12:50pm (EST)

Finally, Barron’s has done us a favor…

Most of you know Barron’s and I don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things and every now and then it seems the magazine will run an article on a company that we have profiled as a trade.  Call it déjà vu, luck of the draw, or how the cookie crumbles but the firm ran a negative piece in its Weekend Roundup on the for-profit colleges that talks about how the low graduation rates are and the high debt students are carrying despite not graduating. 

Of course, we have been on this trade like grass on dirt and we recently rolled out of a profiled Apollo Group (APOL, $53.84, down $2.17) November put position into a December put option position.  Current subscribers are up 30% on the new trade and we are looking for more downside if we can get some more negative SEC news about the company… 

Well, well, well…look who got an upgrade this morning…Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF, $37.69, up $2.68) is flying higher after Goldman Sachs (GS, $175.36, up $3.58) upgraded the stock from “Neutral” to “Buy” and added it to their Conviction Buy List.  Goldman also raised their 6-month price target from $36 to $45.  FBR and Credit Suisse also came out with upgrades.  We have had some luck shorting Abercrombie & Fitch and the 7% surge today has put the stock right in our target zone.  However, the storm is too strong for us to step in here and the company announces earnings on Friday.  Some think the company will surprise but we don’t feel the urge to buy call options either.  We just don’t trust the company… 

RadioShack (RSH, $20.17, up $2.43) is up nearly 14% today after the company said they will sell Apple’s (AAPL, $199.73, up $5.39) iPhone at their stores.  The company said the iPhone will be available in the Dallas-Fort Worth and New York City areas beginning later this month and in stores nationwide in 2010.  We recently profiled a RadioShack trade that returned many of you over 150%, and as you can imagine, the analysts are tripping over each other to upgrade this one.  Credit Suisse also upgraded RadioShack from “Neutral” to “Outperform”, calling the news a “game-changer”.  I like how powerful that made this sound because it will help the Shack’s earnings in the quarters to come.  Credit Suisse echoes our sentiment and commented that the iPhone could add more than 25 cents to 2010 earnings.  The price target was raised from $15 to $25.

FBR Capital got into the action by raising their 2010 estimate from $1.75 to $2.00 per share.  The raised their rating on RadioShack to “Outperform” and the price target from $23 to $26.

Another stock we have been watching closely is Research In Motion (RIMM, $60.78, up $2.06) which broke through $60 despite a downgrade from Susquehanna.  There seems to be some takeover chatter hitting the water coolers this morning and most of it centers on Microsoft (MSFT, $28.68, up $0.16).  Although it is nothing new, some traders think Microsoft could finally be interested in launching a bid for RIMM.

This rumor will likely get shot-down as the day drags on although the deal between the two companies makes a lot of sense…

And finally, Priceline.com (PCLN, $175.07, up $3.07) reports AFTER the bell.  We were under the assumption the company would be reporting BEFORE the bell but obviously that is not the case.  Our resource had said the firm would report before the bell and when we didn’t see anything by 9am this morning we should have double-checked.  In any event, the trade we profiled from Friday is positive and we have updated the trade in the Members Area along with a few others…

The Dow has hit a new high for the year as it is up 155 points to 10,179.

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