Top Internet Companies To Invest In 2014

Things never get dull for the country's lone satellite-radio provider. Shares of Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI  ) moved higher this week, closing 3.7% higher to hit $3.12. The general market moved higher, but Sirius XM's gain was better than the Nasdaq's 2.3% pop.

There was more going on beyond the share-price gyrations, though. Sirius XM kicked off the week by presenting at a Latin Music conference. Short interest declined through the first half of April. Investors and analysts also began to jockey for position ahead of Tuesday morning's quarterly report.

Let's take a closer look.

Sirius XM begins with "Si"
Trinity Colon, Sirius XM's vice president of programming, was a panelist during the first panel discussion of the 24th Annual Billboard Latin Music Conference. Colon shared the stage with Pandora's (NYSE: P  ) Marcos Juarez and Spotify Latin America's Bahigh Acuna to discuss the opportunities available to Latin music artists in the era of satellite and Internet radio.

Top 5 Biotech Companies To Watch For 2015: Yahoo! Inc.(YHOO)

Yahoo! Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a digital media company that delivers personalized digital content and experiences through various devices worldwide. It offers online properties and services to users; and a range of marketing services to businesses. The company?s communications and communities offerings include Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, Flickr, and Connected TV, which provide a range of communication and social services to users and small businesses enabling users to organize into groups and share knowledge, common interests, and photos. Its search products comprise Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Local, available free to users to navigate the Internet and discover content. The company?s marketplaces offerings and services include Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo! Travel, Yahoo! Real Estate, Yahoo! Autos, and Yahoo! Small Business, which allow users to research specific topics, products, services, or areas of interest by review ing and exchanging information, obtaining contact details, or considering offers from providers of goods, services, or parties with similar interests. Its media offerings comprise Yahoo! Homepage, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Sports, Yahoo! Finance, My Yahoo!, Yahoo! Toolbar, Yahoo! Entertainment & Lifestyles, Yahoo! Contributor Network, and Yahoo! Pulse, which are designed to engage users with online content and services on the Web. The company also offers marketing services, such as display and search advertising, listing-based services, and commerce-based transactions to advertisers. In addition, it provides software and platform offerings for third-party developers, advertisers, and publishers, such as Yahoo! Developer Network, Yahoo! Open Strategy, Yahoo! Application Platform, Yahoo! Updates, Yahoo! Query Language, and Yahoo! Search BOSS. The company has strategic alliances with Nokia and ABC News, Inc. Yahoo! Inc. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Californi a.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Tim Beyers and Erin Miller]

  In short: Twitter is succeeding where Facebook (NASDAQ: FB  ) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO  ) have struggled to make gains. Among social networks, only LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD  ) , with its consistent record of near-100% growth, is moving as fast.

• [By Isaac Pino, CPA]

  The idea is to create food that's affordable, or free in some cases, but food that is healthy and still brings a sense of community to that culture of that company. It's taken off like crazy. Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO  ) is now free, since Marissa got there as CEO. Twitter is now free. LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD  ) is going to be free. Google�is free.

Top Internet Companies To Invest In 2014: eBay Inc.(EBAY)

eBay Inc. provides online platforms, services, and tools to help individuals and merchants in online and mobile commerce and payments in the United States and internationally. Its Marketplaces segment operates ecommerce platform eBay.com; vertical shopping sites, such as StubHub, Fashion, Motors, and Half.com; and classifieds Websites, including Den Bl�Avis, BilBasen, Gumtree, Kijiji, LoQUo, Marktplaats.nl, mobile.de, Alamaula, Rent.com, eBay Anuncios, eBay Kleinanzeigen, and eBay Annunci, as well as provides advertising services. The company?s Payments segment offers payment and settlement services for consumers and merchants on and off eBay Websites and other merchant Websites. This segment operates PayPal, which enables individuals and businesses to send and receive payments online and through mobile devices; Bill Me Later that enables the United States merchants to offer, the United States consumers to obtain, credit at the point of sale for ecommerce and mobile tra nsactions; Zong, which allows users with mobile phones to purchase digital goods and have the transactions charged to their phone bill; and BillSAFE that enables customers pay for purchases upon receipt of an invoice. Its GSI segment offers an ecommerce services suite for enterprise clients that operate in general merchandise categories, including apparel, sporting goods, toys and baby, health and beauty, and home; and marketing services comprising full-service digital agency, enterprise email marketing, mobile advertising, affiliate marketing, advertisement retargeting, and in-depth analytics services. The company also offers X.commerce platform that provides software developers access to the company?s applications programming interfaces to develop functionality for various merchants; and Magento Connect, which allows developers to market and sell add-on functionality and solutions to merchants that use a Magento storefront. eBay Inc. was founded in 1995 and is headquarter ed in San Jose, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Maureen Farrell var popups = dojo.query(".socialByline .popC"); popups.forEac]

  The Chinese e-retailer dwarfs its U.S. rivals. According to the WSJ, Alibaba’s online transactions last year were one-third larger than all of the combined value of sales at both Amazon.com Inc.(AMZN) and eBay Inc.(EBAY)

• [By Dan Caplinger]

  On Wednesday, eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY  ) will release its latest quarterly results. The key to making smart investment decisions on stocks reporting earnings is to anticipate how they'll do before they announce results, leaving you fully prepared to respond quickly to whatever inevitable surprises arise.

