NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Here's a few to ponder ...

TIVO: Another one of those situations where you want to be a customer---not an investor. The company that practically invented the DVR -- or at least popularized it -- is changing its pricing policy. How? Raising 'em. Used to be able to get a lifetime subscription for $299. Now you have to pay $469 for a three year subscription. Youch! TIVO has lost money -- serious money, hundreds of million of dollars of money -- since going public in 1999. Its tie-in with DirectTV ends next year, and DVRs from cable companies are now commonplace. Stock (Research) is now $5 and change. Great product, but dead company walking? Don't bother....

NYSE: What wasn't good enough for the 18th, 19th or 20th century, seems to make sense in the 21st century. The New York Stock Exchange went public yesterday -- after 213 years -- and it went off with a bang. Well, what did you expect ... A flop? They wouldn't let that happen. Stock (Research) was up 25 percent, or $15.75, to $80 in its debut. Comparisons? NASDAQ which went public in '02 has done pretty well, rising from a low of about $6 to a recent price of $40. NYSE now has a market value of $12 billion, almost 4 times the value of the NAZ. (Ford is worth about $14 billion, FYI.) NYSE now has currency to do deals with other exchanges. How will NYX do as a stock? As one wag puts it, if there's a bear market, it will go down. (No!) Note: There are more bull markets than bears. I know the stock is a bit rich, but I say it will be a big winner over time.

BUILD-A-BEAR: Reader Deep Blue pointed them out to me. Said his kids have like five bears each. My kids have 'em too. You know the stores? You custom make stuffed animals for kids for a million bucks a pop. Build-A currently has 190 stores in North America. I know quarterly earnings are growing circa 70 percent, but come on ... This one has fad written all over it. I'm sure company would counter that by saying that millions of new kids turn five or six years old every year. Yeah, well that's what they said about Disney stores too. At some point the house fills up with this stuff ... and it becomes uncool. So go there and have fun for now. But I would not be a buyer of BBW (Research) stock.

Loose Change: Have you checked out the devastating book about Barry Bonds, or see the excerpt in Sports Illustrated? Oh yeah Barry, EVERYTHING in the book is untrue. Do the right thing BB and retire. I guarantee you Major League Baseball will NOT let you break Hank Aaron's home run record......So Canada beats the U.S. in the Great American Pastime. Well, we've beaten 'em in hockey.......

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E-mail Andy Serwer at serwer@fortunemail.com