Companies featured in this edition of the newsletter: ACTC, CHIP, CVM, DKAM, ENZ, IWEB, MBCI, MFGD, PHC

Markets rebounded last week, on the strength of upbeat productivity and manufacturing reports that led to solid gains in all of the major indices. Despite news that the unemployment rate had hit its highest levels in 25 years, the Dow managed to end the week up 310 points, gaining 3.2% on the week to close at 10,023, up 14.2% on the year. The Nasdaq posted a gain of 3.3%, closing at 2112 and extending its yearly gains to 34%, while the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 advanced 3.2% and 3.1% respectively on the week to bring their YTD performance to 18.4% and 16.2%.

Several better than expected economic reports provided buying incentive throughout much of the week, as investors managed to shake off the previous week’s negative bias to send indices into positive territory

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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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Note: piece was available to subscribers 9/17. Tradingipos.com is currently long VITC at an avg price of $11.40 VITC - Vitacost.com plans on offering 11 million shares at a range of $11-$13. Insiders will be selling 6.6 million shares in the offering. If the over-allotments are exercised the deal size will be 12.6 million shares offered with insiders selling 7.6 million shares. Jefferies and Oppenheimer are leading the deal with Needham and Roth Capital co-managing. Post-ipo VITC will have 2 ..

Jefferies is out with an interesting call on Palm (NASDAQ:PALM) saying we could see a bidding war for Palm, could garner c.80% premium. Nokia (NYSE:NOK) mentioned as the main bidder. Strategic rationale: WebOS as carrot - Palm gives buyer a PC-class OS (WebOS; Linux-based, multi-tasking) and a US-centric high-end handset (Palm Pre) that best mimics iPhone experience (UI) - courtesy of senior Apple staff defections to Palm. Nokia can't compete in US (c.6% m/share) or high-end with Symbian but with another OS (would make 4, or 5 incl MSFT in Noia Netbook) 3rd Party application development is confused to say the least. Palm would have to be run as a separate business near term; 'parallel' roadmaps may take 1yr+ to converge; it could be 2011 before we see a fully integrated WebOS and Ovi services ...

GLOBAL MARKETS-Stocks, crude surge as profits, data spur rally

Wall Street rallies on solid profits, recovery hopes

Oil jumps as economic data raises economic recovery hope

* Dollar slips as risk sentiment improves

By Herbert Lash

NEW YORK, July 30 - Global stocks rallied and oil surged more than 5 percent on Thursday as solid corporate results worldwide and encouraging economic data boosted sentiment that had turned skittish earlier in the week.

Commodity prices jumped, with the Reuters-Jefferies CRB index <.CRB> of 19 commodities rising 3.9 percent, its biggest daily gain since March, after a two-day sell-off.

And Long-dated U.S. Treasury bonds rebounded as fears about the appetite for U.S. government debt eased after robust demand for $28 billion in new seven-year notes. ID:[nN30286312]

U.S. equity gains were broad-based, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.SPX> hitting an almost nine-month intraday high that was less than 4 points below the key 1,000 mark. The S&P closed up

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2009-06-15 MDSO - Medidata Solutions MDSO - Medidata Solutions plans on offering 6.3 million shares at a range of $11-$13. All of the shares are being sold by MDSO. If the over-allotments is exercised however, insiders will be selling 945,000 shares. Citi and Credit Suisse are leading the deal, Jefferies and Needham co-managing. Post-ipo MDSO will have 22.4 million shares outstanding for a market cap of $269 million on a pricing of $12. IPO proceeds will be used to repay outstanding debt and ..

div style="text-align: justify;"Jefferies is out with a major negative call onspan style="font-weight: bold;" Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN) /spandowngrading the shares to Underperform from Hold and lowering their target to $6.75 (prev. $8).br /br /The analyst notes that in recent days, they have been doing checks on Infinera's business with Level 3.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"HAS HUAWEI BROKEN INTO LEVEL 3?/span Firm's recent checks with industry contacts suggest that Level 3 has been running a long haul WDM RFP process. Moreover, their checks are indicating that Huawei has won the business. Obviously, this has negative implications for Infinera. The equipment vendor is the sole supplier of long haul WDM gear to Level 3. The carrier accounted for 24% of Infinera's revenue over the past year.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"WORST CASE FOR INFINERA: THEY LOSE THE BUSINESS OUTRIGHT./span In a worst case scenario, they expect Infinera – over time – to lose roughly ...

div style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-weight: bold;"Brigham Exploration (NASDAQ:BEXP)/span is getting very positive comments this morning after the co last night issued an operations update and announced that the Strobeck 27-34 #1H well came online with an initial rate of 2,021 boe/d from the Three Forks/Sanish (TFS) zone:br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"- Jefferies /spannotes the first of three wells scheduled for completion this summer achieved a new record for BEXP ... it is also the second highest Three Forks Sanish (TFS) test in N Dakota. The Strobeck 27-34 (63% NRI; Mountrail County) flowed 2,021 boepd during the first 24 hours from the TFS. BEXP's prior record was 1,433 boepd from the Bakken. The highest report TFS test is XTO's (XTO, $35.85, Buy) Boucher 41X-21 well in Williams County at 2,571 boepd.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Demonstrates that longer laterals, more frac stages is working ... /spanthe Strobeck is 3 miles away from BEXP's ...

Gold was flat until the mid-point of the Hong Kong session on Monday, fell steadily from there to a low of $920 in the second hour of Comex trading, then rallied modestly through the rest of the day to regain a little lost ground and finish at $924.90/oz., down $3.90 from Thursday. Overnight, gold is slightly higher. Platinum plummeted from the far East to the New York open, then traded rangebound between $1140 and $1150 through the day, ending at $1144/oz., down $39. Overnight, platinum has been flat.

Silver plunged from its $13.40 peak in Hong Kong to as low as $12.98 in New York’s first hour, then staged a powerful comeback to the noon hour that left it just short of break-even, before flattening out the rest of the day and closing at $13.25/oz., down just 10 cents. Overnight, silver is unchanged. (Click here for charts)

Precious

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div style="text-align: justify;"span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"span class="" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_JustifyFull" title="Justify Full" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 13);ButtonMouseDown(this);"img src="http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif" alt="Justify Full" class="gl_align_full" border="0" //span/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;"Biogen-Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB)/span is getting some cautious commentary after the co reported another case of PML in Ex-U.S.,confirmed June 23, 2009. This is the 10th confirmed PML case since Tysabri was relaunched in July 2006. This patient had received 30 doses of Tysabri therapy.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"- Deutsche Bank is downgrading BIIB shares from Buy to Hold/span, as they believe the shares are now fairly valued. Firm notes that when they upgraded, they argued that at about $42/ share BIIB shares were pricing in an overly pessimistic Tysabri scenario (i.e. that it would decline dramatically or even be pulled from the market). Tysabri, however, continued to grow. In their opinion, the stock is now pricing in reasonable Tysabri expectations and no longer warrants being one ...