The Verizon acquisition of Yahoo has now officially closed and Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, has resigned her position. The acquisition, estimated to be worth more than $4 billion, received shareholder approval last week, with Mayer being granted a 'golden parachute' of approximately $23 million in her exit from the company.

Verizon has stated that it is planning to combine Yahoo with its AOL assets to create a subsidiary called Oath, which will cover more than 50 media brands and over 1 billion customers globally. Tim Armstrong, the former CEO of AOL, has been chosen to lead the new conglomerate.

It is expected that nearly 15 percent of all Yahoo staff will be cut as a result of the acquisition, with roles in areas such as operations, sales and marketing being affected. In addition, several Board members have left Yahoo in the wake of Mayer's departure, including Jane Shaw, Maynard Webb Jr., David Filo, Richard Hill and Eddy Hartenstein. Verizon has no shortage of staff, as it currently employs more than 160,000 people and earned approximately $126 billion in sales revenues in 2016.

The stock market is a brutal beast that is constantly moving and changing. Jim Cramer's guide uses charts to analyze the market price of a share of stock over it's history before jumping in to purchase it.

An investor does not buy a stock with the thought that the value will down after they buy shares. Cramer's idea is that by analyzing the ebbs and flows of a stock's price history over time a prospective buyer will have a better chance of finding a stock that will not fail. He is quoted as saying that looking at the history before buying is "like part of the homework" of buying stock.

Cramer often cites his own experience with the 2009 decline. Knowing when to buy and sell is the critical key in winning at the stock market battle. Cramer knew when to buy in 2009, and he looked around then to find the best stock for the time.

The value of Bitcoin recently surpassed $2000.

The most famous cryptocurrency on the planet now has a per coin value of more than $2000. That is what several bitcoin exchanges are reporting, such as Kraken and Coinbase. This valuation indicates that the total bitcoin market cap (i.e. the total value of coins in use) is $32.92 billion.

This year, bitcoin has thrived - as this Coindesk chart reflects.

In 2013, bitcoin initially surpassed the $1000 valuation, however a range of variables - such as the problems experienced by Mount Gox (which was the leading exchange at the time) - meant that the currency dropped in value. Financial organizations tested blockchain and bitcoin based services during this period, and new Chinese regulations increased overall stability. This led to bitcoin returning to the $1000 mark by the end of 2016. Ever since, its' value has constantly grown throughout 2017.

Professor Aswath Damodaran, based at New York University's Stern School of Business, recently participated in a Google discussion session which focused on the value of using stories in business. The discussion centered on how businesses value their stocks by having a compelling story that justifies its financial assumptions.

Professor Damodaran explained how stocks can become runaway stories, which is basically a story that investors firmly believe in. This may lead to them avoiding asking important questions about the company.

He used Tesla Inc (TSLA) as an example of a runaway story, explaining how he had written an analysis of the company in September 2013, in which he estimated Tesla's stock value to be only $67.12 per share even though it was trading at over $168 per share at that time.

Trending today is the announcement from Rob Sanderson, an MKM analyst, that the cloud business operated by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) could be worth $20 billion in five years, with an additional two or three billion dollars in other Asian countries. If this is the case, Alibaba's cloud business has immense growth potential and analysts are currently suggesting that it is worth one billion dollars annually with 115% growth rate annually.

The service segment of the Apple corporation could be a great stock to keep an eye on in the future. Some experts are saying that this part of the company is now worth over $240 billion. This is drawing many investors to buy it.

Apple Services is now the second largest segment of the company. The biggest is their consumer products division. The services segment has some promising other factors that make it attractive, though.

One promising feature of the services segment is that the number of iOS users is constantly increasing. As there are more users, they are going to need more services. This will increase even more as Apple develops and implements more hardware on the consumer level. There will a lot of service expansions in the future as the amount of different hardware is increased at the consumer level.

CEO Tim Cook is comfortable with the numbers for Apple Watch

Apple is well-known not to reveal their sales figures for each product. This has left market experts wondering if the Apple Watch is a hit or a miss. The IDC has reported that they are under what the company expected. Apple's CEO, Tim Cook says that they are "just fine".

The market for wearable technology is small. There are only 4 companies. The most popular competitor is FitBit. While we don't know the sales numbers, we do know that Apple has shipped over 70% fewer units in the last year.

Current shares of stock in Cirrus Logic have seen recent surges as high as 7.5 percent, which has exceeded expectations after the company's newly released fancy ear buds have grown in popularity. This type of digital technology is expected to be paired more and more with future releases of Apple devices, and this supplier is also on track to keep supplying more audio chips to the tech giant.

Throughout 2016, the stock value of Cirrus Logic has grown by 94 percent; the trend is so far projected to continue into 2017. Among all the other companies in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, Cirrus is the third best performer on Wall Street so far.

With Apple's discontinuation of the standard headphone jack in the iPhone 7, the Cirrus audio chips are now standard in each set of headphones shipped with these new devices. Future releases of headphones from Apple will have even more sophisticated versions of this digital technology.

The Alibaba group held their annual shareholder's group last Thursday. Every year at the meeting the executive chairman, Jack Ma, issues a letter to the members of the company. This year the letter was filled with confidence and hope for the future.

The funding group aims to serve 20% of the world's population over the next two decades. The company is aimed at funding and aiding profitable companies all over the world. Ma's goal is to create 100 million jobs worldwide over the next 20 years.

These lofty goals aren't exactly out of character for the executive director. Ma had very humble beginnings in China s a teacher. He then developed his online commerce company into a worldwide leader. The company has a value of almost $250 million today.

Funds following semiconductor firms have had their best week in months, but it should be noted that stocks are behaving wildly with all of the technology news coming out now. VanEck and PHLX both saw gains over 4 percent in the past week, but Skyworks and Cirrus Logic might be the real winners in all of this. (I am holding a December Call option of CRUS) Skyworks is closely connected with Intel, who has recently enjoyed a large volume of trading as the company increased its revenue expectations for the quarter.

Apple's value appreciated by over 11 percent over the week, which is probably due to the large number of pre-orders of the iPhone 7. That could help to explain the 13 percent growth that Cirrus Logic enjoyed as well as the almost 14 percent gains seen by shareholders of Skyworks.