In Tech We Trust - Fast Money Recap (6/20/08)
Recap of Fast Money, Friday June 20. Dow Falls Below 12,000
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Fast Money Recap - A Trader's Market (3/13/09)
Recap of CNBC's Fast Money, Friday March 13.Bullish WeekThe S&P 500 had its strongest performance since November with a four day rally. Tim Seymour thinks there is risk ahead with a weak dollar and doesn't see the rally continuing into Monday. Joe Terranova sthinks there is at least a feeling of a bull market. Zach Karabell notes stocks are way off last fall's highs and would concentrate on safety sectors such as commodities, healthcare and tech. Pete Najarian comments it is a traders market, whether bullish or bearish.
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Wal-Mart's Retail Empire - Fast Money Recap (5/12/08)
Recap of Fast Money, Monday May 12. Click on a stock ticker for more analysis. Merrill Lynch (MER), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Cisco (CSCO), Intel (INTC), Research in Motion (RIMM), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Electronic Data Systems (EDS), IBM (IBM) MER and Apple rose and took the financial and tech sectors with them. A break in oil's incessant rise also triggered a rally and Adami says he believes in large-cap tech and noted action in MSFT, CSCO and INTC. Najarian discussed new developments for RIMM and thinks Apple was driven up by RIMM. He added Apple is cheap, according to its price-to-earnings ratio. There are rumors that HPQ may buy EDS for $12-$13 billion. Najarian says this is a high price for HPQ and thinks IBM looks good on this news. He also discussed the call activity in EDS. Macke observed a decline in HPQ's stock on the takeover news but notes that the company will give its earnings report this week. Macke thinks the deal is not necessarily bullish for the entire tech sector.
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Bored with Yahoo's Board - Fast Money Recap (5/6/08)
Recap of CNBC's Fast Money, Tuesday May 6. Click on a stock ticker for more analysis. Market Overview: Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI), Google (GOOG) Friday’s selloff saw the Dow stumble 1.22%, the S &P fall 0.8% and the Nasdaq trading down 0.3%. Guy Adami says the market hasn’t bottomed yet, but continues to like railroad stocks like BNI as well as natural gas. Najarian noted Google’s spectacular $40 drop and said the tech horsemen need a rest. Jeff Macke wouldn’t buy stocks unless they fall on a panic. The group looked at the Volatility Index and Najarian said when there is a big move in the VIX, it will be time to buy.
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Here Come the Buys - Fast Money Recap (5/1/08)
Recap of CNBC's Fast Money, Thursday May 1. Click on a stock ticker for more analysis. Aubrey McClendon CEO Chesapeake Energy (CHK) McClendon said his company trades at a discount and he is an aggressive buyer of CHK stock. He predicted the stock price could double and said the company is not hurt by volatility in commodities because it is hedges against downside risk in the price of natural gas. Since he has a large stake in his company, he is unwilling to stop hedging. Intel (INTC), Cisco (CSCO), Goldman Sachs (GS), Wachovia (WB), Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Financial Select SPDR (XLF) The six-month trend of commodities outperforming the tech and financial sectors seems to be reversing and Adami thinks investors are leaving commodities. His picks include INTC, GS, CSCO and WB. Macke agrees and would wait for drops to buy. He doesn’t think there is any reason to short financials. He would buy MSFT on upcoming noise about the stock and would wait for XLF to drop another 4% before buying. Najarian thinks tech is accurately valued and has seen some upside from Google and Apple, while financials are currently undervalued.
