BofA/Merrill Lynch Upgrades FireEye, Inc to Buy | $FEYE, $DIS, $SNAP, $LLY, $NVDA

1. CTMX: $CTMX CytomX’s stock rockets after expanding Bristol-Myers collaboration – MW

2. ESPR:  $ESPR Esperion Therapeutics Sees Clear FDA Path For Its Heart Drug – Fortune

3. DDC:  $DDC Dominion Diamond Receives $13.50 per Share All-Cash Proposal from The Washington Companies – SI

4. NKTR:  $NKTR Nektar pain drug NKTR-181 hits endpoint in phase 3 – fierce bio

5. ARLZ:  $ARLZ Aralez CEO Purchases 500,000 Shares Of Company Common Stock On Open Market – PRN

6. FEYE:  $FEYE BofA/Merrill Lynch Upgrades FireEye, Inc to Buy, “Eyeing A Turnaround”, $18 PT

7. SFM:  $SFM Albertsons Said to Weigh Merger With Organic Grocer Sprouts – BBG

8. LPLA:  $LPLA Goldman Sachs Upgrades LPL Investment to Conviction Buy, $47 PT

9. LLY:  $LLY Lilly’s breast cancer drug combination succeeds key study – Reuters

10. SNAP:  $SNAP Monness, Crespi, Hardt Starts Snap Inc at Buy, $25 PT

11. CIEN, OCLR:  $OCLR Oclaro Selected by Ciena $CIEN as Long-Term Partner in Development of 400G Coherent Network – SI

12. NVDA:  $NVDA Goldman Continues To Pound The Table On Nvidia Bull Story

13. INTC, MBLY:  $MBLY Mobileye could be looking to see if it can get higher offers $INTC – NYPost

14. PPG: $PPG Elliott Management Owns Stake in Akzo Nobel, Pushes for Talks With Suitor PPG – WSJ

15. DOC: $DOC Physicians Realty Trust Announces Closing of Public Offering

16. VOD: $VOD Vodafone to create Indian leader with Idea merger – MW

17. MULE:  $MULE MuleSoft Eyes Acquisitions After Soaring in U.S. Trading Debut – BBG

18. DB:  $DB Deutsche Bank Says Revenue to Stay ‘Broadly Flat’ This Year – BBG

19. DB:  $DB Deutsche Bank Seeks $8.6B in Share Sale – BBG

20. MOV:  $MOV Movado’s stock drops after disappointing results and outlook, job cuts – MOV

21. ARRY:  $ARRY Array Biopharma Withdraws NDA for Binimetinib Monotherapy to Treat Melanoma – SI

22. PULM:  $PULM Pulmatrix 8K, offering up to $11M of stock – SI

23. GNMX:  $GNMX Aevi Genomic Medicine Says SAGA Trial of AEVI-001 Did Not Meet Primary Endpoint – SI

1. ALK:Alaska Air upgraded to Buy from Hold at Stifel

2. FEYE:$FEYE BofA/Merrill Lynch Upgrades FireEye, Inc to Buy, “Eyeing A Turnaround”, $18 PT

3. ILMN:Leerink Swann Upgrades Illumina to Buy $ILMN

4. LPLA:$LPLA Goldman Sachs Upgrades LPL Investment to Conviction Buy, $47 PT

5. TIF:Tiffany rises on William Blair upgrade

1. GOOG, GOOGL:Pivotal downgrades Alphabet to Neutral on brand safety concerns $GOOGL $GOOG

2. NEOS:Neos Therapeutics was Downgraded to a Hold Rating at UBS $NEOS

1. BCEI:$BCEI reports FQ4 earnings of -57c EPS and $47.27M Revs –

2. MOV:$MOV reports FQ4 earnings of 22c EPS and $130.79M Revs –

3. DXLG:$DXLG reports FQ4 earnings of 2c EPS and $122.65M Revs –

1. ESPR:$ESPR FDA Confims LDL-C lowering program is adequate to support approval of an LDL-C lowering indication for bempedoic acid

2. CERU:$CERU halted pending news!

3. BMY:CTLA-4 bound for the clinic, Bristol-Myers hands CytomX $200M to kick off an expanded discovery pact $BMY $CTMX

4. NKTR:$NKTR halted

5. FEYE:BofA/Merrill Lynch Upgrades FireEye, Inc $FEYE to Buy, “Eyeing A Turnaround”

6. SFM:$SFM Albertsons Said to Weigh Merger With Organic Grocer Sprouts – BBG

7. SHAK:$SHAK upgraded at Wedbush

8. JAZZ:$JAZZ positive pIII data OSA

1. NKTR-181 Meets Primary and Secondary Endpoints in Phase 3 SUMMIT-07 Study in Chronic Pain (NASDAQ:NKTR)

2. Nektar Addiction-Resistant Opioid Reduces Chronic Pain in Late-Stage Study

3. Nektar pain drug NKTR-181 hits endpoint in phase 3 | FierceBiotech

1. Update on CIA #Vault7 “zero day” software vulnerabilities Ref:

The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell but Weeping Angel developed by the CIA Embedded Devices Branch EDB which infests smart TVs transforming them into covert microphones is surely its most emblematic realization.

