3SOF

Be careful with this stock. Cramer pumped it big time on Friday. If you decide to buy, move in and out quickly and then wait for two weeks for the price to drop. You can track his daily recommendations in the link below.

http://seekingalpha.com/by/type/cramers-picks

Count me in. I mostly invest in LEAPS which takes a little longer to make money. For newcomers to options, I suggest buying options that are in the money of well established companies. There are many strategies when it comes to options play, but keep it simple. The profits can be enormous but at the same time very risky, this is why I stick with LEAPS.

A good place to find information is www.888options.com. Even though the name may initially appear to be some cheap infomercial, it is actually a site created by the options industry council to educate investors. Their customer service reps will answer your questions for free and they also hold free seminars around the country.

My pick: Microsoft (MSFT)

I realize that this stock has not done much over the last 5 years, but it is getting ready to make its move to the upside. Here are my reasons:

1) Conference call on Wednesday. This is typically the time of the year they give guidance for the upcoming year.

2) MSFT just released Vista interim build 5365 and Vista beta 2 is scheduled to be released next month. So far the signs are still good for a Jan '07 launch for Vista.

3) Should be announcing HD-DVD drive for the X-box. Wistron, one of the three manufacturers of the X-box plans to ramp up manufacturing to 1 million consoles per months starting in June.

4) Windows live @edu program has signed 72 colleges and universities.

5) Coming out with Live drive which will provide users with a virtual hard drive.

6) The long awaited EU trial starts on Monday.

7) Ask.com CEO is the new head of MSN.

8 ) Company plans to accelerate its stock buy back program during the second half of this year. Last count they had $10 billion on hand allocated to share buy backs.

9) Treo 700 W gets new push e-mail which is starting to enter Blackberry's territory.

10) Scheduled to release in June their new program to compete with Google's adsense.

CIEN along with other communication networking equipment makers could see their stock move up tomorrow since Lucent and Alcatel are in merger talks.



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114316910402707136.html?mod=home_whats_news_us


Lucent, Alcatel in Merger Talks

By DENNIS BERMAN, SARA SILVER and ALMAR LATOUR
March 23, 2006 10:06 p.m.

Lucent Technologies Inc. and France's Alcatel SA are in advanced merger discussions, people familiar with the matter said Thursday, in a potential $33 billion cross-border combination that stands to kick off a huge round of consolidation among suppliers to phone companies.

Such a deal, if successful, would be one of the most long-awaited and deeply complicated couplings in the years following the Internet bubble.

And amid growing protectionist sentiment in both the U.S. and Europe, it would also prove a critical test of how far governments are willing to extend their influence to even block such a transaction.

kds,

The link below does a good job explaining the terminology(Scroll all the way to the bottom).

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/02/110802.asp

There was a huge buy position set at $4.30 yesterday, and once that got eaten around 2 pm the stock started to fall. Today is options expiration day and we could see further downtrend in the market. 

This is still a great company and worth holding for the long run. IMO the stock will pull back to $3.75 - $3.80 sometime over the next few days and then move up quickly. This is only my opinion, so please don't buy or sell based on what I say.

MRVC is down $0.30 pre market since the company just announced $74 million private placement.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060316/lath054.html?.v=47

IMO, this is still a great stock for the long run but could take a beating today.

NVAX - Novavax Inc.

This stock is widely followed on this board. NVAX is one of many companies that are planning on creating a vaccine for use in case of a bird flu pandemic. Few days ago Kleiner Perkins invested $12.5 million in the company. Kleiner Perkins has a track record of investing in companies with great potential. Some of their early investments were in companies like Google, AOL, Amazon.com, Netscape etc. With additional funding coming from Congress in the near future, I think NVAX will be one of the beneficiaries.

GOOG is taking a big hit after CFO spoke about growth slowing down.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060228/google_stock.html?.v=2

Looks like VPHM had a great quarter. Stock is up $0.90 premarket

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060228/nytu060.html?.v=43

Elite,

OCCM has a 1-40 reverse split scheduled for 3/10. I am not sure if that plays into your decision to buy this stock.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060223/20060223006026.html?.v=1

CJM

PTSC will continue to run up tomorrow. They just announced today that Casio has agreed to a licensing agreement similar to HP.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060221/20060221005571.html?.v=1

Barron's had an article this weekend which explained the insider selling.

"......most of the sales were part of pre-arranged selling programs that Google asked these executives to establish at the time of the IPO."

Barron's is available online for free this week. You can access the article at

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB113961805110771361.html?mod=9_0002_b_this_weeks_magazine_home

You can review their product pipeline in the link below

http://www.insmed.com/secondary.asp?title=Overview&section=productpipeline



Another informative site on INSM is:

http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=1433