After a couple of weeks of absolute silence and hard work the Covestor Blog has finally gone live and I have some spare time to dedicate to this blog.

It seems that, after a gloomy slow period, the technology industry has finally decided to make a couple of big leaps.

First and foremost Microsoft (MSFT). Bids $44.6 billion in cash and shares to buy Yahoo! (YHOO). It never really gave up and an opportunity such as this comes along only once. Yahoo! announces massive layoffs, Microsoft starts pillaging and making generous offers to Yahoo’s top employees.
Microsoft must really need Yahoo since a $44.6 billion offer is around $31 per share, a premium of 62% over Yahoo!’s last closing price. My bet is that this time they’ll sell and get outta there.

Second exciting thing happening today is the bids over the C block for the 700MhZ auction. The bidding now stands at $4.72 billion after 17 rounds and the 18th has just started. Everybody knew Google (GOOG) wanted a piece of the action badly, and I think they have just done something really, really clever.

While the terms for the auction were being discussed Google lobbied really hard to make sure that a winning bid above the minimum level would be subject to open access provision.
Can you see where I’m going here.
The name of the bidders are obviously not disclosed until the auction is finished but I’m confident that Google will go home with all its money and free, open access to the spectrum. I think their game has been to bid hard until the amount edged as close as possible to the minimum level and then just wait for one of the big fishes (Verizon or AT&T - VZ, T) to make the big bid and give them free access.

The last thing I want to talk about is Apple (AAPL). Shares tanked, badly, right after I reopened my position full of confidence with the MacWorld approaching.
I should have perhaps heeded my own advice. “Should I short Apple”.

Too late to complain now, I’m in long, and sticking to my guns. No doubt Apple was overvalued, despite that they still have a solid and well executed business. Growth is stable and if they don’t screw it up by missing iPhone release dates and burning laptops AAPL will keep being a sound long term hold.

If you’re wondering why I started putting the stock tickers in the blog post it’s simply because these posts are now automatically imported in my Covestor Blog and I want them to be automatically auto-tagged with the relevant stocks.