Stocks Open Under Pressure

Morning News of Note:

• C: Citigroup Raises Bid for Guangdong Bank to $3 Bln Citigroup Inc., the world's biggest bank, raised its bid for Guangdong Development Bank to 24.1 billion yuan ($3 billion), beating two rival offers for the state-owned Chinese lender, people involved in the talks said. The U.S. bank and local partners added more than 1 billion yuan to their bid for an 85 percent stake, the people said, asking not to be identified before a buyer is chosen. (Full Story) Bloomberg
• ELOS: Syneron Medical-ELOS downgraded to Sec Performer from Outperformer@CIBC CIBC's channel checks indicate that ELOS will have a difficult time meeting Q4 Street revenue estimates of $29M. The broker has reduced Q4 forecasts to 50c/$26M from 58c/$31.5M and 2006 estimates to $2.04/$116M from $2.39/$137M
• INTC: Intel to Overhaul Marketing in Bid To Go Beyond PCs Intel Corp. is set to announce a major overhaul of its corporate and product branding, a move designed to symbolize the chip maker's transformation into a supplier for products beyond personal computers. The changes include a new version of the company's blue logo -- without the lowered "e" that has long been a part of Intel's branding -- along with a new tagline, "Leap ahead," emulating such campaigns as "Think different" from Apple Computer Inc. (Full Story) WSJ
• RIMM: NTP Wins Time To File Defense In RIM Dispute Patent-holding company NTP Inc. won a 30-day extension from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, giving it more time to file a defense of patents at the center of its long-running battle with BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion Ltd. The delay gives NTP lawyers more time to respond to the patent office's rejection of some of its patent claims, which are key to a court dispute that could lead to the shutdown of BlackBerry wireless email service in the U.S. (Full Story) WSJ
• CHK: Chesapeake Insiders' Energized Buying IN A SEASON when insider buying activity is meager, to say the least, Chesapeake Energy has stood out with its heavy volume of insider purchases. After taking a brief pause this fall, two top executives resumed their buying binge of Chesapeake stock, snapping up another $72 million worth so far this month in the open market. (Full Story) BARRONS
• GOOG: GOOGLE WARNED OVER VOIP PATENT BY SERIAL SUIT-ER A little known patent-holding company has threatened "to bring Google to its knees," unless the Web giant agrees to settle allegations of patent infringement. New York-based Rates Technology Inc. has slapped Google with a lawsuit claiming that Google Talk, the company's voice-over-Internet-protocal service, infringes on patents covering technology that facilitates cheap 'Net-based telephone service. (Full Story) NY Post

Market Comments: The market opened down this morning, with the bears getting the upper hand. We have seen several strong openings that led to late day weakness. Maybe today will see the reverse of this, with a weak open leading to a bounce later in the day.

Oil is down a bit, to just under $60. The yield on the 10-year is lower also to 4.34%.

I mentioned that the recent weakness of leading stocks could mean a correction is ahead. But I just noticed that the Nasdaq has been down for 4 straight weeks. Usually when this happens, there is a sharp snapback higher, to keep the bears on their toes. The question is, does this occur next week?

long C, ELOS, INTC