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Technology stocks in the US continue to recover in 2006 as spending surpasses expectations, and although some sectors like communications gear and semiconductors would thrive, others would suffer. A Seligman Communications and Information Fund portfolio manager with an excellent track record among large technology funds explains why companies like Symantec, McAfee, Cymer, Seagate would do well and why investors must steer clear of stocks like Dell, The Knot, and Avici Systems.

The values of the shares of NovaGold Resources and Seabridge Gold depend largely on the amount of gold in their properties. The share prices of the two companies have jumped as expert estimates of their gold resources rose.

The shares of for-profit colleges appear unattractive due to concerns about their recruiting practices and the possible impact of student loans. There are also concerns about the quality of education provided by these colleges to their students.

Intuitive Surgical's shares go for over 75 times trailing 12-month earnings which reflect the adoption of the company's da Vinci surgery robot. The shares could fall 25 percent once people get their surgery robotically especially since system sales contribute to half of the company's revenue.

Flash memory is beating the hard disk drive as the flash technology shares are believed to fare well and reward the investors who buy these expensive stocks. Apple Computer has replaced the iPod Mini with nano thereby shifting itself from being the world' largest buyer of little hard drives from Seagate Technology and Hitachi and International Business Machines to the largest buyer of flash from Samsung Electronics.

Loral Space & Communications, a the commercial-satellite maker is giving its ownership of the business to the hedge funds that has paid pennies for the companies debts that would wipe out the equity of existing stockholders. The shareholders have thus waged a battle in bankruptcy court against the Loral Space & Communications.

Roche is leading the way toward 'personalized medicine' and for biotechnology, by combining drugs and diagnostics. Roche's non-voting shares traded in Zurich have increased more than 50% in the past couple of years, to 128.50 Swiss francs in 2004, due to which stockholders are quite satisfied.

The stocks of Clean Energy Fuels appear overpriced as it has already priced in the company's growth prospects as a supplier of natural gas to trucks and buses . The company's shares, which trade at around $21 a share, could drop in value by 30%.

The shares of British software company Autonomy appear overvalued and do not reflect the company's returns on investments. The company's share prices are trading at 1,846 pence and are overvalued by about 20%.

Gordon L. Johnson II, an analyst at Hapoalim Securities, shares his opinions on solar energy stocks. He recommends that investors sell some solar energy stocks and hold others due to a potential supply glut in the industry.

The shares of online brokerage optionsXpress appear overvalued after their price rose to $17.75 each. The firm's purchase of trading seminar group Optionetics may fail to boost growth.

The shares of MasterCard trade at a discount at just 15 times its anticipated earnings and some believe that these shares may be a better play in an economic recovery. The prospects of these shares are compared with those of Visa.

The shares of Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger could drop due to decreasing sales of assault rifles. Assault rifle sales increased after the 2008 US presidential election due to fears of a sales ban on these weapons.

Federal prosecutors are investigating Mike Schaefer, Adam S. Gottbetter, and Mark N. Tompkins for promoting the shares of Gran Tierra Energy. The shares of Alternative Energy Sources were also used by the three investors to gain money.

The shares of solar panel manufacturers First Solar and Energy Conversion Devices appear vulnerable and may drop due to declining silicon prices. The gap between supply and demand of silicon could widen in 2010, reducing their per-watt advantage over their rivals.

Republic Bancorp offers tax-refund anticipation loans with ultra-high interests which many regulators and consumer activists consider predatory. The shares of the bank have more than doubled to a high of $35 but have settled to a price of around $24 as of November 2008. The shares could fall if the government curbs tax-refund anticipation loans.

CBS declined to buy ProElite due in part to Kimbo Slice's loss in the first 14 seconds of his CBS prime-time match. The shares of ProElite have fallen from $15 in 2007 to just 70 cents in October 2008. ProElite founder Florian Homm is being investigated for his trading where he could easily inflate the share's price to generate performance fees.

The colleagues of David Zinberg at BIDZ.com and other enterprises are facing or have been convicted of criminal charges ranging from fraud to prostitution. The shares of the auction website have gone down from $22.50 to $8.72 because of this.

