Although this turned out to be a pretty "meh" day for the stock market as a whole – the Dow and S&P 500 slipped a little bit, while the Nasdaq didn’t gain much – Yahoo investors should be feeling pleased.  Yahoo’s stock rose by a significant amount as an analyst rated it "market outperform," up from "market perform."

Sameet Sinha of JMP Securities is the man who’s responsible for making that change, and he attributed the move to Yahoo’s relationship with Microsoft.  Sinha indicated that other experts will come to think better of the company, too, as additional financial models incorporate the deal.

Then here’s another, more concrete, detail: Sinha set a price target of $21.  Since Yahoo’s stock hasn’t been that high since July of 2008, that would be a significant level.

As for the current price of Yahoo’s stock, it’s been very much on the move.  It rose 2.86 percent during the trading day, taking it from $16.06 to $16.52.

Again, then, this was a good day for Yahoo’s shareholders.  Google’s shareholders lost a small amount of money, meanwhile (its stock decreased 0.31 percent), and Microsoft’s shareholders made an even smaller amount (its stock rose 0.15 percent).