This Week's 5 Smartest Stock Moves

• Email
• Share
• Print

If you're feeling good about the market, you're not alone. Take my hand as we go over some of this week's more uplifting headlines.

1. Every day is Black Friday
It's OK to laugh at your turkey-fed neighbors who got up before the crack of dawn to line up at the local consumer electronics superstore to land one of a handful of doorbuster deals. Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) is letting folks sleep in and avoid the crowds with its Black Friday sale.

"You shouldn't have to stand in a long line to get a great deal," reads the shopping site's Black Friday Deals page. "We're searching for the best Black Friday deals everywhere -- including deals other stores are planning -- so we can meet or beat their prices and bring them to you even earlier."

I've already seen Amazon match the $5 DVD and $35 video game offers that some retailers have been promoting. In a sticky twist, Amazon is offering limited quantities throughout the day. It's a move that will likely keep online shoppers glued to the site over the weekend.

2. Why pass when you can passport?
TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO) may have flunked out in its latest quarter, but at least it has a plan for growth overseas. The patent-rich pioneer of digital video recorders is breaking into the United Kingdom through a partnership with Virgin Media.

Let's hope the deal can help breathe new life into TiVo's lackluster performance. TiVo swung to a loss in its latest quarter, shedding both direct and indirect subscribers along the way. Its guidance for the year's final quarter calls for continued sequential weakness.

TiVo's best approach at this point is to license its technology through as many global partners as possible. It recently launched in New Zealand that way, and now it has a promising software deal in the United Kingdom that will expose the service to Virgin's 4 million subscribers.

3. Make it a Blockbuster right
The dual class structure is toast at Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI). The video rental chain is converting its less popular B shares on a one-to-one basis with its more prolific Class A shares.

It was starting to get embarrassing. As low as Blockbuster's common stock was trading, the seemingly superior Class B stock was trading at a 54% discount. You know your prospects are dicey when even the arbitragers don't want to play by buying the Class B shares and shorting an equal number of the Class A equities.

However, that's a trade that would have worked splendidly given Blockbuster's move. The company has enough on its plate at the moment, so even if the conversion news initially dented the share price of the Class A stock, it's the right thing to do. It will eliminate a humiliating distraction.

4. The HP weigh
Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) beat analyst profit expectations for its latest quarter this week, something that the computing and printing giant has done in all but two periods since the arrival of CEO Mark Hurd.

The real gem in HP's report, though, is when you stack its performance against that of languishing rival Dell (Nasdaq: DELL).

"The enterprise-class storage and servers division reported a 13% sequential sales boost to $4.2 billion, and the personal systems group saw 17% higher sales over last quarter," Anders Bylund points out. "By way of comparison, Dell's best-performing division -- small and medium business systems -- reported a 5% sequential gain last week."

This is how it's done. During the first couple of years of Hurd's tenure, HP wasn't necessarily eating Dell's lunch. It didn't have to. Simply by widening its profit margins, HP was able to deliver huge bottom-line gains despite ho-hum growth on the top line. With most of those efficiencies realized, HP's success on sequential revenue gains is exactly where the company needs to excel.

5. It's the food that makes it good
There were quite a few food giants reporting earnings this week. Is it a coincidence that Hormel Foods (NYSE: HRL) and Campbell Soup (NYSE: CPB) posted their quarterly results during the days leading up to the feast-o-riffic Thanksgiving Day?

It probably is a coincidence, but my mother always told me never to invest on an empty stomach.

Hormel and Campbell earned the tableside accolades, as both companies blew past Wall Street's net income targets.

	EPS	Estimate	Year Ago
Hormel	$0.77	$0.68	$0.50
Campbell	$0.87	$0.81	$0.77

Source: Yahoo! Finance.

Mm, mm, Spam!

Digest safely, my friends.