Morning Look

"Few men have the natural strength to honor a friend's success without envy." - Aeschylus

Morning News of Note:

• VOD: Softer Cell In Mobile Phones, Older Users Say, More Is Less All the Features Just Confuse, They Tell Vodafone, So It Tries Making a Simple One Pushback From Young Staffers At a time when cellphones are letting users do more tricks, from video calling to downloading digital music, one of the latest models from Vodafone Group PLC has no camera, no browser and hardly any icons. Instead of being sleeker and cooler than ever, the phone is large and ordinary-looking. What it is, though, is easy to use, and if Vodafone is right, the market will love it. That's because of who its market is: people getting up in years. (Full Story)
• FOXH: Doctors Take Stock, Supply Data Concerns Over Conflict of Interest: Some Physicians Evaluating FoxHollow Device Own Options Some doctors helping evaluate the effectiveness of an increasingly popular device for clearing clogged arteries own stock and options in the company that makes it, regulatory filings show. FoxHollow Technologies Inc.'s SilverHawk catheter is one of the hottest selling new medical devices on the market and has sent the company's stock surging since it went public in October. As of the end of last year, 12 doctors were supplying information about the catheter's effectiveness to a registry the company uses to evaluate the SilverHawk -- its only product -- and to promote it to other doctors. (Full Story) WSJ
• COF: What's in Capital One's Wallet? Firm Rose Quickly By Opening Its Funds and Broadening Its Services Richard D. Fairbank may be the person most responsible for the boom in consumer debt. Teaser rates. Balance-transfer offers. Blizzards of direct-mail pitches. Credit terms tailored toward almost anyone, regardless of financial status. All those ideas, common now not only in the credit card business, but also in home mortgages and other forms of consumer lending, were first put to use at the company Fairbank co-founded, McLean-based Capital One Financial Corp. (Full Story) Washington Post
• INTC: Intel Corp.-INTC gearing up to launch new power saving processor-FT: Next week, semiconductor company INTC will introduce a new chip architecture that will play an important role for years to come in the computer industry. The new chip architecture, INTC's first in five years, will be launched in the second half of 2006, coinciding with MSFT's new Vista operating system. The new architecture will save power and add a new feature which will allow computers to turn on without the long "boot" process. The new chips, which have not yet been named, will succeed INTC's Pentium 4 and Pentium M.
• TWX: Icahn puts pressure on Time Warner - Financial Times (18.24 ) The Financial Times reports that Carl Icahn has asked Dick Parsons, Chmn and CEO of Time Warner, to increase share buybacks to $20 bn and to spin off a larger chunk of the group's cable business. People briefed on the plans said Mr Icahn told Mr Parsons in a telephone call last Fri that he and 3 other hedge fund investors Franklin Mutual, Jana Partners and SAC Capital had accumulated a $2.2 bn stake in Time Warner. Details of the call and the investor group are expected to be made public today following filings with the SEC on Fri.

Market Comments: The market opens slightly lower this am, and the newsflow is relatively quiet. SYY reported in-line results, and the stock is getting a bit of a pop. AAPL is spiking to new highs, despite the heavy tape.

My market exposure is relatively light, but I might look to get longer for a trade on any further pullback. Sentiment is nearing oversold readings, though we are not there yet. I'll be back with my weekly sentiment review later this morning.

long INTC, SYY, TWX