Lots of stuff going on — let’s jump right in. Also, for those who didn’t know, we’ve launched our own new subscription newsletter, Israel Opportunity Investor. You can find out more about the product and the opportunities we cover at www.israelnewsletter.com.

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Two Birthday Stocks (instead of jewelry)

Aaron Katsman has two good stocks that make better birthday presents than jewelry. Don’t tell my wife!

Incredimail gets dumped by Google
Katsman also has the scoop on Israeli Internet stock, Incredimail (Nasdaq: MAIL), and its Web 2.0 travails with Google.

Teva N. America President hops to Cardinal Health

George Barrett, chief executive of Teva North America (Nasdaq: TEVA), has resigned and will be replaced by William Marth.

Electronics for Imaging Drops

Electronics for Imaging (Nasdaq: EFII), the maker of digital printers and inks, fell the most in more than seven years in New York trading after the company reported preliminary fourth-quarter sales that missed analysts’ estimates.

Amdocs with AT&T win

Amdocs (NYSE: DOX) with a nice win at AT&T (NYSE: T).  It was a good 48 hours for Amdocs.

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Aaron Katsman
www.IsraelNewsletter.com

I would be remiss if I neglect to mention that tonight is my wife’s birthday. This post is serving me as a reminder that I still need to buy her a gift. Maybe I will get her a subscription the the IOI Premium Newsletter! With gold prices surging, I can’t afford to by her actual jewelry, but I can afford  to buy some shares in these 2 little-known Israeli stocks, and they are sure to be DIAMONDS in the rough.

Elbit Medical Imaging(EMITF) stock has dropped nearly 20% in the last few weeks. The real estate and bio-tech company was a big winner for investors in ‘07 and even with a slow start to ‘08, I look at ElbitMedical as a star performer this year as well. They are opening a mall in Poland( maybe I can get some cheap jewelry there) which is a continuation of their plans to continue building out the real estate holdings in Eastern European along with some new projects in India. As I have mentioned before, the real story with Elbit Medical is their very large stake in two of the most exciting private (though an IPO is definitely in the cards) companies Israel has to offer. Insightec ltd., develops a product that combines MRI technology with focused ultrasound in order to treat serious diseases such as bone, liver and brain tumors, without the invasive procedures that are currently used.  The other private company is Gamida Cell. Gamida Cell is developing, along with the aforementioned Teva,  a line of cell therapy products for the treatment of such diseases as leukemia and lymphoma. 

Jacada(JCDA) a leading provider of unified desktop and process optimization solutions for customer service operations, has been signing deals right and left and a few weeks ago announced that they were selling their Application Modernization Business to Software AGfor $26 million. They are doing this to solely focus on high growth business, to position Jacada as a pureplay in the call center solutions business. The firm provides a single, unified workspace for customer service organizations managing lots of legacy and disparate software systems. My buddy Zack”I love the Internet” Miller had a great analysisof this deal. I really think Jacada is poised to fly, and in fact with all the current selling on Wall Street, Jacada stock has actually been inching up.

Happy birthday!

Disclosure: Author’s fund holds a position in EMITF and JCDA. He has no position in any other stock mentioned as of 1/9/08.

Please see our Disclaimer HERE.

NEW! Introducing Israel Opportunity Investor, our monthly subscription-only newsletter.  Stay ahead of the game and make smart decisions in Israel stocks.  Go here to learn more.

Aaron Katsman is Managing Editor of the Israel Opportunity Investor newsletter. He is lead portfolio manager for the Israel Growth Portfolio and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. For more information, go to www.israelnewsletter.com or call 1-888-327-6179, or email aaron@profile-financial.com.

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We recently got a chance to sit down with Jon Medved, a rock-star in the Israeli tech world, to discuss his new startup. This interview appeared as part of our new subscription newsletter, Israel Opportunity Investor. You can find out more about the product and the opportunities we cover at www.israelnewsletter.com

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Jon, can you tell us what Vringo’s all about?
Jon Medved: It’s not just a company story; it’s a story about trends. The trend is personalization 2.0. The big bonanza which most investors missed, myself included, was ringtones. If you were pitching VCs a ringtone company in 1999,you wouldn’t have even been able to get a meeting. You would have been shooed out. The ringtone business has been a goldmine for those investors who got it. Now, it’s a $6 billion business worldwide. It’s becoming a major source of revenue for the music labels. Take Universal Music Group, for example. Music star, Akon, recently sold a batch of 11 million ringtones. And unlike iTunes, which sells songs for $.99, these ringtones go for $2.

It’s the drive for human expression to want to stand out in a crowd, to personalize things, to make them mine. Just like Jibbetz does for Crocs shoes, allowing you essentially to pimp your shoes, like wearing a T-shirt with a slogan on it, or slapping a bumper sticker on your car — Vringo is doing the same thing for the phone. (Continue »)

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ClickSoftware (CKSW), was January’s Stock of the Month as part of our new subscription newsletter, Israel Opportunity Investor. You can find out more about the product and the opportunities we cover at www.israelnewsletter.com

As part of our January edition, we also published an interview with Pointer Telocation’s Chairman. The stock is up 10% in just 5 days.

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Background
ClickSoftware Technologies (Nasdaq: CKSW) provides workforce management and service optimization solutions. ClickSoftware’s Service Optimization Suite provides an integrated solution for optimized decision making used throughout organizations. Over 100 customers in telecommunications, utilities, financial services, aerospace use the company’s products. It markets its solutions via a direct and indirect sales force into North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific Region.
(Continue »)

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