Will Stocks end higher ? $AAPL $GOOG $FB $DELL $GM $F

The Nasdaq composite stock index closed at a 12-year high and the S&P 500 index at a five-year high, boosted by gains in technology shares and stronger overseas trade figures. Volume was roughly 5.6 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the 2012 average daily closing volume of about 6.45 billion. The S&P 500 also posted a sixth straight week of gains for the first time since August. The technology sector led the day's gains, with the S&P 500 technology index (.SPLRCT) up 1.0 percent. Gains in professional network platform LinkedIn Corp (LNKD) and AOL Inc (AOL.N) after they reported quarterly results helped the sector. Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) briefly lurching over 14,000. It's also a decent description of an experienced stock veterans' reaction to the hype about a new bubble in equities. People who lived through two different horrific crashes in the last 15 years know what bubbles look like, and this isn't it. Scoffing at the notion that one month of $77 billion in equity inflows (January) somehow trumps $1 trillion of outflows, Brown says the most that can be said of individual investors is that they are once again considering equities. "Becoming curious" is how he puts it. Usually the curiosity takes the form of a question followed by a quick assertion that stocks are way too high and certain to plunge at some point in the near, but unknowable, future. Brown has three things to say to those paralyzed by fear given the rumored flood into stocks by the masses. 1. Whether or not individuals are buying stocks doesn't matter. Stocks are up 127% since 2009 with outflows every month. It will take much more than one month of investing to move the needle on the price of a stock market valued at $14 trillion, give or take. Only on the extremes are the inflows or outflows of individual investors of any value in predicting future stock moves. 2. There's real money buying. Endowments and institutions are the ones coming back into stocks, they're just too embarrassed to say so. Instead the punditry couches their buying in phrases like "increasing our equity allocation" or "adding risk." Pros talking like that may as well be wearing a sandwich board announcing that they missed the rally. 3. Market timing is for suckers. "I know people who play market timers on TV," he says, "but in reality it's a very tough game to play." Amen. The question for those all in cash is what burning bush or lightning strike was their omen of a crisis to come. Being 100% in cash makes investors literally insane, he insists. Even people otherwise brilliant and successful start hunting for reasons to justify why they've been so cautious. Staying half invested at least wards off the lunacy of timing and Doomsday scenarios Shares of LinkedIn jumped 21.3 percent to $150.48 after the social networking site announced strong quarterly profits and gave a bullish forecast for the year. AOL Inc (AOL.N) shares rose 7.4 percent to $33.72 after the online company reported higher quarterly profit, boosted by a 13 percent rise in advertising sales. Data showed Chinese exports grew more than expected, a positive sign for the global economy. The U.S. trade deficit narrowed in December, suggesting the U.S. economy likely grew in the fourth quarter instead of contracting slightly as originally reported by the U.S. government. "That may have sent a ray of optimism," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Trading volume on Friday was below average for the week as a blizzard swept into the northeastern United States. The U.S. stock market has posted strong gains since the start of the year, with the S&P 500 up 6.4 percent since December 31. The advance has slowed in recent days, with fourth-quarter earnings winding down and few incentives to continue the rally on the horizon. "I think we're in the middle of a trading range and I'd put plus or minus 5.0 percent around it. Fundamental factors are best described as neutral," Dickson said. The Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI) ended up 48.92 points, or 0.35 percent, at 13,992.97. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (^GSPC) was up 8.54 points, or 0.57 percent, at 1,517.93. The Nasdaq Composite Index (^IXIC) was up 28.74 points, or 0.91 percent, at 3,193.87, its highest closing level since November 2000. For the week, the Dow was down 0.1 percent, the S&P 500 was up 0.3 percent and the Nasdaq up 0.5 percent. Shares of Dell (DELL) closed at $13.63, up 0.7 percent, after briefly trading above a buyout offering price of $13.65 during the session. Dell's largest independent shareholder, Southeastern Asset Management, said it plans to oppose the buyout of the personal computer maker, setting up a battle for founder Michael Dell. Signs of economic strength overseas buoyed sentiment on Wall Street. Chinese exports grew more than expected in January, while imports climbed 28.8 percent, highlighting robust domestic demand. German data showed a 2012 surplus that was the nation's second highest in more than 60 years, an indication of the underlying strength of Europe's biggest economy. Separately, U.S. economic data showed the trade deficit shrank in December to $38.5 billion, its narrowest in nearly three years, indicating the economy did much better in the fourth quarter than initially estimated. Earnings have mostly come in stronger than expected since the start of the reporting period. Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies now are estimated up 5.2 percent versus a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters data. That contrasts with a

