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CEO Jerry Yang looks pleased in this company photo (Yahoo.com)
  • After weeks of watching the likes of Carl Icahn, T. Boone Pickens and others treat Yahoo like a punching bag, executives at the Internet giant hit back Friday, with chairman of the board Roy Bostock noting that the company still met its targets in the first half of the year and said it would meet earnings guidance for the rest of the year. “I think that is one hell of a performance for this management team considering what they been through the last six months,” Mr. Bostock told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting. Of course, whether mere discussions and carping are enough to knock someone off-stride is an undeveloped theory (the career stats of Manny Ramirez would seem to disprove this by itself), but perhaps a more emboldened Yahoo might find a way to navigate through the rough world of Internet advertising that has seen them become an also-ran to Google and an easy target to pick on by bloggers and others. Shares were down 0.5%, fallingt to $19.80, so it’s not as if Yahoo’s talk has restored the stock price yet.

    • S&P 500

  • For such a sullen session, dominated by news of GM’s country-sized losses, bad data on car sales, and another lousy report on payrolls, the markets managed to hang together reasonably well. The Dow and other major indexes finished in the red, but the losses were hardly dramatic, concentrated in utilities, transportation and other areas impacted most directly by oil prices. Oil spiked during the session, but settled down near the close, and equity investors calmed themselves as a result. The somewhat improved tone in equities through the last two weeks can be attributed, in part, to better-than-anticipated earnings, particularly if one engages in the contortions of removing financial stocks from the equation. Through Friday morning, 345 S&P 500 components had reported results, with an overall blended growth rate of minus 21.3%, according to Brown Brothers Harriman. Exclude financials, and that turns into a 6.5% growth rate, and leave out the frothy energy sector, and it’s pretty much a flat rate — 2%. “It’s sort of the Olympic scoring system — eliminate the best and the worst — and hopefully you get a median on how things are on average,” says Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Wealth Management. “Considering how the economy is doing, [earnings] aren’t falling off the table.”

    • Trading

  • If the stock keeps performing like this, they’re soon going to start referring to it as the “Little Board.” Shares of NYSE Euronext dropped sharply Friday after the company, which operates the New York Stock Exchange, said earnings fell short of analyst expectations. The shares dropped 13%, leaving it not far from its 52-week low of $38.59, reached on July 15. But analysts at Citigroup say confusion may be part of the reason for the fall-off. “We are disappointed by the expense trends,” they wrote, but added that “part of the reaction of the stock today reflects the complexity of this global exchange and difficulty in fully getting arms around all the moving parts.” That may continue for some time, as the company is probably going to have to continue to make acquisitions to grow, as market share continues to decline — the company had nearly 47% of the trading share of NYSE-listed issues, compared with nearly 66% at this time a year ago. “A lot of the volume has moved off of the Big Board even though they’re Big-Board traded stocks,” says Robert Pavlik, chief investment officer at Oaktree Asset Management.

    • Paper

  • Paper or plastic? This week, it’s paper in a rout. Shares of Weyerhauser bounced 4.4% Friday and trading in the options market suggested expectations of good things to come when the timber company reports earnings this coming Tuesday. The stock had been hit hard of late, similar to its rival International Paper, which posted stronger-than-anticipated earnings earlier in the week, but those in the options market were taking out bullish bets in advance of the report. Nearly 14,000 August call options changed hands Friday, compared with a meager 700 put options, suggesting a positive bias. “Front-month options are currently pricing in as much as a $4.20 move (7%) on back of the numbers… there is much to suggest a move to the upside from current levels,” writes Rebecca Engmann Darst, options analyst at Interactive Brokers.