General Electric (GE) closed at $15.75. GE forecasts flat revenue and margin growth in 2010. GE January option implied volatility of 33 is below its 26-week average of 39, according to Track Data, suggesting decreasing price movement.

IVX Volatility Monitor: PHLX Oil Service Index (OSX) was down 2.6% to 30.9, NASDAQ (NDX) was down 0.2% to 20, Gold and Silver (XAU) dropped 1.5% to 41, according to IVolatility.

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

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s newest Macintosh operating system -- Leopard -- will officially go on sale October 26 (just under two weeks from today). Unlike Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Apple releases new operating systems every year to two years. By contrast, the time difference between the release of Microsoft's Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems was over five years.

That being said, so Mac users flock to upgrade every time a new operating system comes out? Hard to say, but every Apple fan I know borders on zealot (this is not a bad thing), and they do indeed upgrade every time something new comes out. I sense in many cases this is nothing more than psychological pride over genuine utility addition, but I could be mistaken.

Will Leopard's release bode well for Apple's coffers, then? Sure, but the question of how much is still up for debate. Apple's iPod phenomenon -- and now, iPhone phenomenon -- has translated into a growing market share for Apple PCs, and this "halo effect" has been tracked and followed with journalistic vigor in every nook and cranny of the media and blogosphere. What more could yet another upgrade add to this honey pot?

Apple's shares are sitting at an all-time high at the moment due to the perfectly-timed release of new iPods in September, along with the growing market for the revolutionary (yet already outdated in many ways) iPhone. Adding new eye candy to Apple's PC market will do nothing but help bump the company's stock price to over $200 if holiday sell-through does well. Perhaps the iPod was just a means to get customers flocking to Apple's PC segment, since in the long term, the iPod's remarkable sales sustainability can't keep up the torrid pace it has in the past -- or can it? Regardless, the company wants customers buying new PCs to think "Mac" instead of "Windows," and a newer version that looks and feels better than the last will only help that effort.

Nasdaq (NASDAQ:NDAQ) has been trying to emulate The NYSE (NYSE:NYX) buy picking up another exchange. It has not had much success in Europe, Asia, or even Africa.

About a year ago, the NYSE Group bought Euronext, a pan-European exchange, and put together company that had a market cap of about $26 billion. Last November, Nasdaq tried to buy the London Stock Exchange for $5.1 billion. Nasdaq had made an unofficial approach before. The offer was rejected and Nasdaq went through a period of modest humiliation.

Wall Street has been kind to NYSE Group and has given its strategy of becoming a more global exchange a mark of approval. Shares in the company are up over 40% in the last year. Not so the Nasdaq. Its shares are up less than 10%, much less than the S&P 500.

Today, Nasdaq got its wish, but its shareholders did not The company bought the Nordic exchange OSX in Stockholm for $3.7 billion. Nasdaq's shared promptly dropped almost 6% talking away about $250 million in market cap. The OSX does tend to list shares in technical companies including Ericsson (NASD:ERIC) and Nokia (NYSE:NOK).

But, it really isn't the same as owning an exchange in London.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Outgoing Windows Vista chief Jim Allchin allegedly sent an email to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in 2004 stating that he'd buy a Mac if he were not working at Microsoft. If Allchin really used to like the Mac better than the Windows PC, maybe he should have worked for Apple Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) rather than Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). Although he's now claiming those comments were "taken out of context," those are pretty strong words for someone in charge of Windows development at the time, no?

Allchin, at least for a little while, said that Microsoft has lost its way with Windows Vista and didn't really know what customers wanted any longer. Fast forward almost three years from January 2004 and Vista is just about to be released to the public -- and Allchin claims this is the best, most solid piece of software the company has ever built. What does it resemble from many perspectives? Why, Apple's current OS X, according to many.

After having seen the recent release candidates for Windows Vista, it is indeed nice eye candy. It looks great (with a very recent PC and a very good graphics card) and in many ways the look and feel resembles Apple's more svelte looking operating system. If you buy into history books, Bill Gates ripped many of the elements from the first version of Windows from Apple's graphical user interface, so nothing new has changed here I guess. (By the way, I am making a joke here -- don't fly off the handle please.)

Allchin has said now that Windows Vista is "far, far better than any other software available today." History will tell if he is right -- and so will Windows Vista sales in 2007.

[Disclosure: I own MSFT shares as of 12-13-06.]