Online Trading News

Yahoo’s (Nasdaq:YHOO) main page has been down selectively from 8:30pm to 9:40pm today. Other users reported Yahoo.com and Yahoo Publisher Network YPN have been slow throughout the day as well. While this may be nothing, it could possibly be a sign that Yahoo is making changes to its sites. For a company with revenues this large this is significant news. Last year Yahoo had $5.2 billion in revenue if that revenue was truely based on Yahoo’s network of sites being up 10 minutes of being down amounts to about $10,000 in lost revenue. In the wake of news that Google has been making huge capital investments, it may be possibly that Yahoo has been doing the same and today was a necessary step in the process to make things run better in the future.

However the fact that it happened during peek surfing hours suggests it is just as likely that Yahoo has not been keeping up with demand for bandwidth. If this is true the site may see much slower loading time in the future. YPN has thousands of webmasters displaying Yahoo ads on their sights. When these ads load slowly the webmasters are likely to switch to competitive ads, the most popular competitor being Google’s Adsense program.

Iran announced today that the country will begin rationing oil.  The stated reason for this was because of budgeting constraints.  However Iran’s oil capacity has been hard to estimate in the past and it is possible that the country is simply trying to manipulate oil prices or is actually depleting its reserves.

Both Kerr-McGee (NYSE:KMG) and Western Gas Resources (NYSE:WGR) had stock rallys upon recieving the news.  Shares of Kerr-McGee jumped 36.24% to $68.54 and Western Gas’s stock gained 46.00% to $59.74.  Both companies are heavily into oil production.  Western Gas is invloved in the natural and liquid oil process from exploration, drilling, treatment to transportation.  Kerr-McGee produces oil and natural gas as well and also produces industrial chemicals which require the production of heavy minerals as well as forest products.

Oracle (Nasdaq:ORCL), a company with a stock price that has been stagnant for years has some big news. The company’s recent strategy to acquire its competitors has proven dominant. For the quarter ending may 31st, Oracle’s profits grew 27% from last year to $1.3 billion. The company reported increased revenues across the board. The largest growth came from business applications which grew at an almost insane $83% to $641 million from last year’s $350 million.

The news came after Oracle closed trading for the day. Previously Oracle had estimated earnings would be around this figure, which is most likely why traders downgraded Oracle’s stock price a very un-oracle-like -1.38% to $14.33. Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison expressed that he believed continued acquisitions had potential to keep the company growing 20% per year.

European telecom giants Nokia(NYSE:NOK) and Siemens(NYSE:SI) have planned a merger to create a new company evenly owned by the companies. The board of the new company will be controlled by Nokia, most likely by the majority of Nokia’s board and some of Siemens’ board. The reason for the merger has been credited to research and developement. The two companies recognized that they are repeated a huge amount of the same R&D. The research savings from this merger is estimated to be above $1.5 billion per year. The merger will also help the companies compete with the recent merger between Alcatel(NYSE:ALA) and Lucent(NYSE:LU). Nokia also has large cash reserves that may lead to future acquisitions, or other changes in control of companies.

In anticipation of the event Circuit City’s share price has increased from about $27.5 a share on Monday to $29.5 on Friday.  Earnings estimates range from $.04 to -$.01 per share, with the average at $.01.  Circuit CIty has has outperformed estimates the last three quarters.  This season, Circuit City’s weakest, is likely to be a big change from last years first quarter which resulted in a -$.07 per share loss.

Shares of Finisar (Nasdaq:FNSR) tumbled 24.83% after lower than expected earnings. The company, which just recently became profitable had surprised analysts with earnings of $.03 per share compared with expected earnings of $0.00 per share in the quarter ending Jan 1, 2006. The most recent quarter lost some momentum with earnings coming in at $.01 per share.

Share of Revlon (NYSE:REV) dropped an astonishing 37.50% upon announcing weaker than predicted sales. The change in price decreased the value of the company by approximatly half a billion dollars. Other companies, such as Avon, Estee Lauder, and Procter & Gamble saw declines in their share prices as well do to the fact that the cosmetic industry appears to be oversaturated. Revlon has lost money over the past three years and it appears that this will continue unless the company can execute its original plan to drastically cut costs and introduce new products to spur growth.

Encysive Pharmaceuticals Inc. (nasdaq:ENCY) and Gtc Biotherapeutics Inc. (nasdaq:GTCB) both posted large gains for the day. Encysive received news that it’s drug Thelin will be approved by the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products, or EMEA. Thelin has big potential because of its ability to successfully treat pulmonary arterial hypertension, by helpoing maintain proper vascular contraction. Shares of Encysive increased 37% to $5.89 in trading in response to the news.

GTC’s stock price increased an astounding 77% to $1.74 upon recieving similar news. GTC’s drug, ATryn(R) also recieved a positive opinion from EMEA. ATryn(R) will be the first antithrombin (anticoagulant and anti-inflammatory) in use across the European Union.