Are u a Bear on Dell Stock ?? ( Barrons )

By E. SAVITZ

Dell reflects sector's woes. Gadget of the Week: Logitech V550 Nano.


SO, THE SECOND-QUARTER EARNINGS SEASON IS FINALLY OVER. And it fittingly ended Thursday night with results from Dell (ticker: DELL) that nicely illustrated many of the troubles that now afflict the technology sector.

Dell offered both good news and bad news. The nice surprise came at the top line: Revenues of $16.4 billion in the July quarter beat the Street consensus by $500 million. But the upside came at a significant price. Gross margins fell to 17.2% from 18.4% in the May quarter and 20% a year earlier. While the company cut its operating expenses to their lowest level in six quarters, the impressive revenue growth was a result of aggressive pricing, particularly in Europe.

Dell didn't provide specific forward guidance, but it did say that it will continue to incur costs to realign its business. More significantly, it is seeing "continued conservatism in IT spending" in the U.S., Europe and several countries in Asia. The mention of Asia in that sentence is a new wrinkle: The slowdown is clearly spreading.

The company promises to continue cutting costs, and it vows a raft of new products in the weeks and months ahead. But ultimately, Dell faces an increasingly conservative IT spending environment and struggling consumers; the biggest growth opportunities are in emerging economies where price competition is fierce. And consider this: At the company's global consumer business, revenue rose 28%; unit sales jumped 53%, and market share climbed by 1.6 percentage points, to 9.1%. But that unit somehow still had zero profits in the quarter.

So, while Dell has diversified into servers, storage, services and other areas, and is making admirable progress in cutting costs, it's still dominated by the fiercely competitive PC business. Dell's turnaround continues, but as Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope wrote in discussing the results late last week, "the company has clearly taken a step backward."

For well over a month now, I have been walking around with two smartphones: hanging off my belt, my trusty, battered, Research In Motion (RIMM) 8700c, and in my left front pocket, a sleek, shiny 3G Apple (AAPL) iPhone. I wanted to understand the lure of the iPhone and figure out whether I was ready to leave my stubby BlackBerry behind for the promised land.

Let me say right up front, the iPhone really is in many ways the best mobile device I've ever used. Calling it a phone does it a disservice; it's more like a pocket Mac. It's less phone than computer. Indeed, what makes the device so remarkable is its flexibility. You can download hundreds of applications from the iTunes App Store. Throughout the weeks that I have been experimenting with the iPhone, I've had to wrest it from the hands of my tech-savvy kids, who downloaded free apps by the dozen, some silly -- the iPhone as a flashlight, or the virtual light saber -- and some simply delightful. (I particularly liked Midomi, a Web-connected application that can identify songs by simply having you hum them into the phone. Amazing.) Indeed, the iPhone is simply more fun, by a wide margin, than any other phone I've come across. And it does myriad things that my aging BlackBerry can't. It plays songs and videos. It takes pictures. It has built-in GPS navigation. You can access Wi-Fi networks. And you can surf the Web at reasonable speeds.

I nonetheless have to report that I can't quite bring myself to give up my BlackBerry. Let me tell you why.

For starters, the iPhone simply doesn't feel quite reliable enough as a corporate e-mail device. It actually took me close to a month to simply set up access on the phone to the Dow Jones Exchange Server. It didn't help that the company's IT staffers had little experience with the phone; they knew I had been suffering from some kind of glitch, but had no real idea of what it was. So I defaulted to the extreme option, erasing all the data and starting over.


