Category: News & Chatter

A reminder: the stock markets will be closed today – February 20th – for Presidents’ day.

Here’s a previous post on all the 2006 dates the U.S. stock markets will be closed: Mark Your Calendars: Stock Market Holiday Dates.

A good measure of online search engine popularity is measuring traffic of online users going to internet destinations, such as Yahoo!, MSN, or Google. A few websites display traffic rankings for nearly every website on the internet, such as Alexa.

I like Alexa Traffic Rankings for my research because they provide charts of traffic over a period of time, similar to stock charts. They also display other data, such as the average number of pages a person will view.

How Alexa measures traffic
Alexa has a browser plugin available for download that uploads your usage history to their servers. They then extrapolate the data and generate traffic graphs and stats.

Top 3 internet destinations
1. Yahoo!
2. MSN
3. Google

Google, as popular as it is, is still ranked third.

Here’s the traffic graphs for Yahoo, MSN, and Google:

Yahoo!

MSN

Google

As you can see, MSN and Yahoo! are flat or declining. Google, on the other hand, has been increasing. It looks like Google may take the #2 spot or even overtake Yahoo! to claim the most visited website on the internet.

The past few days have been rough for not only the US stock markets, but also international markets – especially Japan’s Nikkei 225. The Nikkei lost 5% in two sessions, but regained 2% in Wednesday trading. It looks like investors everywhere are locking in profits, based on the past few trading sessions.

Shares of Yahoo! (YHOO) fell 12% to 35.09 on lower than expected earnings and future outlook. Coupled with analyst downgrades, Yahoo! shares were hit hard by investors deciding to lock in profits. I think outlook on Yahoo! is great. Yahoo! is still the #1 destination on the internet, even surpassing the mightly Google, in web hits, according to Alexa traffic rankings. My target entry price is 33.00 to 34.00, the lower the better. I’m expecting Yahoo! earnings to build this year as they have new search technology rolling out, and they are generating increasing revenues from their branded advertising business.

Google (GOOG) shares also dipped -5% on analyst expectations that the search revenue market may be stalling, and that shares of Google are overvalued at their current price. I would like to pick up some shares of GOOG at a lower price, maybe under 400 if investors decide to take more profits. I wouldn’t count on many Google employees selling their shares – I think they’re expecting many more years of profits. Google, in my opinion, is still in their infancy as a giant corporation and I’m expecting many groundbreaking new products and services from the company. Going to watch Google for a while and look for a good entry, as close as possible to 400.

I hope everyone had a great year trading last year. Here’s to another great year of profits in 2006!

Don’t forget, the stock market is closed on the following dates in 2006:

January 2 – New Year’s Day
January 16 – Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday
February 20 – Presidents’ Day
April 14 – Good Friday
May 29 – Memorial Day
July 4 – Independence Day
September 4 – Labor Day
November 23 – Thanksgiving Day
December 25 – Christmas Day