, are now beatable, in their view. Also, they see a powerful cash flow story emerging as GME nears paying off its remaining debt and could turn to buying back shares. Lastly, they see secular concerns around the business as overblown; digital downloading is not an existential threat as current console games are too big to download, and the Used business has significant barriers to entry; GME should continue to dominate that market. Goldman's $28 price target suggests 19% upside.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Catalyst/spanbr /After two quarters of downward earnings revisions Goldman now has forecasts above the Street. Beginning with 3Q09, where they are 3c above consensus, they expect the ...

The global markets are beginning to diverge. As the economy rebounds, the winners are separating from the losers. So far, Gravity (NASDAQ:GRVY) appears to be on the winning team.

The investment world is splitting in half. Now, more than anytime in the last 18 months, the winners are diverging from the losers. No more does a single macroeconomic event steer the markets.

We are back to individual fundamentals and microeconomic themes. That means it is a stock-picker’s market.

Perfect evidence of this phenomenon comes from two companies with similar product offerings but widely divergent business models, GameStop (NYSE:GME) and Gravity (NASDAQ:GRVY).

Shares of GameStop are down by over 5% so far today as the Street digests the firm’s latest earnings figures.

With wary consumers unwilling to open their wallets, especially on non-essential items like video games, the company’s top line shrunk by 3.7% over the past three months.

The

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A sharp rebound in Chinese shares helped erase yesterday’s slump and sent Asian stocks sharply higher Thursday, a day after Shanghai’s big fall ignited fears of a Chinese stock collapse and triggered a selling spree around the world.  Asian markets also drew comfort from an overnight recovery on Wall Street after a surprise drop in U.S. crude stockpiles lifted hopes for an economic recovery and sent investors back on the buying table.

Shanghai's main index jumped 126 points, or 4.5%, to 2,911.58, while Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average climbed 179.41 points, or 1.8%, to 10,383.41.  Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 374.63, or 2%, to 20,336.36.  South Korea’s Kospi advanced 2% to 1,576.39.

Stock futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street Thursday.  Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 24, or 0.3%, to 9,300. Standard & Poor's 500 index futures edged up 3.70, or 0.4%, to 1,000.80, while Nasdaq

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Through the middle of June, the S&P Retail Index (RLX) is sitting on gains of about 13% year-to-date. The strong relative performance of retailing stocks thus far has been due to low expectations coming into 2009, "less bad" sales declines and cost cutting efforts. This combination allowed retailers to easily beat first quarter earnings estimates.Going forward, however, retailers are going to have a harder time beating estimates because expectations have climbed higher, while "less bad" results and cost cuts are already reflected in analyst estimates. Moreover, for the retailers to deliver better-than-expected results in the months ahead, the upside will have to come from an improvement in sales growth. This is unlikely because there are simply too many headwinds for the consumer to overcome.These headwinds include wealth destruction from the housing and equity markets and higher unemployment, which has reduced discretionary income. Additionally, financial institutions ...

No surprise: video game sales were weak again in May. According to the NPD Group, May 2009 video game sales came in at $863.3 million, down 23% from May 2008. Software sales were down 17% to $448.9 million. Hardware sales dropped 30% to $302.5 million. Accessories were down 25% to $112,000.May, which is typically the weakest month of the year for video games, marked the third straight month of sales declines. Year-to-date, video game sales are tracking 7% below the first five months of 2008.Sales were soft across the board due to the lackluster release schedule and difficult economic conditions. Still, there were a couple of bright spots: THQ's (THQI) UFC 2009 Undisputed sold over 1 million units on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles, and the Wii Fit w/ Balance Board and EA Sports Active Bundle (both for the Wii) ...

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL - June 1, 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: GameStop (GME), Sony (SNE), AutoZone, Inc. (AZO), Esterline Technologies (ESL) and Westell (WSTL).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=4579.

Here are highlights from Friday's Analyst Blog:

GameStop CFO: GME a Bargain

According to an SEC filing dated May 27, GameStop (GME) CFO David Carlson purchased 25,000 GameStop shares for $562,000, which comes out to an average price of $22.48. Mr. Carlson now owns a total of 194,828 GameStop shares.

That is a

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