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This week is a jam packed list full of the Unusual Suspects. We have many earnings reports, enough that we had to screen out some, and we have many issues to watch for news, charts, and coming developments to watch. This week’s list of Unusual Suspects is Adobe Systems Inc. (NYSE: ADBE), Aixtron Aktiengesellschaft (NASDAQ: AIXG), GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME), Hasbro Inc. (NYSE: HAS), Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY), Ciena Corp. (NASDAQ: CIEN), Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (NYSE: LGF), Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: OSIP), Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM), Somaxon Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: SOMX), Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited (NASDAQ: TEVA), and Tiffany & Co. (NYSE: TIF).
In this issue you will see detailed previews, coming expectations. relevant price and trading ranges, chart data, and other color for each situation where applicable.
Customer satisfaction with the e-commerce operations at Neiman Marcus and 
comScore, which measures online consumer behavior, is among the best companies at analyzing traffic to websites. comScore also decodes what people do when they get to their online destinations. The value of the data is fleeting, though. The internet is forever changing as the habits of people and businesses using the web move in new directions every day. Some websites lose popularity while others gain it.
The fun part of the holiday season that involves getting things on sale may be ending. Retailers have managed their inventories better than they did last year. Large stores will not be stuck with huge numbers of shelves of unsold gifts. That means that price cuts have already been made and that last-minute markdowns are not coming. 
Some of the largest websites in the country had extraordinary swings in their audiences in 2009. Many of the most well-known web destinations lost large portions of their traffic
Reuters: Galleon’s Raj Rajaratnam was indicted for securities fraud.
The second half of December is supposed to be when trading volume starts slowing down. That does not look to be the case for this coming week, and this list of the unusual suspects is packed with many major stocks and events. We actually have a mini-version of earnings season with companies like Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE), Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY), Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE), Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), and Research-in-Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM). There is also significant event-driven trading that will be present around Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), AXA (NYSE: AXA), Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (NYSE: BMY), Mead Johnson Nutrition Company (NYSE: MJN), OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: OSIP), PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish (NYSE: UUP), Visa, Inc. (NYSE: V), and Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC).
It is impossible to argue against the success of Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) as a company, and it is also impossible to say that the stock is not on fire. After all, 52-week highs AND all-time highs are the greatest measurement a stock can get. The problem here is that this last run has so many investors excited that the metrics for valuing Amazon are starting to resemble the great tech bubble all over again, at least for a time of “the new normal.” And Wednesday night’s tout from Jim Cramer on CNBC’s “Mad Money” said Amazon has another 74 points of upside.
Measurements from online research site Experian Hitwise show that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has been the most visited e-commerce site during the holiday shopping season since 2006. It is in the process of extending that lead and its dominance of the category.
There are bits of research that say holiday e-commerce sales rose in the double digits over the Thanksgiving weekend and did even better on Monday. E-commerce sales have risen as a total percentage of retail revenue since 1995, the year Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) was founded. Online sales are about 10% of total retail sales at this point. The rumors that growth was dying in the e-commerce industry began to circulate late last year when it became clear that both internet and bricks-and-mortar holiday sales numbers would drop from 2007. Online holiday buying activity had to keep a better pace than store-based sales for the theory of its bright future to hold. The internet has not changed anything meaningful about the American consumer’s basic buying habits otherwise.
Most people would guess that Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) would do well this holiday season–better than their respective competitors.
The fears about 2009 holiday sales may be coming true. Early research shows that retail activity was flat and in some regions fell sharply.
Reuters: Japan raised the idea that the G7 make a statement about the dollar.
Black Friday is under 48 hours away. We have seen much data and much analysis out there on the topic, but there are two fairly easy conclusions here…. well, make it three. First is that consumers are going to get deals galore. The add-in third notion, or the second, is that inventories at stores will be very low and many items may have to be bought online (with free or low-priced shipping to boot). But the big conclusion here is that it seems a foregone conclusion that the great deals and (quasi-) price matching and free shipping offered by retailers are still likely to create margin pressure for the retailers even if they have strong sales.
More than 13% of people who went to the top 500 retail websites went to Walmart.com for the week ending November 21. The number was up 77% from the previous week, which is not strange because interest in buying holiday gifts should be about to peak.