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Google's Android Market Guarantees Problems for Users
Daniel Eran Dilger It's great news that Google is planning to deliver a market for mobile software with its own centralized “Android Market.” It should give Apple's iPhone Apps Store competitive pressure to continue to innovate, and provide a safety net for smartphone users if Apple fails to deliver progress fast enough. If Apple and Google both fail, users will be stuck with the failed third party software models related to Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian. Those high stakes make it all the more disappointing to find that the Android Market fails to answer the tough issues correctly. iPhone App Store vs Android Market. There's no doubt that there will be apps that make it into Google's Android store that aren't currently available from Apple, likely including WiFi tethering (for using your mobile's data plan to give your laptop Internet access on the road), a feature Apple forced NullRiver's NetShare to remove from the iPhone store. That was apparently at the behest of AT&T, which staunchly refuses to support tethering without charging an expensive additional fee. AT&T's 3G network is already strained to carry relatively light-duty mobile traffic; unrestricted amounts of data being dumped on the network from far more demanding desktop apps by millions of users is currently just infeasible to accommodate. Other providers have 3G EVDO bandwidth to spare, but will cut you off just as quickly when you reach their finite definition of “unlimited” data access. Finite bandwidth is not a problem Google's 'free and open' software market can solve, because Google is not the only link in the chain in providing mobile apps. AT&T isn't going to allow tethering from Android phones either, regardless of Google's intended store policies. And Verizon Wireless likely isn't going to allow WiFi on Android phones at all. So it's a joke to say Android will transcend every problem in ways that Apple hasn't. This isn't a case of Google acting like Netflix to offer unlimited content to rival Blockbuster's censorship; instead, Google is simply making great sounding campaign promises it won't be able to deliver. AppleInsider | Google reveals open Android Market to rival iPhone's App Store Will Google’s Android Play DOS to Apple’s iPhone? Why Apple Plays God with the iPhone SDK But Wait, There's More (And Less). The Android Market will also deliver lots of problems Apple isn't, including a way to distribute malware that can't be remotely killed, or untraceable spyware that professes to be on the up-and-up when you install it, but then works behind your back and phones home sensitive data to a rogue developer's servers. Remember all the speculation last year about the possibility of developers being able to hack the iPhone open and install their own malicious tools to watch what you're doing? Under the iPhone SDK, access to that dangerous path is simply forbidden. Under Android, there's not so much as a handrail for users. Apple has already reprimanded iPhone developers who provided inadequate protection of their users' data, and then forced them to fix their problems immediately. With Google advertising its “see no evil, hear no evil” policy for its self-policing development community, Google won't even know if there's a problem. It will also lack any way to stop or reverse problems, and having renounced any accountability for protecting users with regulatory controls, Google will lack the leverage to push malicious or possibly just incompetent developers to take any action once it does discover problems. Malware and junkware on the PC is a big problem, but on a smartphone it is orders of magnitude more serious of an issue. Having to run spyware cleanup on a PC is a nusance. Having your phone subverted into a tool for advertisers or identity thieves could easily result in issues on the level of life safety. If you thought it was embarrassing to have Outlook send out spam in your name in 2001, wait until Android starts drunk dialing all your contacts to tell them about special offers, attaching your GPS location and perhaps a recent photo from your album so they know they can trust you about it. Google seems to think it can simply ignore security problems by asking developers not to take advantage of its users. This is absurdly ridiculous in our modern context. Google may as well be building unvented fireplaces in a tornado alley trailer park. Ten Myths of Leopard: 9 Apple is Spying on Users! The Unavoidable Malware Myth: Why Apple Won’t Inherit Microsoft’s Malware Crown Wired's Grotesquely Rank Hypocrisy in Mobile Security. Where did all of those mobile phone security experts from last fall run away to? They were abuzz about the imagined catastrophe that might befall the “can't even run any software” iPhone, but none have stepped forward to posit an opinion on why Android's exposed spinning blades in a dark room might result in the world's next Windows XP. Wired, which led the witch hunt against the iPhone last fall, published an article this summer titled “Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web,” which went on breathlessly for days about how Android would solve the industry's problems with giddy can-do chutzpah. Nowhere did the article even suggest a criticism of its wide open, security-free business model. Instead, the author announced, “Engineers who write for just about any mobile operating system today have to spend time and cash obtaining security keys and code-signing certificates. Android would allow any application to be installed and run, no questions asked.” If you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, don't bother. It ended right there on the “time and money savings” of not having any security model. Microsoft saved a lot of money by ignoring security, too, as long as you don't count the $11 billion malware industry. Shame on Wired for continuing its descent into hopelessly unplugged irrelevance. UnWired! Rick Farrow, Metasploit, and My iPhone Security Interview Kim Zetter and the iPhone Root Security Myth High Risk, High Likelihood for Exploitation. The tech media more recently went into high alert to warn users that Apple's MobileMe web apps didn't perform SSL encryption, allowing the possibility for spies to