MOST NOTEWORTHY:

• Cantor believes HouseValues (NASDAQ: SOLD) may be a lagging indicator of the broader real estate market. As such, it may see its customer and revenue bases contract further in the face of still-sluggish housing data and started shares with a Hold rating.

• Pali Research initiated Fortune Brands (NYSE: FO) with a Neutral rating based on valuation.

• The firm also believes D.R. Horton's (NYSE: DHI) risk to book value and profitability is higher than some of the competition since the company has taken significantly less land charges. Shares were initiated with a Hold rating.

• Dick's Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS) was initiated with an Outperform at Baird and is positive on Dick's store expansion, market leadership, margin opportunities and fundamentals.

• USG (NYSE: USG) was initiated with a Sell rating at Banc of America, believing wallboard price and profit declines will be worse than expected due to lower housing starts and less spending on remodeling. Their analysis suggests another leg down for housing...

• Morgan Joseph started Jamba, Inc (NASDAQ: JMBA) with a Buy rating.

• Wachovia started Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) with a Market Perform rating.

• Baird started Golfsmith International Holdings (NASDAQ: GOLF) with a Neutral rating.

• Merrill Lynch initiated Bayer AG (NYSE: BAY) with a Buy rating and UBS initiated QLogic (NASDAQ: QLGC) with a Neutral rating.

Analyst initiations 7-11-07: BAY, DHI, FO and JNJ originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 11 Jul 2007 11:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Will Yahoo!, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) seek to acquire something or will Yahoo! look for a buyer for itself? Those are the two questions flying around . For me the answer is simple. At this time Yahoo! shouldn't be considering either move. Who needs to hear that Microsoft has purchased Yahoo!?

What Yahoo! needs right now is something new. Yahoo! needs a new direction. Yahoo! needs a new focus. Yahoo! needs new talent. Yahoo! needs to do new things. Did I mention Yahoo! needs something new?

Here's one of my ideas: Yahoo should align with ESPN and reawaken the "First Person Sport Cam". Do you remember the failed helmet cam concept they tried in the NFL? It was an excellent idea but unless you're completely immune to motion sickness you can't stand to watch the action from that perspective for more than a couple minutes. There is a way to make it work however. If a GPS sensor was put on a player's helmet which then sent directional cues to camera arrays around the perimeter of the field of play, then the helmet would relay the players field of view and the static cameras could provide clear, stable pictures of exactly what that player is looking at. The Yahoo! Helmet Cam Sport Arena could be born. The concept could work on baseball caps and batting helmets. Sensors could be put in soccer players head bands. Tiger Woods could have one in his golf hat.

The simple point to this blog post is that it's my opinion that now with Terry Semel moved aside it's the time for Yahoo! to do something drastically new. They should continue to work the boring old search realm as long as the revenue justifies that, but indications are that the search advertising game is bracing for upheaval from video sharing interests. Web users are becoming more and more entrenched in where they like to go and what they like to do. The dynamics of Internet advertising are changing and it's time for something Yah-new!

Yahoo! to buy or Yahoo! to sell, that is the NEW question. originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.