18 years in Wall Street, left after finding out it was all horseshit. Founder/ Master and Commander: iBankCoin, finance news and commentary from the future.
I don’t need to recap what you see in front of your faces. I’m not starving for page clicks or retweets, sucker. I have my own money. Anything momo is getting lit today. If you stepped into today leveraged long into social media stocks, you’re not feeling very jovial right now.
On the other hand, my ANGI is working the street today. I took her from another iBC pimp, Option Addict, on Friday–even though I was in it first. I bulked up on her on Friday and rode it down into the bell.
I’m good at skiing downhill.
All eyes on EGLE for me. I got the feeling it will fly again. Give it some time.
I sold off some POWI and more IMMR. I am almost completely out of IMMR. Considering the size of my position, the stock has behaved well into my selling.
Bottom line: if you missed out on TRLA, YELP, GOGO, Z and others, now is your chance to start edging in. Remember, Twitter is coming.
I turned off my monitor. I can’t stand to watch this carnage. The market is down like 30, yet I am off nearly 3%. God save me if the market trades down heavy today. I might lose it all.
I’m over here racking my marbles, trying to discern the mood. Clearly, we are in a risk off environment. Under the surface, momentum names are being clubbed to death, continuing the Friday death trap. For the most part, I escaped the tragedy that struck Wall Street on Friday, sashaying (no homo) throughout the day unscathed. But Mother Market, the bitch that she is, has made certain that Senor Tropicana “pay his fair share” today.
What would you have me do, sit here and watch this crap? Am I supposed to react and sell everything to save my hide?
I don’t think so.
Real men accept the sword in their stomach, without complaining about the pain, blood or prospect of living. Real men take the good with the bad and accept drawbacks as “the cost of doing business and aspiring for greatness.”
A great man once said “no balls, no babies.” Well, to that end, I am having mines boxed around like a speed bag this morning.
Tomorrow we are getting some earnings reports out of some very important homebuilders. As you know, I’ve made MHO my top position, so this is a big deal for me. The sector has been under fire for months, due to higher rates caused by “taper fever.” Without a doubt, the housing sector is the most polarized industry in America. The bears cling to it, as their last great hope. The bulls point to it as something the bears keep getting raped on.
I believe the numbers are going to be better than people think. In recent months the mood has been dour and the numbers tepid. Anything that points to an improving housing market will light a fire under these stocks, sending them, well on their way, to new highs.
Today is all about Apple and how the people have spoken, in regard to who has the best phone out right now. Samsung is on the ropes and Apple has the momo, once again.
Two of my longer term option strategies has been long Apple and IYR calls. I’ve had these positions for months now and feel they are still great positions to keep.
Following Friday’s drubbing, it’s very important that the market bounce today, otherwise the market can and will get very ugly.
I’m not done buying the market. We’re going to make scores of coin in shippers, tech and biotech, over the next weeks and months to come.
Your wives will accept your new status as a “multimillionaire” power mogul and permit you to keep a harem in the west wing of your manor. Gone with the spartan lifestyle of a man clipping coupons, arguing with the deli manager over the price of your turkey hero, in with unchecked hedonism and the absurd. Why, you won’t even need to ask for extra lettuce.
A new age of electric break-dancing on your marble floors will descend upon you–a mulled wine lifestyle if you will. Parties will be thrown, in your honour. Elected politicians will beg for your endorsement, all the while you blow cigar smoke into their stupid faces. Limousines will wait for you outside of your favorite eatery, causing traffic jams, yet the police say nothing because you have them on the payroll.
All of this, AND MORE, will be yours, if you are willing and able to accept that Benjamin Bernanke is your lord and savior. I know this is hard for you to accept, especially the bible thumpers out there, fixing to embrace Jesus amidst fire and brimstone– but it’s true.
Have faith in the Federal Reserve, leverage your accounts to the maximum, and live like a king beating on thieves for trying administer ‘unauthorized cinnamon’.
For those that can recall, when Steve Jobs went back to Apple, he did so as “an advisor.” For years he said it was only a temporary role, for reasons unbeknownst to me. As a point in fact, he was actively trying to find a new chief for Apple, one that would’ve changed the course of time, for the worse.
Naturally, no one believed Steve could turn AAPL around, since he failed once before.
Steven P. Jobs, who stepped up his role as an adviser at Apple Computer three weeks ago, has been trying — unsuccessfully so far — to persuade Eastman Kodak’s chief executive, George M. C. Fisher, to come to Apple, according to an executive who knows both men.