target them in order to read their calendar and email transactions, were they to used the web apps over a public network. That's a valid concern to voice, but also an extremely unlikely threat for users to spend much time worrying about, particularly since there are a number of straightforward precautions users can take to avoid any risky exposure scenarios. There's also little business model behind sniffing calendar appointments and the kind of mundane email threads that .Mac users might engage in while drinking coffee at Starbucks. On the other hand, malicious software and social engineering exploitation is a billion dollar industry, and organized criminals in Korea, China, Russia, and of course Nigeria are as desperate for new dollars outside of the PC desktop as Google is. Rather than the unlikely scenario of on-site spies targeting a specific individual to sniff out truffles from their browser's email, these people have organized and profitable methods for delivering viral payloads to wide audiences from the convenience of a position thousands of miles away. On a smartphone, they can take your money simply by having installed software send a paid SMS. This is a real threat, not a contrived bunch of hysterical nonsense dreamed up by fear-mongering pundits. It is simply criminally negligent for Google to design a smartphone software platform with nearly zero regard for the safety of its users. We can justifiably criticize Microsoft for its lax stance on security in the 90s that resulted in the Windows malware crisis, but many of the potential dangers of certain decisions weren't fully recognized back then. Google is organizing an olympic-sized skating party on a lake it knows has dangerously thin ice. Is Apple’s MobileMe Secure? Store vs Market? It's also worth mentioning that the media is comparing what Google only intends to do with what Apple has already pulled off; I could easily draft plans for a phone that sounds better than the iPhone, but I certainly couldn't deliver it. Apple has years of experience in media sales and micro-payments in iTunes. It began selling software through iTunes in 2006, and spent years refining its software deployment system to make sure iTunes would work as a true market place for mobile software once the iPhone was ready. Anyone can open a store. There are a dozen online music and video stores that have gone out of business trying to sell music like iTunes. Apple created a real market, where both buyers and sellers can have confidence that they're getting a fair deal. Google has tried to backhandedly condemn Apple's App Store for being called a “store,” negatively associating the word with a commercial endeavor as opposed to the community effort Google's marketing team has branded a “market.” Never mind that the words really mean the same thing; Google isn't really creating a market, because markets have enforced rules. Without rules and authority, there is too much risk involved to do legitimate business. If Android were only setting up a barter system between the company's altruistic and noble minded PhDs in the Google cafeteria, there wouldn't be an issue. However, Google is setting up shop in the most corrupt, chaotic, and criminal setting on earth: the wide open Internet, a dirty enough place to turn a brand new PC into a viral porn spam server within fifteen minutes of being plugged in. Hacking iPod Games: How Apple's DRM Works Rise of the iTunes Killers Myth Can Great Google Getter Done? The company's Alfred E. W. Newman approach to security issues is more than a little alarming coming from a company that is fully aware of Internet scammers. Google's main job is identifying and scouring away the criminal tracks that SEO frauds try to leave behind in its search engine results. The company terminates its advertiser partners on a whim when it even suspects an irregularity, and the web is full or people complaining that Google has failed to pay them for hundreds of dollars of AdSense advertising without even a fair explanation. The company is hard edge and savvy when it comes to protecting its own revenues, so why is it being so soft and naive when the security of its users is on the line? Google's “do no evil” slogan, paired with its considerable contributions to society, from free search to free satellite imagery, and from its staunch support of the public interest related to WiFi and mobile broadband issues to its investments in progressive technologies to make the world a better place, all simply add up to leave its unreasonable stance on mobile security a mysterious puzzle. Can Google even pull its store off? The company serves up millions of free videos in YouTube, but remember that Google originally tried to build its own YouTube and failed; it had to buy YouTube to enter the market. Google also screwed the pooch when it dropped its own paid DRM video service and told its users to go fly a kite. That kind of customer-oblivious behavior isn't going to successfully lock horns with Apple's proven excellence in delivering the iTunes Store as a customer-friendly market place. Apple pulled together 14 year old torrent freaks and the RIAA's lawyers into the same room and made them play together. It turned the festering boil of the rotten mobile software market into a million dollar per day buffet. Google's Android Market not only faces the same challenges, but also has to fly in the face of the industry darling, starting at zero against Apple's ten million installed base of iPhones and its accelerating market share. The industry outside of Apple is working just as hard to grab its own slice as well. Google taking on the iPhone App Store is a bit like Sony deciding to build cars to take on BMW. That's all fine and good, but let's see the car before we start comparing its “planned” zero to 60 performance against that of today's cars with a proven legacy. And stop telling us that lacking both seat belts and brakes is a feature. Did you like this article? Let me know. Comment here, in the Forum, or email me with your ideas. Like reading RoughlyDrafted? Share articles with your friends, link from your blog, and subscribe to my podcast (oh wait, I have to fix that first). It's also cool to submit my articles to Digg, Reddit, or Slashdot where more people will see them. Consider making a small donation supporting this site. Thanks!
