5/13 - "Clearly, the Street is not crazy about Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) plan to acquired Electronic Data Systems (EDS). In two days, the Street has knocked about 10% off HP’s stock price, chopping its market cap by about $12.5 billion, almost equal to the $13.9 billion deal price. The obvious question is, why?...And the answer is, there are several reasons." "Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research, notes that since 2002, EDS has generated annual revenue growth of just 0.4% versus...

5/14 - "Whole Foods (WFMI) released results and profit fell 13%, again proving like Starbucks' (SBUX) results, consumers will go for the less expensive option for like items...While the company backed its same store sales number of 7.5% to 9.5%, given results to date, one has to think that will turn out to be just way too optimistic. Like Starbucks, Whole Foods is being hit by a slowing economy and increased competition. Both, unfortunately, are not reacting to it and actually seem to be denyi...

5/15 - "Although DE’s unchanged 2008 net income outlook (higher Ag revenue offset by cost/margin headwinds) takes some near-term momentum from the story, we continue to view the company as the best way to participate in an Ag cycle that we expect to remain strong, supported by rising farm income, elevated crop prices, and low crop inventories. We maintain our Buy rating and $94 target price." "2Q08 EPS of $1.74 beat our $1.72 but trailed cons of $1.75, as better than expected Ag and C&CE ma...

5/14 - "For a bearish hedged play on this stock, I would consider an August bear-call credit spread above the $37 range. A bear-call credit spread is an options position that combines the purchase and sale of call options to hedge risk in case the stock doesn't do what you think but still leverage nice returns. For this particular trade, we will make a 7.1% return in three months as long as WFMI is below $37 at August expiration. Whole Foods would have to rise by more than 26% before we would st...

5/14 - "Although the quarter beat analysts' expectations on an adjusted basis, many investors seem to be thinking "game over," especially since EA turned in a rather tepid forecast and gave reason to believe that the pesky "enhancing profitability" portion of EA's picture remains fuzzy at best. EA also said it will stop offering quarterly forecasts. Although corporations' forecasts can be unreliable, I'm not sure what EA's decision to stop giving them at all -- at a time when many investors ar...