Top Internet Companies To Invest In 2014: Symantec Corporation(SYMC)

Symantec Corporation provides security, storage, and systems management solutions internationally. The company?s Consumer segment delivers Internet security, PC tune-up, and online backup solutions and services to individual users and home offices. Its Security and Compliance segment provides solutions for endpoint security and management, compliance, messaging management, data loss prevention, encryption, and authentication services to large, medium, and small-sized businesses, as well as offers solutions through its software-as-a-service (SaaS) security offerings. This segment?s products enable customers to secure, provision, and remotely manage their laptops, PCs, mobile devices, and servers. The company?s Storage and Server Management segment provides storage and server management, backup, archiving, and data protection solutions across heterogeneous storage and server platforms, as well as solutions delivered through its SaaS offerings to large, medium, and small-s ized businesses. Symantec?s Services segment offers implementation services and solutions, including consulting, business critical services, education, and managed security services. The company also provides various enterprise support offerings, such as annual maintenance support contracts, including content, upgrades, and technical support. It sells its products through its eCommerce platform, as well as through distributors, direct marketers, Internet-based resellers, system builders, ISPs, and retail locations worldwide. Symantec markets and sells its products through distributors, retailers, direct marketers, Internet-based resellers, original equipment manufacturers, system builders, and Internet service providers; and its e-commerce channels, as well as direct sales force, value-added and large account resellers, and system integrators. The company was founded in 1982 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Tim Melvin]

  The first "insider" stock to buy is Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC), one of the leading internet security providers in the world.

  Symantec makes a wide range of products that help individuals and businesses keep their computers and mobile devices safe from viruses and malware. The stock recently dropped sharply after the company fell short of analysts' quarterly earnings expectations, but CEO Stephen Bennett clearly disagrees with the market's opinion of the company's prospects. He got out his checkbook and added 1,000,000 shares of stock for a total cost of more than $2.2 million. He now owns 488,000 shares of Symantec stock and clearly has high expectations for the future of Symantec's stock price.

• [By Wallace Witkowski]

  Symantec Corp. (SYMC) �shares dropped 7% to $19.44 on heavy volume, after a brief halted at the closing bell, as the security software company fired Chief Executive Steve Bennett.

• [By Jake L'Ecuyer]

  Equities Trading DOWN
  Shares of Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) were down 13.42 percent to $18.10 after the company fired President and Chief Executive Steve Bennett and appointed director Michael Brown as interim president and CEO. UBS downgraded the stock from Buy to Neutral and lowered the price target from $27.00 to $21.00.

Top Internet Companies To Invest In 2014: Google Inc.(GOOG)

Google Inc. maintains an index of Web sites and other online content for users, advertisers, and Google network members and other content providers. It offers AdWords, an auction-based advertising program; AdSense program, which enables Web sites that are part of the Google Network to deliver ads from its AdWords advertisers; Google Display, a display advertising network that comprises the videos, text, images, and other interactive ads; DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a real-time auction marketplace for the trading of display ad space; and YouTube that provides video, interactive, and other ad formats for advertisers. The company also provides Google Mobile that optimizes Google?s applications for mobile devices in browser and downloadable form; and enables advertisers to run search ad campaigns on mobile devices, as well as Google Local that provides local information on the Web; and Google Boost for small businesses to participate in the ads auction. In addition, it offers And roid, an open source mobile software platform; Google Chrome OS, an open source operating system; Google Chrome, a Web browser; Google TV, a platform for the consumers to use the television and the Internet on a single screen; and Google Books platform to discover, search, and consume content from printed books online. Further, the company provides Google Apps, a cloud computing suite of message and collaboration tools, which includes Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Sites; Google Search Appliance that offers real-time search of business and intranet applications, and public Web sites; Google Site Search, a custom search engine; Google Commerce Search for online retail enterprises; Google Checkout to make online shopping and payments streamlined and secure; Google Maps Application Programming Interface; and Google Earth Enterprise, a firewall software solution for imagery and data visualization. Google Inc. was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Doug Ehrman]

  It's hard to imagine that the ability to make minor edits to documents and spreadsheets on your iPhone will attract a huge throng of new users, but pushing existing customers toward the cloud will be good for Microsoft. Additionally, the nod toward iOS may be just enough to remind Apple users of how much better -- or at least ahead -- Office is compared with its competition. Google (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) Docs has mounted a challenge but is still not the preferred choice of business. Apple also threw its hat in the ring with iWork for iCloud, but Cupertino is playing catch-up in this arena.

• [By Evan Niu, CFA]

  With the very obvious consumer trend toward smaller tablets,�Microsoft� (NASDAQ: MSFT  ) has little choice but to release a smaller version of its Surface if it has any hopes of success.�Apple� (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) recently launched its iPad Mini in an admission that there is a market for smaller devices. Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) Nexus 7 has a hot seller among Android enthusiasts, and Amazon.com� (NASDAQ: AMZN  ) was easily the first company to see major success with its 7-inch Kindle Fire. Windows Blue, which may be officially dubbed Windows 8.1, will lay the groundwork for smaller Windows tablets.

• [By Dan Newman]

  The largest holdings in GMO's own Quality Fund include�Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ  ) ,�Oracle� (NYSE: ORCL  ) , and�Google (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) . All three have profit margins above 15%, worldwide operations, and strong respective moats. For Johnson & Johnson, its scale and name brands like Tylenol and Band-Aid lend it power over competitors. Oracle's advantage comes from the lock-in its customers experience, represented by its near-50% market share in database management. And Google's dominance knows no industry bounds. Its search engine holds a 66% market share in the U.S., while its Android mobile phone platform holds 64% market share of global smartphones.