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★ Let the Tea Leaf Reading Begin
The best thing about being an Apple observer is that even when the company does make a long-awaited announcement, it inevitably leads to new questions regarding what exactly they mean. Apple punditry is the Kremlinology of the tech world. So it is with this week’s announcement from Steve Jobs1 that, yes, “We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February.” We now know two new things: (1) that there will be “native third party applications on the iPhone”; and (2) that the SDK is scheduled for February. That leaves a long list of questions. Whither Widgets? For one: What exactly is a “native third party application”? The obvious answer is the sort of UIKit-based Cocoa-ish applications that underground iPhone hackers have been creating over the last two months — the exact sort of native apps that Apple has itself already written for the iPhone and iPod Touch. For all we know at this point, though, it could be something more like Dashboard widgets — but I think that’s unlikely. Jobs wrote: > With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful > hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we > have created the best mobile platform ever for developers. JavaScript, HTML, and CSS are cool in that they’re widely-used, widely-known coding standards — but they’re not a good way to create user experiences that take full advantage of the iPhone, and would be pretty hard for Apple to pass off as an SDK for “native apps”. Third party developers want access to the same dog food Apple’s own iPhone engineers are eating. Plus, there’s the issue of performance. Iconfactory developer Craig Hockenberry, who has been tinkering with the unofficial iPhone developer tools to create an iPhone-native version of Twitterrific, wrote a splendid weblog entry titled “Benchmarking in Your Pants” regarding the lackluster performance of JavaScript code running in MobileSafari compared to compiled Objective-C code running in a native iPhone app. Function calls, for example, were 226 times slower in JavaScript. (Hockenberry also benchmarked JavaScript running on the iPhone compared to the same code running in Safari on an Intel-based iMac; the code ran about 80 times faster on the iMac.) Back in January at the iPhone’s introduction in the Macworld Expo keynote, Jobs described some of the apps on the iPhone, including Weather and Stocks, as “widgets”. My somewhat-informed understanding is that Apple’s original plan was for the iPhone to ship with its major apps written in Cocoa and with a handful of smaller apps written as Dashboard-style HTML/CSS/JavaScript widgets — but that this plan was scuttled for performance reasons, and the Weather and Stocks widgets2 were rewritten as UIKit Objective-C apps sometime this spring.3 My guess is that they ran into what Hockenberry documented: JavaScript on the current iPhone just isn’t fast enough to provide an iPhone-caliber user experience. So my money is that the iPhone SDK that Apple plans to release this winter is the real thing — Cocoa-style UIKit apps written in Objective-C. Security? Jobs wrote: It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target. External security — the threat of vulnerabilities that would allow malfeasants to compromise a victim’s iPhone — is a serious matter. There have already been several published exploits against the iPhone, including an as-of-this-writing open vulnerability in TIFF-processing code in the current iPhone OS. So clearly there is some merit to Jobs’s stated security concerns. As it stands in the current iPhone OS, all processes run as the root user; in broad layman’s terms, any process has access to everything else on the phone. So when a buffer overflow can be exploited to allow remote code execution, that code can do anything. To allow third-party iPhone apps to run today would be to trust those third-party developers not to write code with any security flaws. What the iPhone needs before Apple will allow third-party apps to run is some sort of sandbox, a way to prevent application processes from being able to access things they shouldn’t be allowed to access. But iPhone Cocoa apps are no more inherently susceptible to buffer overflow vulnerabilities than Mac Cocoa apps. And the hysteria over the iPhone’s current “everything runs as root” situation is overblown.4 Applications on your Mac don’t run as the root; they run under your user account. But all of your data — your email, your address book, your documents, everything your apps can read or write without administrator authentication — is vulnerable to any sort of hypothetical buffer overflow exploit on the Mac, and would be on the iPhone, too, even if iPhone apps didn’t all run as root. Sure, root privileges allow an exploit to do anything, but