Under the Radar

Drive maker Seagate (STX) is up 8%+ as it was reported that CEO Steve Luczo bought 100k shares on Tuesday. If my memory serves correct, Steve used to be an investment banker, so...

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ML is insisting today (good call for a quiet day) that PALM can earn $1.00/share next year. CY 2010 consensus is around breakeven as far as I can tell. The stock at $13 is telling you that real consensus is higher than that.

Palm - Place you bets

Palm, as you can see from that chart, is up huge year to date in anticipation of next month's launch of the new Palm Pre smartphone.

The chart tells you all you need to know about expectations for the thing. They're huge. I would bet a lot of money that one of these two other things happen:

• Dell buys them. The whole company, not the phones. Dell has cash and needs a boost. Lots of color over here.
• The Pre is a flop. Apple and Blackberrry have the market pretty well covered for business. Everyone else has some version for the student crowd.

A much better OS would go long way to tilt the odds but I haven't heard much detail on that of late. The Dell thing feels likely.

PALM

You're not alone if you didn't notice that smart phone maker PALM's shares have tripled since December 5.

Well-know tech investor and hippie Roger McNamee was just on CNBC on Maria's show bulling the hell out of it. He might be right that as consumers expect more computing from their communications device, we're ripe for a new mobile operating system, which apparently they have.

The stock's run should continue tomorrow.