TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO - option chain) stock is falling today after the U.S. Court of Appeals granted the request of EchoStar (NASDAQ: SATS) to stay the contempt order imposed by the U.S. District Court pending the outcome of SATS's appeal. TIVO says it is confident that it will win the appeal.. If you think this stock won't be rising too far in the coming months, then it could be a good time to look at a bearish hedged play on TIVO.

This morning, TIVO opened at $9.13. So far today the stock has hit a low of $9.05 and a high of $9.79. As of 11:45, TIVO is trading at $9.22, down $1.55 (-14.4%). The chart for TIVO looks neutral and S&P gives TIVO a neutral 3 STARS (out of 5) hold ranking.

Today was one of those days where stocks looked lower early in the morning, traded lower, and stayed there. Despite recovering from triple-digit losses in the DJIA earlier on, we still closed down 65.63 at 8.675.24 on the DJIA.

The S&P took a bigger hit by almost 13.00 at a lower level of 931.76. Bond prices rallied and we saw a 9 basis point drop in the 10-Year Treasury to 3.55%.

Here were today's top analyst upgrades, and there were several key downgrades as well.

TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO) closed at $6.98. The Federal district court for Eastern Texas upheld TIVO patents and said Echostar (NYSE: DISH) is infringing on them. TIVO June option implied volatility is at 87; July is at 81; verses its 26-week average of 88, according to Track Data, suggesting non-directional near term price movement.

Moody's (NYSE: MCO) closed at $28.64. MCO is hosting an investor meeting on June 4. MCO June option implied volatility is at 57, July is at 55; below its 26-week average of 71, according to Track Data, suggesting decreasing price movement.

Option Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com

DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) closed at $22.98. DTV is scheduled to report Q4 EPS on February 10. February option implied volatility is at 64; March is at 59; above its 26-week average of 53, according to Track Data, suggesting larger price movement.

Echostar (NASDAQ: DISH) closed at $12.84. DISH is expected to report Q3 EPS in late February. March option implied volatility is at 83, June is at 74; above its 26-week average of 63, according to Track Data, suggesting larger price movement.

EchoStar (NASDAQ: DISH) closed at $26.70 Monday, near five-year low. DISH August option implied volatility of 57 is above its 26-week average of 45 according to Track Data, suggesting larger price movement.

Financial Select Sector-XLF overall volatility at 43; 26-week average is 34

Option Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com

MAJOR PAPERS:

• Three years into its $35B takeover of Nextel, the Wall Street Journal reported that Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE: S) is considering selling or spinning off the troubled unit. Few details were available and a deal is not imminent.
• The Wall Street Journal also reported that pressure is mounting on Citigroup Incorporated's (NYSE: C) CEO Vikram Pandit to show that he can turn around the troubled bank. Executives believe Pandit, who has been praised for his cautious and deliberate approach, has been taking "too long" to make crucial decisions.

WEB SITES:

• According to a person close to Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG), Reuters reported that Google and Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ: YHOO) are still "hammering out the intricacies" of a potential advertising and search deal. The source said no final agreement has been reached yet.
• ABC News learned that if Rupert Murdoch does not testify in a lawsuit accusing one of his companies of "corporate espionage," it may cost News Corporation (NYSE: NWS) hundreds of millions of dollars, a federal judge overseeing the trial said. News Corp has denied any wrongdoing, and lawyers maintain Murdoch had no direct knowledge of the unit's alleged hacking into EchoStar Corporation's (NASDAQ: SATS)/DISH Network Corporation's (NASDAQ: DISH) security code and posting it on the Internet.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says this major player's lowered guidance shows why its whole sector is uninvestible.

Is it EchoStar (NASDAQ: DISH) (Cramer's Take)? Or is it foreclosures? Is it DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) (Cramer's Take) or is it bills that are too high? Is it Verizon (NYSE: VZ) (Cramer's Take) or is it house poor fears?

