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Tuesday Equity Ideas: PFWD, MVIS, USO, YHOO

Phase Forward Inc. (PFWD) – Down 3% and now trading at Friday’s close of $17.21 after hitting an intra-day high yesterday of $19.24, completely erasing the gains following Monday’s upgrade from Needham on no news. The two-day 11.8% swing is completely unwarranted.

Microvision Inc. (MVIS) – Lower by 13.3% yesterday to close at $3.00 on heavy volume of 2.04 million shares. Interesting story behind this one. The financial blog aggregator SeekingAlpha published a negative post on Microvision by someone who apparently works in a hedge fund that is short the company. Not sure how that happened given the blatant conflict of interest but the post has been removed this morning “pending investigation of claims of material inaccuracies.” Think Microvision gets a bounce today.

United States Oil Fund (USO) – The price of crude oil continues to hover just below its all time trading high of $139.89 and as such this oil ETF is continuing to consolidate in a tight range from $107 to $112.50, trading closer to the top of that range today at $111. Keep an eye on a potential breakout especially in light of the weekend’s disappointing Jeddah meeting that resulted in Saudi Arabia raising daily crude output by an insignificant 200,000 barrels.

Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) – Up 4.8% to 22.46 on chatter from TechCrunch that a Microsoft-Yahoo buyout talks are back on, though its being reported that the price is lower than the $33 bid that Microsoft was offering during buyout discussions in May. The rumor mill will certainly heat up again and put Yahoo shares in a tizzy.

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