Two in a Row: The Nasdaq climbed for a second straight month with a 1.8% August gain. But it slid 2% last week, hurt by Dell's disappointing earnings.
Once I finally got e-mail going, things improved. The e-mail client on the iPhone is in many ways better than the BlackBerry's. For one thing, deleting messages on the iPhone actually deletes them from Exchange, which is not the way Dow Jones has configured my BlackBerry. For another, it handles attachments more smoothly; opening Word documents on my BlackBerry often results in a blur of text that removes all the spaces between words. (Try editing a 1,200-word column with all the spaces removed on a BlackBerry-sized screen.) It's also useful that the iPhone mail client provides a short preview of each message, which the BlackBerry doesn't.

However, I've also endured long, inexplicable periods when I simply stop receiving e-mail; not so with the BlackBerry unless the server goes down. Given how much I rely on mobile e-mail, that's not a good thing. I've also experienced highly variable and inconsistent 3G access; about half of the time at my desk in the Dow Jones offices in Palo Alto, I get 3G access; the other half of the time it flips over to EDGE. I also prefer a real keyboard to the virtual version on the iPhone, though that alone wouldn't deter me from using the iPhone as my primary mobile device.

The overarching issue for me is battery life. If I charge the iPhone overnight, I can't get much past lunch before it runs out of juice. If I'm actually out and about -- if I'm mobile, which after all is when you really want a mobile phone -- I must jump through hoops if I want to get through an entire day without its going dead.

Since I haven't been relying on the iPhone as my primary mobile phone -- that's still my BlackBerry's job -- I've taken to simply shutting it off when I don't need it. Of course, that makes it a lot less useful as an e-mail device, and requires the phone to catch up on e-mail once I turn it back on. My BlackBerry can get through several days on a single charge.

The iPhone is a stunningly flexible device. But ultimately, I rely on my mobile device to remotely make calls and send and receive e-mail. I can't do those things on a device that is constantly in danger of running out of juice. And, yes, I know there are tricks for extending battery life -- shutting off 3G when you don't need it, or dimming the screen, or turning Wi-Fi off. But I don't want to be worrying about strategies for getting through the day without exhausting my battery.

I really do love the iPhone. It rocks. It's a truly awesome feat of engineering, a huge leap ahead. But until Apple figures out how to substantially improve the iPhone's battery life, I am sad to say, I simply don't feel comfortable relying on it as my primary mobile phone.



Our Gadget of the Week: Mouse on the Run


Logitech V550 Nano Cordless Laser Mouse; Price: $59.99. Stats: Weighs just over 4 oz. with batteries; PC- and Mac-compatible. Features: Normal scroll wheel; 18-month battery life. Website: www.logitech.com
NOT EVERYONE CARES FOR THE TYPICAL TOUCHPAD or pointer stick on a laptop, but carrying a cordless mouse around when you're traveling or off to make a presentation can be cumbersome. Not only can batteries run out at the most awkward moment, but the dongle that captures the mouse's wireless signals usually sticks so far out of the notebook's USB slot that it can easily get broken.

Logitech 's new V550 mouse solves both problems. First off, Logitech says you get 18 months -- yes, 18 months -- of use from two AA-batteries. In the interest of writing a timely review, I didn't test that claim, but Logitech swears that it's true. It's the result of new battery-saving technologies and a feature whereby the mouse is automatically turned off when you store it on a small button that sticks to your laptop.

Then there's the well-designed USB plug that you insert in a laptop slot to enable wireless connections. A fraction of the normal size, it is only three-quarters of an inch long and, when inserted, sticks out just one-quarter inch. That's small enough that you can easily leave it plugged in all the time without fear of damage, even when storing your laptop in a briefcase.

Logitech (ticker: LOGI) was a hot stock up until the end of last year, rising from 10 to 37 in three years. But since then the share price has fallen to 27, despite continuing strong double-digit growth in sales and operating profits. The Street may be wrong. Given the Swiss-based company's strong margins and record of innovation, the stock's potential may be anything but mousy.
I would buy DELL if it reaches 21.00 or below a share , hold for the long term and u should make some mad money !!$$$$$$$$$$$$