In the wake of Edward Snowden leaks about the NSA the technology industry secured a commitment from the Obama administration that the executive would disclose on an ongoing basis rather than hoard serious vulnerabilities exploits bugs or zero days to Apple Google Microsoft and other manufacturers.

A series of standards lay out CIA malware infestation patterns which are likely to assist forensic crime scene investigators as well as Apple Microsoft Google Samsung Nokia Blackberry Siemens and companies attribute and defend against attacks.

2. Uber’s president quits, blasts the company on the way out.

is now clear however that the beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber and I can no longer continue as president of the ride sharing business he said in a statement to Recode.

the last six months Ryan and I have become increasingly convinced that our rapidly growing marketing efforts needed to be far more integrated with our city operations Kalanick wrote in a post announcing hire.

The situation at the company has deteriorated since then obviously after a blog post by a former female engineer chronicled a deeply dysfunctional management led by Kalanick that favored what board member Arianna Huffington called.

3. Minnesota judge grants police request for an entire town’s Google search history of googling a particular name

As detailed in a report from Tony Webster earlier this week a Hennepin County judge has granted the Edina Police Department an extraordinary degree of access to citizens Google history as cops attempt to crack the case of a wire transfer fraud.

Typed into Google a search for the same name Douglas something according to a warrant also turns up photos that were used on a fake passport by the criminal who was seeking a fraudulent wire transfer of.

In the case of Douglas something or other Edina police are raiding people Google history to catch a man who committed worth of bank fraud.

4. Incredible new hardware: Byte addressable, persistent. I want to build a new machine just to buy one of those.

Details on how the memory actually works remain generally believed to use some kind of change in resistance to record its performance characteristics and technical capabilities make it appealing for a wide range of applications.

The low latency and high endurance make Optane a good fit for applications like caching and database servers.

If using the PCIe bus to attach storage and then use it as memory seems a bit awkward next year Intel plans to release Optane DIMMS.

5. I wrote about @Techmeme, which I feel is probably one of the most influential websites in the tech world

For example when asked in about traffic by Business Insider Rivera told the site uniques are a particularly bad stat for aggregators like not untrue reach extends beyond homepage views but also a convenient way of dodging the question.

really fun I love when that But Techmeme still plays a singular role in spurring journalists to chase a particular type of content scooplets executive shuffles product updates that might matter more to venture capitalists and CEOs than the millions of civilian tech consumers.

Toggling between a Slack chat and the window where software routinely crawls over sites and blogs Rivera sifted through a cascade of tips before turning his attention to the innards and the tools editors use to rank stories.

6. To quote the EFF: “Holy shit. Case name should be In re Minnesota Unconstitutional General Warrant.”

Police in a small suburban town of people just outside Minneapolis Minnesota have won a court order requiring Google to determine who has used its search engine to look up the name of a local financial fraud victim.

The court order demanding such a massive search is perhaps the most expansive one we seen unconnected to the US national security apparatus and if carried out could set an Orwellian precedent in a bid by the Edina Police Department to solve a crime worth less than.

The Edina Police Department declined to comment other than to tell Webster that the agency would be reluctant to disclose active case information or specific strategies used during the investigation.

7. Intel’s first Optane SSD: 375GB that you can also use as RAM

Details on how the memory actually works remain generally believed to use some kind of change in resistance to record its performance characteristics and technical capabilities make it appealing for a wide range of applications.

The low latency and high endurance make Optane a good fit for applications like caching and database servers.

If using the PCIe bus to attach storage and then use it as memory seems a bit awkward next year Intel plans to release Optane DIMMS.

8. An open source victory over stupidity: 20,000 university lectures withdrawn by Berkeley irrevocably made available

Berkeley removed the videos because of a lawsuit brought by two students from another university under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

While other archive teams have also backed up these lectures using traditional methods publishing them to LBRY offers greater openness usability and robustness.

The LBRY protocol provides a completely decentralized network for discovering distributing and publishing all types of content and information from books to movies.

9. Uber CEO Kalanick in staff note said it was “unfortunate that this was announced through the press” #sorrynotsorry:

is now clear however that the beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber and I can no longer continue as president of the ride sharing business he said in a statement to Recode.

the last six months Ryan and I have become increasingly convinced that our rapidly growing marketing efforts needed to be far more integrated with our city operations Kalanick wrote in a post announcing hire.

The situation at the company has deteriorated since then obviously after a blog post by a former female engineer chronicled a deeply dysfunctional management led by Kalanick that favored what board member Arianna Huffington called.

10. Not surprisingly, found this story about TechMeme’s longstanding value to the tech industry on TechMeme –…

For example when asked in about traffic by Business Insider Rivera told the site uniques are a particularly bad stat for aggregators like not untrue reach extends beyond homepage views but also a convenient way of dodging the question.

really fun I love when that But Techmeme still plays a singular role in spurring journalists to chase a particular type of content scooplets executive shuffles product updates that might matter more to venture capitalists and CEOs than the millions of civilian tech consumers.

Toggling between a Slack chat and the window where software routinely crawls over sites and blogs Rivera sifted through a cascade of tips before turning his attention to the innards and the tools editors use to rank stories.