I did not trade today, but we had a nic…

I did not trade today, but we had a nice pop in the portfolio despite the (as expected) moves in Silver and Gold going against us today.  Corning was up more than 3% itself and as that and Nuance are two of our largest positions, we made out pretty green on the day.  More on the Nuance below and other than that, thanks for reading and I’ll see ya manana.

Some more details on the Nuance surge to a new 52-week high today, up 8% on the day alone and now up more than 20% from where we were buying it with you guys just a few weeks ago:

Two hours ago, new news about the Nuance/Apple dealings from TechCrunch: “So yes, it appears very likely at this point that a Nuance/Apple partnership is a big part of Apple’s cloud initiative. The next question is what this will mean, if anything, for developers at WWDC? Will they get access to this advanced voice recognition technology through iOS APIs right off the bat? Or will this technology mainly serve Apple’s own applications at first?”  Full article here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/09/apple-nuance-data-center-deal/

And here’s a good summary from some site called “Pink Sheet Insider” (note that Nuance is definitely not a pink sheet stock):

The Apple Effect is boosting speech-recognition software company Nuance this morning.

TechCrunch reported late Friday that Apple, once rumored as a Nuance buyer, is in talks for some sort of link-up with Nuance, citing “multiple sources.� That report has Nuance jumping nearly 8% higher today (though it was higher earlier in the session.)

Nuance does have a number of backers. Motley Fool last weekcalled it a “stock to pop� based on its investor-community stock rankings. Cody Willard, writing at MarketWatch, last monthcited Nuance as one of his “App Revolution� plays.

As with many Apple App stocks, there’s no shortage of counter-argument, and the shorts have gathered around Nuance. The stock has many of the elements that shorts tend to love, including a roll-up strategy and the promise of breakthrough technologies. Short interest has risen from about 5 times daily trading volume in mid-January to about 8.5 times average trading volume in mid-April, according to Nasdaq. Some of those shorts may be getting the squeezola this morning.

Dow Jones offers up a view on the Apple-Nuance possibilities from investment bank FBR: “While Apple and Nuance have an existing partnership, we believe the next leg of this relationship is becoming incrementally more significant and could also represent some nice revenue upside to FY12 once this deal is officially inked.�

Nuance reports second-quarter results after the close on Tuesday.