Lawsuits against Marvel Entertainment, Stan Lee, and Bill and Hillary Clinton are pushing the claims from Peter F. Paul that Stan Lee Media was undone by the actions of the accused. Paul's associates argue that Stan Lee Media owns rights to Marvel characters and that they want half the profits that Marvel is making.

Investors should wait for evidence that Applied Materials' SunFab line of equipment for making solar-power cells can perform as well as First Solar's. The summer of 2008 will be the first time that SunFab's customers get to try production on SunFab and no one has demonstrated a technique for installing the huge solar-power panels that measure two meters to a side.

The shares of National Financial Partners have fallen below their initial offering price as sputtering sales and management turnover leave many investors wondering. One of the company's star brokers is being sued for their 'life settlement' contracts while another broker is being pursued by the IRS for unpaid taxes.

Shares of Marvell Technology Group could double from their level of $11 a share if the company manages to resolve issues regarding its options and release a 3G-capable chip to the market. The semiconductor company's shares have fallen by two-thirds, but its new technology offers some promise.

Systemax is under active investigation by Florida's attorney general due to widespread complaints about TigerDirect's failure to pay rebates. The company's high gross margins are attributed to this failure to pay rebates and an end to this practice could bring down the price of their shares.

ParkerVision remains unsuccessful in its bid to come up with a successful technology product. The wireless company has wasted $160 million in its failed endeavors over 17 years. Barb Paldus and Mike Farmwald continue challenging the company's claims about its products.

Eli Lilly's P rasugrel heart drug had mixed test results but the drug will still go to market because it prevented more incidents of heart attack than added bleeding. The company's shares could drop another 10% if the product fails to generate sales especially since the company has no other pot ential blockbuster product in development and some of their patents will expire by 2011 .

Shares of Chinese silicon wafer maker LDK Solar dropped by nearly 30% on issues surrounding its accounting and production practices. The company's inventory is overvalued by as much as $92 million and production yields are actually lower than what the company announces.

The use of statistical analysis and quantitative research by hedge funds investment companies to monitor stocks on Wall Street is discussed.

The decline in the stocks of Micron Technology Inc. due to plunge in the prices of memory chips is presented.

The Thomson acquired Reuters Group Holdings for $18 billion cash and stock deal. The impact of the merger on the stock performance and revenues of Thomson-Reuter company are analyzed.

The fall in the sales of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators of Medtronic Inc. despite increase in the demand for defibrillators in the United States is discussed. The fall in the share prices of the company too is examined.

An update is presented on the possible release of new video-conferencing products by Cisco Systems Inc., and the potential effects on company stocks.

The shares of database operator NeuStar fell by about 14% to US$25 on the morning of September 22, 2006 after the company agreed to a 10% cut in the fees it gets from US phone companies for operating the country's call-routing database. However, by the end of the day the stock closed at US$28.34, down just 2%, leading to a divergence of opinion among analysts about what NeuStar's price cut would augur for investors.

Announcements of average sales growth for June 2006 by flat-panel display makers like Corning, LG Philips and AU Optronics have sharply declined the stocks of the companies. The LCD manufacturers attribute the slide to their large production capacity that the manufacturers added in 2006, rather than to the failing demand.

The expiry of the US patent on Merck's cholesterol-lowering pill Zocor is expected to have a huge economic impact on Pfizer's market-leading cholesterol drug, Lipitor. However, some analysts believe that even if US sales of Lipitor dropped to zero, Pfizer's balance sheet and the huge cash flow from its other products would support a value of US$25 a share, while Pfizer itself aims to increase sales by introducing an experimental drug that boosts blood levels of the body's 'good' cholesterol.

A report on performance on EMC shares, which did not halt even after the data-storage company reaffirmed its growth guidance, is presented. EMC has five new businesses in 2006 that should each reach $1 million in annual revenues within the next few years which are server virtualization, content management, data center management, storage virtualization and data security.

The performance of shares of Aspect Medical system is presented which have built its business out of manufacturing a system that helps anesthesiologist decide if patient is waking up in the midst of surgery. With the stumble in company share prices Aspect is eager to direct investor's attention to the newly launched Brain monitors that would help psychiatrists find the right medicine for depressed patients.