the most important thing on your system is your personal data, and an exploit doesn’t need root privileges to access that. I’m thinking Apple is more concerned about internal security — about having third-party apps limited to a sandbox so that user-installed code has no access to things like, say, the phone network modem’s firmware (the component that you need to diddle with to create SIM unlocks). That’s the key difference between the iPhone and the Mac, security-wise. Which Third-Party Developers? Mac OS X is pretty much completely open to development; even the developer tools are free, and anyone is free to write whatever software they want for the Mac. It seems unlikely that iPhone OS X development is going to be like that. One possibility is that the iPhone SDK will only be available to developers with ADC Select ($499) or Premiere ($3,499) accounts. (Premier and Select ADC members are the only ones with access to pre-release Mac OS X seeds, for example.) If that’s the case, it’s not going to be popular with hobbyist developers, but most professional Mac developers already have paid ADC memberships, and, let’s face it, we all know most iPhone apps are going to be written by Mac developers. Interviewed via email, Craig Hockenberry told me, “If there’s a simple way to get third party apps on the iPhone, you keep 90 percent of the developers happy and jailbreak/unlock has much less momentum. Sure, there will still be people that want to ‘buck the system’ but they’ll be in the minority rather than the majority.” The most intriguing part of Jobs’s announcement was this section, regarding security: Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,? we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs. It’s hard not to interpret the scare quotes around “totally open” as a reference to Nokia’s recent “Open to Anything” ad campaign — sort of a you guys aren’t completely open either call-out. This seems like a pretty clear indication that Apple is working on a similar signing system for iPhone apps. Restricting development to paid ADC members would instantly allow Apple to associate app signatures “back to a known developer”. Here’s more information from Nokia on the signing program Jobs mentioned; here’s similar information on the Symbian site. Which Apps? Another question is whether Apple is going to allow participating (trusted-by-Apple) developers to write whatever apps they want, signing the apps themselves, or if apps will need to be approved case-by-case by Apple before being signed. Mac OS X Leopard includes a new “application signing” feature, described by Apple thusly: A digital signature on an application verifies its identity and ensures its integrity. All applications shipped with Leopard are signed by Apple, and third-party software developers can also sign their applications. That same page describes a “sandboxing” feature that seems applicable to the iPhone, too: Sandboxing prevents hackers from hijacking applications to run their own code by making sure applications only do what they’re intended to do. It restricts an application’s file access, network access, and ability to launch other applications.” The prototypical example of a potentially popular app that Apple might refuse to approve would be a VOIP app like, say, Skype, in that it would undermine the need for the phone network, which in turn undermines Apple’s revenue sharing with the iPhone’s exclusive network partners. Or, say, instant messaging, the omission of which from the current iPhone is seen by many as a concession to the fact that heavy SMS users pay handsomely for extra monthly messages. (Personally, I suspect iChat for iPhone simply didn’t make the cut for 1.0 but is planned for a future update.) “Nokia’s model is to run as trusted/untrusted,” said Hockenberry. “Trusted apps get to access more than untrusted ones. This model could be extended to allow different levels of access based upon whatever Apple wants (as owner of the root certificate.) Basic access for Wi-Fi, extended access for EDGE, hardware access for deep pockets, etc.” That makes sense, and strikes me as a likely course for Apple. Development There’s a question, then, of how developers will write the apps in the first place. If iPhones only run third-party apps that have been approved by Apple, how do you develop an application in the first place before it’s been approved? Steven Frank — who, as co-founder of Panic and an unrepentant gadget hound, may well be the single most interested person in the world in a supported iPhone SDK — described to me via email the development process for the Danger Hiptop/Sidekick: “The Hiptop/Sidekick platform has a Java SDK that abstracts away all the low-level hardware stuff so you can’t touch it, while still providing everything you need to write an application. You test and debug in