Mid-week is synonymous with the Market Rag.
Firstly, Google is up in trading today after spending over a billion and a half dollars acquiring YouTube. Meanwhile News Corp is down today as the details of this trade begin to trickle down and bad news for the newspaper business continues.
According to the Wall Street Journal, News Corp tried to jump in and possibly make a counter-offer to buy out YouTube, but the startup video service didn't even return their calls, indicating one of two things: either the 20-something founders were diehard-locked-in to Google, or they were terrified that if they shopped around, their payday might slip through their fingers.
While indicative of their age, this course of action still seals a huge acquisition for the search engine leader and in all honesty, pissed off the boys at News Corp, who met according to the Journal after the deal to discuss the possibility of banning YouTube links on MySpace.com.
Things remain cordial, however, as Google and News Corp executives, including Rupert Murdoch, plan to meet in Los Angeles this week. Smartly, the two companies see that despite their competition, they both can make a lot of money off each other.
Shares of Apple Computer are down slightly today as their stock option scandal churns. Federal prosecutors have begun to look into the company's option practices, according to reports.
As a bit of breaking news, (at 4:00 p.m. EST) a plane crashed into a residential building in New York today, according to a CNNMoney report. CNN is also reporting that this development has dragged market prices lower this afternoon. All eyes are now focused on this development.
It has now been confirmed that the plane was flown by New York Yankees pitcher, Cory Lidle and that two people were killed in the incident.
Finally this week, Alcoa, the first blue-chip company to release its earnings, posted an 86 percent increase in net income and is reportedly having its best fiscal year in the aluminum company's long history. Despite that, the company did not meet analysts' expectations and predictions. This development is driving stocks downward today, and Alcoa itself is down five percent despite an 86 percent jump in income. There are clearly economic explanations for this, but it is amazing to see this be the case.
And that, my dear friends, is the rag for this week.
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