The complaint against Gradient Analytics firm and its investor clients that were filed in a New Jersey state Court by the Canadian drug maker Biovail (BVF), alleging a conspiracy to drive down Biovail stock is presented. Biovail filings show that it received a subpoena of its own from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is formally investigating the company's, financial performance from 2001 to 2003.

Shares of the Sunnyvale, California-based SanDisk fell 15% in November 2005 after Intel announced that it was joining Micron Technology in a multibillion-dollar venture to make flash memory chips. The partners claimed to have leading-edge technology and stated the joint venture would not pay new royalties to SanDisk.

Amedisys is one of the fastest-growing, most profitable members of the American home health-care industry, yet half the company's free-floating shares are sold short, indicating that a sizable number of investors are bearish on its prospects. Critics doubt its unusual success can continue, but Amedisys maintains it will do even better in the future.

Pharmacy-benefit manager Express Scripts decided in 2005 to drop Pfizer's cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor from its list of preferred drugs, in favor of generic versions of rival drug Zocor. Pfizer retaliated by cutting off rebate payments to Express Scripts in 2006, and analysts are keenly watching how the confrontation affects stocks of both companies.

Seattle Times carried an important story in its August 7, 2005 issue that described the scandalous ways in which doctors used Wall Street's money to discuss investigational drugs. The newspaper claimed that it found 26 instances in which researchers leaked inside information on drug research, making the hedge funds an unfair deal and threatening the integrity of medical research.

The Premium-priced shares of Network Appliance, gained first week of August when the company warned that its sales had fallen short of expectations for its fiscal quarter that ended in July 2005. The shortfall resulted from NetApp's own disruptive technology such as a midrange offering introduced in May, called the FAS3000 series.

The stocks of technology sector fell sharply in the first quarter of the year 2005 with the Morgan Stanley High Tech Index falling 7% and the Nasdaq falling to its lowest level of 4.6%. Among other companies Sun Microsystems reported a sales drop, International Business Machines (IBM) reported lower sales from January to March 2005, and Infosys technologies (INFY) missed expected earnings.

Digital River, e-commerce firm has got its billon dollar market value by selling lots of downloaded copies of Symantec's Norton AntiVirus and also has kept its shares aloft by silencing stock analysts with the threat of lawsuit. Miller Johnson Steichen Kinnard, a brokerage firm, was demanded by the lawyers of the Digital River to discontinue coverage on 15th March 2005. Reasons for stopping the coverage are discussed.

LM Ericsson, the Swedish wireless-equipment supplier, has reported record operating margins of 24 percent in 2004. Though Ericsson sales increased because customers were raising their cellular network investments, some analysts feel that the company's operating margins could drop to around 18 percent in the long term.

Chip stocks increased with endorsements from Lehman and JP Morgan while the Nasdaq composite Index finished the week up 0.34% at 2071. Details regarding the inventories of Intel, Microsoft, Novell, Advanced Micro Devices, National semiconductors and others are presented.

Cyberonics' cyclothymic, a device used as a treatment for epileptic seizures, shares went from 40 to 13 and back to 45 as the FDA did not back the proposal. With the approval of new data presented by Skip Cummins, chief executive to the FDA, the company is expected to reach $1billion in sales by 2010 and thereby become the industry leader in the next frontier for medical devices.

Cisco Systems, the giant network-gear vendor on 10 January 2005 reported that its sales were up to 12% to $6.1billion, whereas the earnings rose to 20% to 21cents per share. Investors were indicated by the Cisco during its conference call that sales would grow only modestly in the current April quarter of year 2005.

Prudential and Cowen analysts upgraded chip stocks, forecasting a June 2005 recovery in semiconductor sales and profit margins that helped the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index to a 4.4% gain with inventories declining at the chip makers' customers. However, Merrill Lynch analysts resisted the upgrade fever and warned clients that the semiconductor industry shows little evidence of growth in sales or margins, in addition to excessive inventories and production capacity.

Cable television stocks dropped in the year 2004 after phone companies announced plans to replace it with a fiberoptic line. The Regional Bell Operating Companies ultimately succeeded in the multichannel TV business by running fiber to residential neighbors, the sting would be felt most sharply by the satellite TV companies DirecTV and EchoStar Communications.