Dreams, Inc., a leader in licensed sports products, has reported a web syndication deal with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, one of the nation’s highest circulation newspapers. The new agreement will provide Dreams another outlet for licensed sports products and provide their new media partner with an additional stream of income. Dreams has previously obtained other major media/newspaper clients including USA Today, the Baltimore Sun and the Boston Globe.

In the new agreement Dreams will provide the design, development, marketing, customer service and fulfillment of an online Fan Shop for their new media partner. The merchandise offered includes a selection of more than 120,000 team products in a variety of categories including apparel, novelties, collectibles, home and office. Dreams will also provide the media outlet with sophisticated Search Engine Optimization (SEO), targeted database marketing, customer service and same day turnaround for shipping products.

Kevin Bates, Dreams’ Retail President and FansEdge Founder, commented on the

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If you want to do well in today’s market, ignore this rally. Pay all your attention instead to the only class of companies you need to know about. I call these companies the “best of breed.”  They’re probably the least-talked about companies in the market. Many investors are missing the boat. And that’s a shame.

This has been a tough quarter for companies. Compared to last year’s second quarter, profit is down roughly 31 percent and revenue is down even more. Wall Street thought it was going to be even worse. So in one of the worst quarters ever, the market has rallied.

Investors learn all the wrong lessons from a rally like this. Nothing about it makes sense. The smallest companies are outgunning the biggest one. The most heavily shorted stocks are doing better than the least shorted stocks. The companies with the worst analyst ratings are outshining the ones with

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From the Independent's Shaun Walker, via HuffPo:In the past year he's been painting pictures, singing songs, and demonstrating his expert judo moves. This week Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will complete a clean sweep of the artistic disciplines after turning his hand to writing. Mr Putin's first ever column for a Russian media outlet will be published on Friday, entitled "Why it's hard to fire people".  (...)"Conflicts within a team, especially within a big team, always arise," writes Mr Putin, in extracts leaked to a Russian news agency. "This happens every minute, every second - simply because between people there are always clashes of interest." Can't wait to read that one tomorrow.  It's very kind of the Prime Minister to share his experience and advice on how to handle firings, given that most Russian companies are going to do quite a lot of them ...

Both gold and silver rose in Sunday evening trading on the Globex [counterparty...Western Pacific Ocean]. The peak prices in Far East trading occurred around lunchtime in Hong Kong. From there, both metals drifted slightly lower…and remained there all through European trading until the Comex open in New York…then away they both went.

Gold managed a $10 rally before some not-for-profit seller showed up at 9:15 a.m. Eastern time. Once the London p.m. gold fix was in, gold rallied again…making it a hair above $900 for a few seconds…before some other [probably the same] not-for-profit seller showed up. From there it got sold off into the close.

Silver’s 8:00 a.m. rally on the Comex was like a moon shot…and heaven only knows how high the price would have gone [certainly north of $13] if the same not-for-profit seller hadn’t showed up at exactly the same 9:15 a.m. time. Silver got sold off a

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From David Remnick's long, very long, article in the new New Yorker about Echo Moskvy and editor in chief Alexei Venediktov, we get an inside look into Russia's most interesting and unique media outlet, which some have described as the country's last remaining "pressure release valve" (it is indeed 60% owned by Gazprom). See also more about Venediktov's strange experience in front of Vladimir Putin over here. My only complaint about this interesting article is that Remnick makes Yevgenia Albats sound like a nutcase, which is unfair and inaccurate - at least she understands why the Kremlin still allows Echo to continue existing... At the meeting in Sochi, Putin turned his attention—and his icy glare—to Aleksei Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow, criticizing the station for its broadcasts about Georgia. Many of the loyalist editors in the room were delighted as they watched Putin rough ...

Sohu.com Inc.(SOHU) set a 52-week high after being featured on May 1st as a Zacks Rank Buy. The Chinese web site offers a variety of online services and still carries a Zacks Rank of #1.

A 46% Earnings Surprise

On July 28th the company reported second-quarter earnings of $1.02 per share, 46% higher than the consensus estimate of 70 cents. This was the fourth earnings surprise in the last four quarters. Sohu reported second-quarter revenue of $102 million, an all-time high for the company.

The consensus estimate for full-year 2008 and 2009 earnings are both up over 30% within the past two months. The company is reasonably priced with a PEG ratio of .5.

The Chart

Shares of SOHU had been volatile earlier this summer after setting a 52-week high of $91.50. The stock has come off of the

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TiVo, Inc (TIVO) has announced its fourth earnings surprise in the last four quarters. The company has also recently entered into several very promising partnerships with a prominent online retailer, cable companies, and a respected media outlet.

Company Description

TiVo, Inc. is an innovative home entertainment company that first developed the digital video recorder(DVR). The company has changed the way millions of viewers watch TV and has spurred an advertising revolution as viewers fast forward through conventional 30-second spots.

The company was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Alviso, California. It employs approximately 500 full-time employees and has a market cap of nearly $860 million.

A Solid Second Quarter

TiVo reported second-quarter fiscal year 2009 earnings of 3 cents per share on August 27th. The street was expecting a loss of 2 cents, which made this the fourth earnings

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We unveiled one of our favorite 4PM pastimes back in April: called The Correlation Game, the steps are simple:

Step One: Point your browser at Yahoo Finance, Marketwatch, or whatever mainstream financial media portal suits your fancy. Step Two: Scan the top headline, which is typically of the form, “Markets move x on news that y.”  If the headline includes a dubious assumption or inference about causation, take a drink. Step Three: the next player moves to the next headline and/or media outlet, and repeats step two. The last player to fall over or to refuse to believe that some shots fired in the air in the Niger delta have any intrinsic relationship whatsoever to the price of West Texas Intermediate Crude, wins.

Let it be noted for the record that this is not a game to be played every day.  Why?  Well,

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