BREAKING NEWS: CBS To Buy CNET & Other News
7:45 AM THURSDAY– Breaking news just minutes ago on CNBC: CBS is going to buy CNET for $11.50 per share or $1.8 billion. I have to say I am so-so-soooo jealous of anyone who bought CNET before its close yesterday…
MarketWatch posted a correction on a former story by pointing out that Hewlett Packard will actually report their final results for the fiscal second quarter on May 20. Meanwhile, they are highlighting the projected first-quarter earnings of Blackstone, Nordstrom and Blockbuster.
In other news the Wall Street Journal is reporting that General Electric, the parent company of CNBC, is putting its appliances business up for sale, which is estimated to fetch between $5 to $8 billion. According to the story, this is all part of a strategy by GE’s CEO to concentrate his company’s focus more towards higher-growth technology operations.
A longtime personal complaint of mine has been analysts’ hesitation to slap a flat-out “sell” on a stock. To that end, I was pleased to read a NY Times story this morning indicating Merrill Lynch has told all its analysts that starting in June they must assign “underperform” ratings to one out of every five stocks they cover. In my opinion, this is long overdue, and here’s hoping others — such as Goldman’s — implements similar requirements of their analysts. I’m tempering my comments right now, because I could easily go off on a long diatribe on how extensive analysts’ research really goes… but I’ll save that opinion for another day.
Stock on my radar screen today: Chevron — On just a first quick look it appears to be almost debt-free, appears there’s some healthy buying-back going on, and has a good P/E currently at 10.79. I’ll have to do some good ol’ due-diligence on this one.
Set your TiVo’s Sidenote: On Friday at 9 p.m. CNBC will air BoomerAngst, which looks promising with Suze Orman and Jim Cramer teaming up for this special.
(REMINDER: Don’t base any investment decisions on anything in my little blog ramblings — do your own due diligence — or hire a professional to do it for you.)
