I found an interesting and sobering article while searching through the news this morning. It appears that the U.S. Postal Service may close up to 1,000 local offices thanks to snowballing financial issues. There are other options, including: reducing post office hours, consolidating processing centers, and doing away with Saturday delivery. Last Thursday, the Postal Service presented a list of 681 post offices that it will study for possible closure, with most of them in urban areas - located close to other offices. Such a move would not impact delivery at homes and businesses. Ending Saturday delivery is expected to save $2 billion to $3 billion a year, as current mail volumes can't support Saturday (six-day) delivery. According to the article, the volume of regular mail dropped 5% last year and is expected to drop 15% in 2009 --- this would result in a $7billion loss.

Hey, FedEx (NYSE: FDX) beat the estimates of Wall Street! That's awesome, right? Not in this case. The nemesis of United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS) reported Q2 numbers on Thursday, and they didn't matter for the most part. What mattered more was that management seemed to be in a frantic mood over cutting costs and capital expenditures.

According to this article, FedEx only managed to deliver (yes, I used that word on purpose) a four-cent rise in earnings per share; they came in at $1.58, one penny higher than what analysts expected. Problem for FedEx is this lousy economy. The company will have a hard time ensuring that it can deliver (there's that word again) on its promised guidance for the rest of the year. Simply put, if the economy continues to sour, and if confidence doesn't bounce back soon, then there will be less demand for its services. No complex arguments necessary for this thesis, so far as I can tell. I would imagine that it's going to be rough for management to keep employee morale going at an acceptable level with all the cost reductions and job cuts that are being used to navigate the stormy seas. One of the worst problems I see is the minimum one-year freeze on 401(k) company matching contributions that was mentioned in the press release. Seriously, that will be a bitter pill to swallow for many.

I personally would stay away from FedEx's stock. Yes, it is well off its highs, but is all the bad news priced in the stock? My opinion: not on your life. I cannot see how anyone could read that earnings release and subsequently decide to buy shares of the company. The commentary is kind of unnerving, if you ask me. CEO Frederick W. Smith thinks the current financial climate is one of the worst seen in the company's history. Tell us something we didn't already know, buddy! What I find unnerving is that I really don't get a sense that there's any sort of plan beyond the cuts. The company is just looking to survive as best it can. I wish FedEx luck, but I don't want to get involved with the stock. At all.

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.

We've written about Incredimail (NASDAQ: MAIL) before. You know Incredimail: that cool, profitable internet company with those great smiley faces embedded in email, cool screen savers, and cool chat client?

The company just takes software programs and activities we take for granted -- and makes them fun.

We've written about the small cap's travails with partner Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), and the on-again, off-again partnership that threw the stock for a ride a couple weeks back. The company uses Google to help monetize traffic on the site and the loss of Google as a partner was enough to whack the stock.

News that Google (NSASDAQ: GOOG) has cut off Incredimail (NASDAQ: MAIL) from its AdSense program and that Adsense revenues "made a significant contribution to the company's results" caused a 37% drop in MAIL stock price. This is just the latest example of why you MUST learn to trust stock charts instead of corporate management. Remember this interview the CEO gave less than one month ago?

When I first saw how rosy a picture the CEO was painting as compared to Incredimail's incredibly downtrending stock chart, I was inspired to write this article. But with this latest news, I must disagree with my fellow BloggingStocks bloggers from IsraelNewsletter.com, specifically Aaron Katzman's latest post. Buying this stock here is just as risky as buying 50% off sushi; yes, it might be a bargain, but it could also be very dangerous to your investment health.

After all, there is a definitive reason for this plunge. When a company is dropped by Google, it's basically an indictment by the Supreme Court of the Internet. To make matters worse, remember that the CEO said, "We can find a way to promote suggested searches and ultimately, as our search traffic increases, negotiate a better deal with Google. We've just started optimizing our search revenues." Wow, now they are so totally busted! And thanks to the that now infamous interview we now know that advertising and search, "... accounts for almost 46% of our revenue," a figure noticeably absent from today's press release.

News that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has decided to stop the AdSense partnership with the Israeli Incredimail (NASDAQ: MAIL) has sent Incredimail stock tumbling. The company said that Google is disabling ads to search result pages displayed through the Incredimail account, and in addition that the Company's AdSense account has been disabled. In 2006 and 2007, search revenues powered by Google's AdSense program made a significant contribution to the Company's results.

There is no reason for this move yet and I shudder to think what happened to cause Google to cancel the program. Incredimail stock has been under pressure since the company announced it was going to focus resources on the top line to grow revenues, at the potential expense of short-term profitability. While this is a short-term setback for the internet company, I am sure that it will quickly announce a new partnership. With the stock under $5, this may be the bottom. This is a very interesting company with a cool product. The company still has cash of more than $20 million and the stock has a market-cap of less than $40 million. Keep in mind too that both revenue streams continue to grow. It may yet turn out to be an Incredible story.

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. DISCLOSURE: Writer's fund has no positions in any stock mentioned as of 1/11/08.

Ever see those smiley faces your friends and family may append to their email messages? Well, the leader in the space is a publicly-traded Israel firm named Incredimail (NASDAQ: MAIL). We, at Israel Opportunity Investor recently had a chance to sit with founder and CEO of Incredimail, Yaron Adler.

Tell us about your company.

Yaron Adler: Incredimail is an Israeli company, founded in late 1999. Incredimail is our flagship product for email. The product allows users to customize and personalize traditional email communication in a way that brings life and excitement to applications they regularly use. We enable you to send emails with 3D effects, funny animations, and customized backgrounds. We aren't re-inventing the wheel. We take existing applications, like email, and make them fun to use.

Do you have any other products?

YA: We are continuously looking for existing, successful consumer markets, and then we try to bring fun to these markets. Email, Magentic, (our desktop and screensaver application), our soon-to-launch messenger product and social network, we're launching Q1 2008, called Incrediworld. This product will not only be completely tailored for Incredimail users and products but also act as a fully-fledged social network.

The US Postal Service's new "Forever Stamp" is the hottest thing since those 1918 "Inverted Jenny," and the USPS says that it has printed a whopping 4 billion of the always-good stamps; that's enough for everyone in the country to mail 15 first-class standard-size envelopes. And they'll print more, a USPS spokesperson insists, as much as anyone could want.

But is it worthwhile to invest your money in these financial instruments of the smallest? While the new stamps certainly put a fresh spin on "stamp collecting," no one has yet come up with an analysis that would indicate the forever stamp makes financial sense.

Think of it as purchasing futures on your mail. Certainly, it's a good bet that stamp prices will continue to rise. However, in order for it to make sense to purchase 41 cent stamps in bulk? You'd also have to assume that stamp costs were increasing at a greater rate than inflation -- and not just that, but greater than inflation plus the standard return on a CD or other "safe" investment vehicle; a long shot indeed.

Unless you just have a very, very small amount of money to invest -- say, $8.20, or $16.40 -- I think we can agree that Forever Stamps really don't make sense. But if you're the sort who only goes to the post office under great duress, but sends out a lot of mail, buying Forever Stamps will save you a trip for additional postage when the inevitable next price increase goes into effect (paying back untold dividends in time, travel expense, and the psychic damage of standing in line).

Hate to visit the post office? Forever Stamps are for you. For the rest of us, let's stick with money market accounts.