an emulator/virtual machine that can simulate edge conditions like loss of cellular network availability and so on. When you’re almost done, and ready to try on real hardware, you apply for a ‘developer key’, which is a small certificate that you install on the phone that enables you to run third-party apps that didn’t come from the on-device for-purchase catalog. To get the developer key, you have to prove to them you actually have an almost complete app, and aren’t just some kid who wants hot Yung Joc ringtones by submitting a build of your application. You also have to sign a waiver that says you are no longer eligible for support from your cellular carrier.” The iTunes App Store? Which leaves us with the question of distribution and installation. The obvious route is the same one Apple has taken with iPod games: the iTunes Store. Apple, in this case, would likely get a cut of every sale. From a user’s perspective, it’d be easy and obvious: shop and pay for apps in iTunes, and iTunes takes care of installing the software, and, perhaps, synching data. This is similar to the Danger model — where apps must be approved, and can be sold only through the official channel. Limiting, to be sure, but as Frank put it, “The process [of developing for Danger] is somewhat tedious, but still an order of magnitude better than not allowing third-party applications, period.” Frank also pointed out the most glaring downside of Danger’s pay-to-play development model: “One drawback to this approach from the user’s perspective is that there is basically no free third-party software. Everything costs at least a couple bucks.” The announcement appeared on Apple’s Hot News web page, but with no permalink, so it’s likely to disappear from Apple’s web site in a week or two as newer items appear. I’ve saved a plain text copy here for posterity.↩ I wonder if the Calculator app was originally a widget, too. UI-wise, it’d certainly be a cinch, because just like with the iPhone’s Weather and Stocks apps, it more or less looks and acts exactly like the corresponding widget in Mac OS X. So my theory is that when Apple made the decision to rewrite the iPhone widgets as native iPhone Cocoa apps, they used the widgets as the specs for the apps. “Make a native app that looks and acts exactly like this widget,” more or less. One thing that makes me think this is that the iPhone Calculator app doesn’t make any sounds when you press the buttons. Pure JavaScript/HTML widgets can’t make sounds when you click or tap buttons. I find typing on the iPhone keyboard to be much more satisfying with the sound on; with the sound off, because the keys are virtual, there’s no sensory feedback at all. The Calculator app would feel more real if it simply made the same button-clicking noises as the iPhone keyboard.↩ That this change was — I believe — made rather late in the game might explain why vestigial references to “widgets” remained in the shipping iPhone 1.0 software. (It could also mean, of course, that Apple plans to re-expose this feature at some point in the future.)↩ It certainly is a curious question why all iPhone apps run as root. I don’t know the answer. But I’ll bet there’s an interesting engineering trade-off involved somewhere. If you think the reason is laziness or ignorance on the part of the iPhone OS X engineers, you’re an idiot.↩
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Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News
Kraft seals Cadbury deal. This morning Kraft (KFT) announced a recommended deal to buy Cadbury (CBY) for 11.9B ($19.4B), or 840 pence per share, in addition to a 10 pence dividend. The new terms followed friendly talks late last night between the two companies, and Cadbury board members have unanimously recommended to shareholders to accept the offer. Premarket: KFT -1%, CBY +5.7% (7:00 ET). Tyco on the brink of U.S. expansion. Tyco International (TYC) announced it will buy Brink's Home Security Holdings (CFL) for around $2B in cash and stock, approximately a 35% premium over Brink's Friday closing price. The deal is the latest in the sector's gradual consolidation, and combines two of the top companies in the North American security industry. Premarket: TYC +1.2%, CFL +32.1% (7:00 ET). Berkshire heads for share split. Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, BRK.B) is widely expected to approve a 50-to-1 share split of its Class B shares tomorrow, in one of the biggest structural shakeups the company has seen in years. The move will bring the share price down to around $65 from Friday's $3,247, making it likely that trading volume will increase and potentially opening up the stock for inclusion in the S&P 500. Separately, Berkshire announced a 1.3B Swiss franc ($1.26B) deal on Monday to buy a block of life insurance business from Swiss Re (SWCEY.PK). JAL falls to bankruptcy. As expected, Japan Airlines filed for the country's fourth-largest bankruptcy today. The airline will be delisted, wiping out shareholders. As part of its 900B ($10B) turnaround plan, JAL will slash 15,700 jobs, cut unprofitable routes and retire older planes. E-book talks for Apple's tablet. Publisher HarperCollins (NWS) is reportedly negotiating with Apple (AAPL) to make e-books available for an Apple tablet. Details are still up in the air, but HarperCollins would likely set the price of the books, which would come with bonus features, and Apple would take a cut of the sales. Apple is widely expected to unveil a tablet device at its Jan. 27 media event. Sinopec, BP talk about tie-up. Sinopec (SNP) said it's in talks with BP (BP) over a potential collaboration in the exploration and development of shale gas. The discussions, which Sinopec said were going "smoothly," reflect the growing international interest in China's shale gas fields. European countries warn against MSFT browser. German and French agencies made the unusual move of warning users against Microsoft's (MSFT) Internet Explorer browser, suggesting users switch to alternatives. The warning stemmed from the security hole in IE that hackers recently exploited to attack Google (GOOG) and other companies. Microsoft challenged the recommendations, and said users should instead upgrade to the latest version of its browser. China blamed for Indian hack attack. Indian officials said there was an attempted cyber-attack on Indian government computers, and that Chinese hackers are likely to blame. Chinese officials said such claims "are entirely without basis," and noted that China itself is one of the biggest victims of cyber-attacks. Google delays China phone launch. Google (GOOG) postponed the planned launch of its mobile phone in China today, without specifying why the launch was delayed or when it might be rescheduled. The move comes as Google and China face off over internet censorship and a recent cyber-attack. Williams Cos. creates major nat-gas partnership. Williams Cos. (WMB) is reportedly planning to restructure by merging Williams Partners and Williams Pipeline Partners, creating in the process one of the largest natural-gas partnerships in the country. Williams Cos. will receive 80% ownership in the combined entity, valuing its stake at $6.2B, and will receive $3.5B in cash to pay down debt. A merger announcement is expected today. Unisys sells health unit. Unisys (UIS) agreed to sell its health information management business to Molina Healthcare (MOH) for $135M in cash. U.K. faces rating risk. The U.K.'s triple-A rating is "extremely vulnerable" and the economic and political situation is "highly toxic," warned Standard Life, one of the U.K.'s largest money-management firms. Earlier this month, Pimco said there's an 80% chance of a U.K. downgrade unless the government changes its deficit reduction plans. Separately, data released this morning showed U.K. prices rose a higher-than-expected 0.6% in December, bringing the annual rate up to 2.9% and raising speculation that interest rates may be increased faster than expected. The news sent the pound to a four-month high against the euro. Earnings: Tuesday Before Open New Oriental Education & Tech. Group (EDU): FQ2 EPS of $0.03 misses by $0.02. Revenue of $61.2M (+24%) vs. $61.8M. (PR) Today's Markets In Asia, Nikkei -0.8% to 10,765. Hang Seng +1% to 21,678. Shanghai +0.3% to 3,247. BSE -0.9% to 17,486. In Europe at midday, London -1%. Paris -0.9%. Frankfurt -1%. Futures: Dow -0.2%. S&P flat. Nasdaq flat. Crude +0.2% to $78.15. Gold +0.7% to $1,138.40. Tuesday's Economic Calendar 9:00 Bank of Canada Announcement 9:00 International Capital Flow 10:00 State Street Investor Confidence Index 1:00 PM NAHB Housing Market Index 5:00 PM ABC Consumer Confidence Index Notable earnings before Tuesday's open: AMTD, C, EDU, FAST, FHN, FRX, MMR, PH Notable earnings after Tuesday's close: CREE, CSX, FULT, IBM, WIT Seeking Alpha editors Eli Hoffmann and Jason Aycock contributed to this post.
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Fast Money Recap: 6 Stocks to Watch Ahead of a Correction (6/22/09)
Recap of CNBC's Fast Money, Monday June 22.Potash, Intrepid (IPI), JPMorgan (JPM), Transocean (RIG), Goldman Sachs (GS), Freeport McMoRan (FCX)
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Fast Money Recap - The Banks That Got Away (6/9/09)
Recap of CNBC's Fast Money, Tuesday June 9.Wells Fargo (WFC), Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), Blackstone ( BX), Jeffries (JEF)
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Fast Money Recap - Pfizer and Wyeth ... Why? (1/23/09)
Recap of CNBC's Fast Money, Friday January 23.Pfizer (PFE) and Wyeth (WYE) Merger: Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), Amgen (AMGN)