At an event in San Jose, Mr. Larry Ellison, the Chief Executive and Chairman of Oracle Corp. (ORCL), the largest software company said that its proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc. (JAVA) for $7.4 billion ($9.50 a share) has been slowed by an ongoing antitrust review in Europe and the company is still waiting for clearance by the European Commission. The delay in approval from the regulatory body is causing Sun Micro to lose about $100 million each month. The major issue lingers on Oracle's potential acquisition of Sun's MySQL – an open-source database software which overlaps Oracle’s own database software. This could smother competition in the database software industry. However, Mr. Ellison said the deal is expected to be cleared by European regulators, despite the delay. It still remains unclear how long the European approval would take. While it is being speculated that Oracle ...

When it comes to healthcare reform, people believe some very strange things. Or so says Cliff Asness, founder of AQR Capital Management. Today, the seven biggest “myths” are exposed…

My little brother and his fiancée dropped into Reno/Tahoe for the weekend. They were wending their way west to go apartment hunting in San Francisco, visiting friends and family along the way.

On Saturday we took a two-hour catamaran cruise up at the lake. It was as perfect a day as I’d ever seen it. The water was so clear and blue, you could see 30 feet down through the netting of the boat. The sky was just as blue – not a cloud to be seen – and the day was just hot enough to be perfected by a crisp Tahoe breeze.

At one point in the cruise we sailed past the “Ellison project”

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Some of China’s stockpiling may well have been due to speculative excess, rather than any rational plan on the ground. That realization played a role in the market carnage seen this week.

As Grant’s Interest Rate Observer has been known to say, “We wrote it. Did you read it?”

My slim hope is that the Chinese really and truly know what they are doing, because, in fueling investor optimism with such flair, they are playing a high stakes game. My worry is that they drop the ball, somehow, and the result shows up as a violent wake-up call for “high beta” assets… emerging market equities, energy, commodities and the like.

What happens next is far from clear. The huge [commodity] stockpiles could continue to grow at a breathtaking pace – after all, Beijing has plenty of greenbacks to work

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Cloud computing has been the buzz word the last couple years in IT, making many believe it is a fad. The vast majority of the investing population does not understand what cloud computing is, what it can do, and how it is changing the current framework of computing and the large corporate data centers that have become the nerve center of business. I want to shed some light on this computing model and offer some ideas for those looking to invest into this IT hotspot.

What is Cloud Computing?

The concept of cloud computing is nothing new and has been turned into the “cool” word amongst IT companies. This was evident late last year when Oracle [ORCL: 18.99, 0.00 (0.00%)] CEO Larry Ellison, ridiculed this new fad that has swept IT investors, analysts and users worldwide. The idea of cloud computing has been in

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Insider Buying: The Best Buy Signal You Can Get

by Alexander Wissel, Editor in Chief, Investment U

Did you miss the perfect insider buying opportunity? You might have.

Over the past two months stocks have climbed almost 40%. After hitting historical lows - and being completely oversold - the markets have been clawing their way back up, week by week.

And even with the ugliness caused by the release of the banking stress tests last week, it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing values plunge. There’s simply too much money sitting on the sidelines, and it’s slowly creeping back in.

Since 1987 the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) has conducted a monthly survey on how we allocate our money between stocks, bonds and cash. And per the most recent survey, the percent of direct investments in individual stocks is at an all-time low of 17%, nearly half the

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Top Stories     

Businesses worry U.S. money to bring rules, regulations Companies in the U.S. are concerned that the government’s push for improved accountability and transparency in stimulus spending will bring with it additional rules and regulations, a study by auditing and consulting firm Deloitte found. Of the executives responding, 58% said they do not think it is possible to make a link between stimulus spending improved transparency. Reuters (20 Apr.)

Watchdog: Chrysler rejected loan to dodge executive-pay rules: The U.S. Treasury’s special inspector general for the bailout of Chrysler and General Motors said Chrysler Financial, which loans to Chrysler dealers and car buyers, turned down a $750 million federal loan to avoid limits on executive pay. Chrysler Financial said in a ...

After a day of high spirits at Red Hat Inc. (RHT), shares dipped more than 5% this morning as analysts said rumors of Oracle Corp. (ORCL) bidding for the biggest seller of Linux was not likely to bear fruit anytime soon.

Investors have long speculated that the Redwood City, California-based Oracle would buy Red Hat. After rapid growth of Linux in corporate computing, Oracle launched its own version of the product in 2006. But Oracle did not succeed in providing strong support on the operating-system software. While buying Red Hat would definitely win Oracle more market share in the business, analysts say the deal does not seem practical at the moment.

Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison has indicated that he would look for high-value acquisitions at a discount in the current downturn. However, Oracle has just announced its first-ever dividend. It would also be keenly watching

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Shares of Oracle Corp. (ORCL) jumped more than 12%, a day after the software giant reported quarterly earnings that topped market expectations and said it would pay its first-ever dividend.

In the third quarter, ended Feb. 28, the Redwood City, California-based company earned 34 cents per share, excluding special items, which beat the consensus estimate of 31 cents.

Chief Executive Larry Ellison said the quarterly results were a "tremendous achievement in the face of the serious slowdown in the world economy."

However, the real surprise for investors was the announcement that Oracle would pay a quarterly dividend of 5 cents a share for the first time since it went public in March 1986.

While most companies have slashed their payouts to shore up cash in a deepening recession, Oracle's performance reinstated shareholder confidence in the company's resilience to the recession.

Oracle stock, which has shed 10% in the

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Cash Rich in a Cruddy Economy: The Perfect Storm for Technology Takeovers

The Takeover Trader Email – #262
By Louis Basenese

As the market plumb’s new depths, we have two choices. Either pack it in. Or keep hunting for opportunities. As you probably guessed, I’m opting for the latter. And for good reason…

Prices for most stocks – particularly small technology firms – are down significantly, below cash in many instances. Yet the titans of the industry – Oracle, Cisco, and Microsoft – are sitting cash heavy with $29.5 billion, $20.7 billion and $10.6 billion, respectively.

Like a proverbial kid in a candy store with a five-dollar bill, don’t expect it to last very long…

In the past year, Oracle made more than a few impulse buys, scooping up 10 smaller firms for a combined $750 million. And CEO Larry Ellison is an unashamed takeover addict, not interested

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It's time to start doing your gift shopping. Here are some great investment, finance, and stock market books to give your friends and relatives. These are in no particular order other than the approximate order that I wrote about them, within the categories. You can click on the title of each book to get more info about them. And if you aren't sure what books are right for gifts, how about an a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00067L6TQ/ref=nosim/?%5Fencoding=UTF8tag=antiquestocka-20linkCode=ur2camp=1789creative=9325"Amazon Gift Certificate/aimg src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=antiquestocka-20amp;l=ur2amp;o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /.br /br / center span style="font-weight:bold;"Fiction/span /centerbr /br /a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804119120?ie=UTF8tag=antiquestocka-20linkCode=as2camp=1789creative=9325creativeASIN=0804119120"A Conspiracy of Paper/aimg src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=antiquestocka-20l=as2o=1a=0804119120" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" / by David Lissbr /br /a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FDay-Trader-Stephen-Frey%2Fdp%2F034544325X%2Ftag=antiquestocka-20linkCode=ur2camp=1789creative=9325"The Day Trader/aimg src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=antiquestocka-20amp;l=ur2amp;o=1" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" / by Stephen Freybr /br /a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSet-Up-Paul-Erdman%2Fdp%2F0312968051%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1194850092%26sr%3D1-1tag=antiquestocka-20linkCode=ur2camp=1789creative=9325" The Set-Up/aimg ...