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  Thursday, 16 May 2013 | 1:35 PM ET

Google Seems to Drop the Ball With Its Music Play

Posted By: Chris Ciaccia | TheStreet.com Technology Reporter
Getty Images
Google senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps Sundar Pichai speaks during the opening keynote at the Google I/O developers conference at the Moscone Center on May 15, 2013 in San Francisco, California

Google's announcement of its music streaming service, Google Play Music All Access, had much fanfare going into it. After the announcement, it seems Google dropped the ball with this.

At its I/O developer conference, Google's Chris Yerga unveiled the subscription service to take on the likes of Spotify, Rdio and to a lesser extent, Pandora Media.

By pricing the service at $9.99 per month and not having an ad-supported model, Spotify, Pandora and others have little to fear. The ad-supported model has allowed Spotify to grow to over 24 million users, with over 6 million of those paying for the service. Yes, Google's "Listen Now" feature, which can suggest music to you based on your history, and allows you to combine your purchased music with the radio feed, is nice. But the short-sightedness to attack Spotify, Pandora and others where Google knows best (targeted ads), seems like a curious decision, and perhaps a mistake.

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  Friday, 17 May 2013 | 4:31 PM ET

NBC, CW Network Jump Into Amazon's TV Everywhere

Posted By: Gary Krakow, Senior Technology Correspondent
Sam Diephuis | Stone | Getty Images

The blurring of the line between what you watch on TV and what you stream over the Internet continues to get hazier. This morning, more proof that the watching of television is quickly changing.

Amazon wants to be your primary entertainment provider and toward that end, signed an exclusive deal with Comcast's NBC/Universal to stream its shows on the Seattle-based online retailer's Amazon Prime Instant Video service.

Amazon will be the only service able to stream five Universal programs from previous seasons"Suits", "Grimm", "Covert Affairs", "Smash", "Alphas," and later this year, the popular series "Hannibal."

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  Thursday, 16 May 2013 | 10:38 AM ET

Cramer: This Company Is Set for Higher Margins

Posted By:
Cramer: A Sustained Move Higher For Cisco?
CNBC's Jim Cramer takes a closer look at the tech giant's move from a hardware company to a solutions company.

Cisco's earnings report showed an important change for the company as well as the broader economy, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Thursday, and investors can expect increased margins from the networking giant.

"This was a great quarter and there was levity on the call which I like to hear," Cramer said. "A couple things (CEO John Chambers) pointed out that I thought was interesting. He said Europe has bottomed out. State and local governments in the United States, strong. Good business from AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and Comcast."

"This was one of these quarters where he basically said, 'listen, we're not a hardware company anymore, we're a solutions company.'" Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street."

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  Thursday, 16 May 2013 | 6:27 AM ET

EMC Draws Stubborn Buyers

Posted By:
Neal Hamberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Call buyers stubbornly returned to EMC yesterday, even through the cloud-computing stock has lagged the rest of the market.

Option traders looked for upside in the June contracts, snapping up almost 16,000 of the 24 calls, with the largest block priced for $0.25, according to OptionMonster's tracking systems. The volume was almost triple the strike's open interest before the session began, indicating fresh activity.

Those calls lock in the price where the stock can be bought no matter how far it might rise. They can provide some nice leveraged gains from even a small pop in the share price over the next month.


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  Wednesday, 15 May 2013 | 11:47 AM ET

Apple Should Trade at $240, Here’s Why: Analyst

Posted By:
Apple Bear Takes Swipe at Stock
David Trainer, New Constructs CEO defends his call of $240 a share for the big tech company.

Apple is trading far above where it should be trading and investors need to reevaluate how they value the stock, said David Trainer, CEO of New Constructs, a stock research firm. Apple's stock should be at $240, he said, pointing to one key metric for this expectation.

"It's a curse and blessing to have a really high return on invested capital," Trainer said. He noted that with such a high metric—which at one point hit 330 percent, dropping to 227 percent in 2012—any company would invite a large amount of competition.

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  Wednesday, 15 May 2013 | 11:21 AM ET

Tech Giants Play Dangerous Game With Their Fans

Posted By: Dana Blankenhorn | TheStreet.com Contributor
Getty Images

Teen idols, Hollywood stars and technology companies have something in common.

It's possible for them to get too close to their biggest fans, to make such a big splash that these fans tire of them, rejecting what they once loved as caricatures.

The lesson of the Olsen twins and director M. Night Shyamalan may now have to be learned by Facebook, whose widely hyped "Home" skin for Android is increasingly looking like a product failure.

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  Wednesday, 15 May 2013 | 6:03 AM ET

Bulls Beam In on Dish Network

Posted By:
Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Dish Network

Dish Network has pulled back from 52-week highs reached last week, and traders are buying more time for the stock to rally again.

OptionMonster's tracking systems yesterday detected the sale of May 40 calls for $0.15 to $0.20 and the purchase of June 44 calls for $0.40. About 5,000 contracts traded in each strike.

Calls lock in the price where shares can be purchased in the satellite-television company, and they can deliver significant leverage if the stock continues to run. Rolling the position out a month to a higher strike buys more time for the move to occur and indicates that traders anticipate even more gains than originally thought.

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  Tuesday, 14 May 2013 | 12:10 PM ET

What May Move BlackBerry Stock This Year

Posted By: Eric Jackson | TheStreet.com Contributor
Getty Images

If things keep up like this in the second half of the year as it has in the first half, all shorts might be dead and buried.

This has been the year when shorts have been carried out on a stretcher. Last week, it was Tesla—with 44 percent of its float held short as of April 30—going parabolic in the face of solid earnings.

Then there has been Green Mountain Coffee, with 38 percent of its float held short with an 83 percent return year to date. First Solar is up 66 percent this year, even though 33 percent of its float is held short. High-flying Netflix is up 145 percent this year, but it has 24 percent of its float still held short.

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  Tuesday, 14 May 2013 | 10:24 AM ET

Cramer: This Is the Shorts' Worst Nightmare

Posted By:
Cramer: This Is the Short's Worst Nightmare
With stocks heading higher, many of the traditional short positions are disappearing, and Cramer said this is the "worst nightmare" for short sellers

The most popular short positions of the year are causing pain for hedge funds and bearish investors alike, after many of these heavily shorted names have rallied this quarter. This is a "worst nightmare" situation for short sellers, CNBC's Jim Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street" Tuesday.

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  Tuesday, 14 May 2013 | 5:15 AM ET

Energy Bulls Discover Dresser Rand

Posted By: David Russell | Writer, OptionMonster
Nestor Galina | Wikipedia

Dresser Rand Group is an oil-equipment name, and it was discovered by the energy bulls yesterday.

OptionMonster's tracking programs detected the purchase of more than 2,000 September 70 calls, most of which priced for $1.80. Volume was more than 30 times open interest at the strike, indicating that new money was put to work on the long side.

Long calls lock in the price where shares can be purchased, so they have the potential to generate significant leverage from even a modest rally. A 20 percent gain in the stock price, for instance, would result in a profit of almost 100 percent. The contracts also spare the investor the difficulty of timing an entry.

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About The Stock Blog

The CNBC Stock Blog is a cross-section of expert opinions and insights from our TV and Web site coverage. This blog includes posts written by and about top analysts and strategists, super-investors and CNBC's own market mavens. You'll find stock picks, news about publicly-traded companies, commodities, hot sectors, ETFs and the latest options action.