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Whether or not Yahoo decides to begin merger negotiations before Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's Saturday deadline will depend on how Yahoo shareholders react to the company's first-quarter earnings report today. If Yahoo beats Wall Street expectations, there's a chance shareholders could drive its share price past Microsoft's $31 per share offer. Essentially, Yahoo shareholders have turned the fate of the company over to Wall Street analysts.

Bad idea. Those people have no idea what they're talking about, according to Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab:

When Wall Street's almost 1,800 equity analysts figured U.S. earnings growth for the third quarter of 2007, they were 8.2 percentage points too high. Forecasts for the fourth quarter were wrong, too, overestimating profits by 33.5 percentage points, the biggest miss ever.