Filed under: Earnings reports, General Electric (GE)

So — General Electric (NYSE: GE) comes out with an awful earnings report, its stock is down over 12%, and the market as a whole is also behaving badly. What did I decide to do? I just had to buy some GE stock for my trading portfolio.

I own shares of GE in a long-term portfolio, but I’ve been keeping my eye on the stock as a potential short-term trading vehicle as well — why not? If I make the wrong move and get stuck with it for a while, it’s obviously not going to bother me, since I retain a long-term thesis on the company (well, it will bother me a little, since I’m expecting to perhaps harvest a quick gain on it in my tax-exempt account). But, I’d really be surprised if GE doesn’t move up several bucks after this pounding today within a few months. So, you see, I’m not day trading, I’m just several-month-trading here (although if the stock were to go up a lot on Monday, I might sell then).

GE was yielding 3.8% at the time I purchased today. With that dividend buffer, the stock seems like a reasonable long-term or shorter-term idea to me.

Disclosure: I own shares of GE in a long-term account and a trading account; the shares I bought today will be sold soon if the price rises dramatically; positions, and rationale for selling, can change at any time.

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Filed under: Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Time Warner (TWX)

Jerry Yang may have just figured out a way to not hose Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) shareholders. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo! and Time Warner Inc.’s (NYSE: TWX) AOL may be close to a tie-up to combine their Internet operations. According to the report, Time Warner would make a large cash investment into Yahoo! and then Yahoo! would repurchase billions of dollars worth of shares in the mid-$30’s. Just keep in mind that as of now, this all only an unverified WSJ story; nothing has been released by the companies.

This would thwart Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) in a deal valuation, or at least that would be the intent. Interestingly enough, there were headlines today tying Yahoo! into running some test search-ads via Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). As long as we’re talking about your cousin’s sister’s brother, Google also owns a 5% chuck of AOL via a prior $1 billion investment. In order to monetize the deal, AOL would have to have a liquidity event of some sort, although by now the time may have passed.

There are no assurances that shareholders would go along with an AOL/Yahoo! combination, nor are there assurances that this would net more money to Yahoo! shareholders in the end. Time Warner shareholders might even potentially be an issue. Until there are more facts out other than the Journal’s un-named sources, it’s just all hearsay anyway.

Frankly, it’s a wonder that Bill Gates hasn’t tried to get involved in this deal with his own money. He could always say he’s too young to go do charity.

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Filed under: Earnings reports, Bad news, General Electric (GE)

General Electric(NYSE:GE)is blaming its huge Q1 miss on the financial markets, and Bear Stearns NYSE:BSC) specifically.

Two weeks before the end of the quarter, GE CEO Immelt did a webcast in which he said the quarter was great. Implication? Load up on the stock. And now everyone who did is hosed.

What happened? Jeff Immelt wants us to blame those nasty market conditions, the ones that were apparently unforeseeable two days before they occurred. Please. Jeff and GE shouldn’t compound this disaster by further damaging their already clobbered credibility. The credit crunch started last summer.

But GE’s problem isn’t just the credit crunch and Bears’ collapse. For example, NBC Universal was also a laggard. It posted revenue growth of 3% and profit growth of 3%; in January, GE had predicted 10% revenue growth and profit increases of 5-10%.

NBC U isn’t the most important part of GE’s portfolio, so it’s understandable that during the earnings call this morning, analysts didn’t demand an explanation of what happened with Jeff Zucker’s unit. But we sure would love an answer. The best-case scenario for the NBC U division: Zucker and his lieutenants underestimated the effects of the writers strike. Worst-case scenario: It’s reflective of a larger decline in the advertising business.

UPDATE FROM CONFERENCE CALL: Pathetic GE: Blame Bear Stearns For Our Mess.

See Also: NBCU: Strike Has “No Noticeable Impact” On Q4

Peter Kafka is managing editor at Silicon Alley Insider.

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We lost 80,000 jobs in the latest payroll reports as unemployment spiked to 5.1% the highest in two and a half years.  The 80,000 jobs lost was the biggest single contraction of the job market in five years.

From Market Watch on the dismal job numbers:

In employment data that would seem worthy of the name recession, the government reported Friday the steepest monthly job losses in five years as well as a spike in the unemployment rate for March.

The report confirms widespread pessimism about the near-term economic outlook.

Nonfarm payrolls fell by an estimated 80,000 in March, the Labor Department said. It marked the largest decline seen since March 2003, underscoring how reluctant employers remain to committing to making new hires.

Private-sector payrolls have now declined for four consecutive months, the data showed. Read full survey.

The nation’s unemployment rate surged to 5.1% last month, the highest since September 2005.

Source [blownmortgage]

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