We will debate the Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) (Cramer's Take) blowup -- it just cut its forecasts for 2007 sales, new subscribers and cash -- for a long time. Trying to figure out how a monopoly utility that we used to regard as a utility that could no more be shut off than Con Ed, has become a totally discretionary competitive item that needs to be sold and can't be pulled.

The implications either way show you the limits of this former wonder industry. For all of the years I have been in the business, investing in cable stocks worked. The companies always grew with consistent cash flow and that was enough. They were utilities that always talked about how dividends weren't tax-advantaged and instead focused on the broad expansion and cash flow growth.

Technology insider blog, TechCrunch, ran a thought-provoking post yesterday about Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) entitled, The Google Set-Top Box. The article speculates that the search-engine giant may leverage its new open-source operating system, Android, to address TV advertising in a revolutionary way. Google is already testing a new ad platform for TV with Echostar (NASDAQ: DISH), being propped up with data provided by a recent deal with Nielsen. But this just addresses the way ads are bought and sold. According to TechCrunch, almighty Google's ambitions for television go way beyond just ad delivery.

In short, the article posits that Google's aspirations for the mobile phone can be applied to the set-top box, itself essentially a computer. Android's open-source application platform can be used to help promote and support new developments that would turn TV watching more like Internet browsing. "In many ways," says Google's head of TV development, Vincent Dureau, "we think that television is becoming like the Internet in that there is a multiplication of channels. This creates challenges for viewers, advertisers and creators."

So, what does this mean in practice?

The rumor mongers on Wall Street took the bait on the EchoStar Communications (NASDAQ: DISH) buyout by AT&T (NYSE: T). The satellite TV company's shares rallied from just above $39 on Friday to a high of $50.29 yesterday.

Never give a sucker an even break. After the close of the market, The Wall Street Journal said that it was all just speculation. The paper says, "one person close to AT&T says the two sides aren't even talking about an M&A deal."

Today, EchoStar shares may well go back below $40 and a lot of people will lose money. DISH traded close to 22 million shares yesterday.

The incident is a hard lesson in buying on rumors. The AT&T deal seemed to be such a clear "win" for both companies. Having a national TV play would make it easier for the telephone company to compete with cable. No one bothered to mention that a partnership between the two companies would probably work nearly as well as AT&T spending $25 billion to buy DISH.

Listen for some cries of pain at the open today.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

EchoStar (NYSE: DISH) closed at $39.83 Friday.

• Smith Barney upgraded DISH from Hold to Buy on: "1) attractive valuation, and 2) our ongoing conviction that there's a 65% chance that AT&T (NYSE: T) acquires DISH over the next 12 months. We still view $52 as fair value for DISH shares. Maintain $52 target price DISH within 12-month."
  
• DISH announced on 9/26/07 the proposal to spin off its technology and infrastructure assets.
  
• DISH overall of 50 is above its 26-week average of 34 according to Track Data, suggesting larger price risk.

Daily options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

MAJOR PAPERS:

• According to people familiar with the situation, the Wall Street Journal reported that Hurray! Holding Co Ltd (NASDAQ: HRAY) and Enlight Media have agreed to a merger valued at about $160M, that could be announced as early as Monday afternoon.
• The Financial Times reported that anti-corruption investigators are probing payments by Chevron Corporation's (NYSE: CVX) ChevronTexaco and Royal Dutch Shell PLC (NYSE: RDS.A) to a company owned by powerful Nigerian politician James Ibori, whom they suspect has laundered tens of millions of dollars in British banks, cars and property.
• The Financial Times also reported that Vodafone Group Plc (NYSE: VOD) is looking to increase its presence in China through a government-led restructuring of the country's telecommunications industry.
• According to Barron's "The Trader," there is speculation that the decline in the shares of Echostar Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) last week has reinvigorated AT&T Inc's (NYSE: T) interest in buying the company.

