Despite the fawning attention of a news media that never seems to tire of stories about corporate mommies who bring their  toddlers and dogs to work, we never believed the Marissa-Mayer-as-wunderkind story for a minute. Although she was well regarded as an executive at Google, that’s hardly reason to think she could turn the congenitally clueless Yahoo around. Steve Jobs aside, there are no second acts in the high-tech sector, and by implication no way to re-brand Yahoo for an attempted rise from the ashes. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s impossible — only that it would take a real genius at the helm to succeed.  Mayer, for all the hype, was no genius, just a competent executive; and the only reason the stock rose significantly in 2014 was because Yahoo lucked into a big stock position in Alibaba, a now-failing company that for a while got even more hype than Mayer’s career.

Technically speaking, it looks like YHOO shareholders will receive a further drubbing in the weeks ahead. If and when the stock cracks the midpoint support at 29.97 (see inset), it would portend more slippage to 26.16 — a 17% fall from current levels. Click here for Steve Tobak’s trenchant commentary at Fox News, Is Marissa Mayer Finished at Yahoo? _______ UPDATE (September 28, 11:12 p.m.): Yahoo has gotten deservedly trounced recently as anticipated. If you’ve been short, it’s time to start scaling in at least 25%-50% of the position, since the stock is within $1.50 of the target given above. _______ UPDATE (October 6):  Adding weeks or even months to Marissa Mayer’s tenure at Yahoo, a nasty, $2.40 short squeeze on Friday has put bears badly on the ropes. It could go higher, too, since the pullback thus far has been shallow. If the move continues to a promising target, we’ll try to get short there.  _______ UPDATE (October 7, 10:55 p.m.): The stall precisely at p=31.98 holds promise for getting short at D=33.36, assuming YHOO can get past p. Accordingly, I’ll recommend offering 400 shares short at 33.34, stop 33.51. En route to the target, you can also try to get long ‘mechanically’ on a pullback to p or p2.  _______ UPDATE (October 19, 8:33 p.m. ET):  The position was stopped out for a theoretical loss of $68. Let’s try again, shorting 34.18, stop 34.32. The recommendation is based on a 34.20 target that can be found on the hourly chart, where a=30.59  on 10/6 at 6:00 p.m.  _______ UPDATE (October 21): The stock has relapsed with a vengeance as expected, but from a recent peak at 33.86 that fell well shy of the target where we’d aimed to get short.