Main Street Maverick?

Mark Cuban is a polarizer. He also wrote quite a bit about the market in early May. They're still worth the read.

May 6: Tax the hell out of Wall Street and give it to Main Street

Make it tougher for the financial engineers and you will make it easier for investors to evaluate companies and hold on to shares and maybe even act like owners of those companies.

May 7: The biggest risk to the stock market? The illusion of liquidity

Regulating agencies should set a trading volume threshold relative to exchange/issue/security volume that when exceeded, the trading entity must “notify” the appropriate agency .

May 9: What business is Wall Street in?

The best analogy for traders? They are hackers.

Cuban writes that he used to be an extensive trader until the past three years. Three years? His thoughts on what the market has become in the past three weeks since he penned these pieces ... must be interesting.

He who fight and run away ...

Just like Robert Nesta Marley once said, "He who fight and run away lives to fight another day." I gave up on the Google trade. I still think the stock will recover from the selloff, but today's Microsoft-Yahoo news is too powerful. The kicker came at about 15 minutes before the close when CNBC quoted Mark Cuban saying (paraphrasing) that this move by MSFT is brilliant and creates a dominant player in everything online except search. For Google, Cuban adds, it leaves only search as a dominant niche.

I got out at 521, took my loss and moved on. GOOG is now at 516.

I moved into YHOO at 28.39 — a buck higher than it was early in the day. I saw it at 27.40 or so and thought it was too simple and easy. Something had to be wrong with a stock hovering there after receiving an offer of 31.

Since overthinking that non-trade, I'm now in a stock I normally dislike. I use Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Fantasy Sports, like tens of millions of people, but that has nothing to do with the performance of the stock.

(No different from Starbucks. I go there often, but don't want the stock.)

With Terry Semel's resignation yesterday, I think Jerry Yang will give this deal his blessing and spare Yahoo the torturous road to ruin.

Yang has his beeellions. I'll be content to make a few bones when YHOO hits 30.50.

> > > Microsoft's letter to the Yahoo board