OTHER PAPERS:

• Citigroup Incorporated (NYSE: C) is said to have "informally" approached The Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc's (NYSE: RBS) CEO, Sir Fred Goodwin, the Telegraph reported.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has cut a deal with TV ratings service Nielsen that will give the search company access to demographic data for ad targeting. Reuters says that, "Google will combine the data it receives from television set top-boxes with information that Nielsen, the dominant TV ratings company in the United States, provides on viewers by gender and age."

Google hopes that the additional layer of targeting will make its TV advertising sales package even more effective at aiming marketing messages at people who are most likely to respond to them. Today the company has access to a relatively small part of the country's ad inventory, about 14 million homes, through a deal with Echostar (NASDAQ: DISH).

Adding the Nielsen data to its current ad target system, which is used primarily on the internet, is likely to make network TV executives and sales organizations a bit tense. If the system works well, it could take the marketing and the pricing of inventory out of the hands that traditionally hold it. In other words, Google could destroy a system for selling TV ads that has been in place for decades.

It may not matter that networks and cable systems do not want Google to take away their roles as middlemen. If the new systems works, they are out of luck, and time.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor of 247wallst.com.

Looking at some of the 52-week highs from a week in the market is often indicative of its direction.

Last week Echostar (NASDAQ: DISH) was moving over $52. Its 52-week low is $33.55. The high signals a couple of critical points. The first is that strategic M&A is far from dead. There were a number of rumors and analyst reports that said AT&T (NYSE: T) would be a buyer of the satellite TV company to allow the telco to more effectively compete with cable in the television market. The other reason Echostar has been moving up is that it has been able to add HDTV channels at a more rapid rate than cable because it does not have the bandwidth constraints that cable does. Satellite TV was viewed as dying just a year ago. HDTV demand has changed that. And, while private equity buying may be moribund, a critical technology and customer base is still attractive to another corporate buyer.

Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) hit a 52-week high last week at $59.75, and it hit it Friday and the market collapsed. But, when investors get nervous, a big global company with a strong balance sheet becomes a haven. Coke has more than a billion in cash and little debt. Its earnings were good. And, perhaps most important, it has a worldwide customer base for inexpensive products. Not the kind of things people will cut out in a tight economy.

MAJOR PAPERS:

• The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reported that the SEC is investigating Countrywide Financial Corporation (NYSE: CFC) CEO Angelo Mozilo for selling $130.6M in stock in the first half of the year.
• While all eyes have been on a possible AT&T (NYSE: T) play for EchoStar Communications (NASDAQ: DISH), the Wall Street Journal's "Deal Journal" says AT&T may go after DirecTV Group (NYSE: DTV), and may be more likely, and could be a better deal for AT&T.

OTHER PAPERS:

• The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs has decided to sharply limit the use of GlaxoSmithKline's (NYSE: GSK) once-popular drug for Type 2 diabetes, Avandia. The decision is likely to further reduce revenue from Avandia, whose sales have dropped in the U.S. by an estimated 60% in the last five months, reported the New York Times.
• Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) said it would pay $172M for a majority stake in Indian metal castings maker Sigma Electricals and its affiliated companies, reported the Business Standard.
• A molecular diagnostic test for HPV developed by Digene, which is now part of Qiagen (NASDAQ: QGEN), has been found to be almost 40% more accurate than traditional cytology in identifying women with advanced cervical disease, according to a report published today in The New England Journal of Medicine.

EchoStar (NASDAQ: DISH) is recently up .64 to $48.82 on unconfirmed chatter the DISH really might be purchased by AT&T (NYSE:T). DISH & T have been frequently chattered over the last seven years as possible transaction partners. DISH announced on 9/26/07 the proposal to spin off its technology and infrastructure assets. DISH October 50 straddle is priced at $3.15. October option implied volatility of 50 is above its 26-week average of 32 according to Track Data, suggesting larger price fluctuations.

Daily options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.