As recently as two weeks ago Mr. Fisher said publicly that he had no desire to leave Kodak, after reports that he had been approached about the possibility of taking the top spot at AT&T.
However, Mr. Jobs and Mr. Fisher have had a long and friendly relationship, and when Mr. Fisher was at Motorola Inc., that company came close to making a major investment in Mr. Jobs’s software company, Next Inc.
Neither Mr. Fisher nor Mr. Jobs would comment.
But Mr. Jobs, a co-founder of Apple who was later ousted from the company, once successfully wooed an initially skeptical John Sculley away from the larger Pepsico to lead Apple. Mr. Jobs reportedly asked Mr. Sculley, who in the meantime has left Apple, whether he wanted to ”sell sugar water” for the rest of his life.
Apple recently retained the executive search firm of Heidrick & Struggles to look for a new chief executive. However, Mr. Jobs has rapidly and visibly put his imprint back on Apple, and even without a formal position appears to be, in effect, leading the company after the recent ouster of Gilbert F. Amelio. As such, Mr. Jobs is deeply involved in the search for a new chief executive.
Mr. Jobs is reportedly also attempting to recruit former board members of Apple and Next Inc., including a friend, Larry Ellison, the chairman of Oracle; John Warnock, chairman of the Adobe Corporation, and Daniel Case, an investment banker at Hambrecht & Quist, to fill open positions on the Apple board.
Mr. Jobs has privately told friends and associates that he does not want to be Apple’s chairman or chief executive. However, while a chief executive search is under way, he has pushed the computer maker swiftly toward a strategy that he believes will allow the company to revive itself in a computer industry dominated by machines based on Microsoft software and Intel chips.
The change in Apple’s direction apparently includes a dramatic rollback of the company’s willingness to license the Macintosh operating system. Apple’s board told executives at several companies earlier this week that licensing the operating system was ”no longer consistent” with Apple’s strategy, according to officials at two companies that have licensing agreements with Apple.
So far, on the inside at least, Mr. Jobs has had a positive impact, according to current and former Apple employees.
”Marketing has been galvanized in a way they haven’t been for many, many years,” said one former Apple employee who stays in close contact with the company.
The new attitude at Apple is evident to those who have visited the company in recent days, particularly when compared with the malaise that the company had fallen into under Mr. Amelio.
”There is an incredibly high level of energy on the Apple campus compared to four weeks ago,” said Richard Doherty, a computer industry consultant at Envisioneering, a consulting firm in Seaford, N.Y. ”Everybody is really charged up, and it’s all because of Steve Jobs’s new role.”
At the heart of the new Apple strategy is a narrowing of the company’s focus on the education and publishing markets. However, Mr. Jobs has also directed Apple’s hardware designers on a crash program to develop a ”network computer” — an idea championed by both Mr. Ellison and Sun Microsystems Inc.’s chairman, Scott G. McNealy, for a relatively low-cost computer that provides Internet access and other basic capabilities. But unlike others, the Apple network computer is to be based on Macintosh technology and aimed at the home and education markets.
Mr. Jobs has reportedly told Apple employees that he wants to work closely with the company’s tiny server business, which develops larger machines that store and distribute information. Though it provides almost no revenues to the company now, if it is linked to a network computer strategy, the server business could conceivably blossom when joined to inexpensive machines, said a person who has discussed the strategy with Apple managers.
In one sense the new strategy is a return to Mr. Jobs’s roots. The first version of the Macintosh, which was intended to simplify personal computing, was described as resembling an ”appliance” at the time. People who have seen early design prototypes of Apple’s network computer have said that they are also remarkably flashy.
Mr. Jobs will have a coming-out party at the Macworld computer exhibition in Boston next week. The event could provide Mr. Jobs, who will give a speech, an opportunity to restore some momentum to the computer maker, which has in the last two years been in what has widely become perceived as a death spiral in the computer industry.
To help introduce his new strategy, Mr. Jobs has retained Tom Suiter of CKS Interactive, a multimedia advertising firm based on the West Coast that was founded by a group of Apple Computer veterans from the early days of the company. Mr. Suiter was Apple’s first creative director.
Mr. Jobs’s rapid push to revamp Apple may actually make it more difficult to find a high-profile chief executive who would be forced to come in and execute a strategy that was already in place.
However, Mr. Jobs has made it clear to a number of people that his plans call for only a short-term rescue effort.
”I think that Steve would love to be in an ambassadorial role in the long run,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Emory University School of Business in Atlanta.
Adjusted for dividends and splits, AAPL was trading around $5.50 at the time this article was published.
For those of you who were too young to understand the dot com era and how hated/loved the dot coms were, I’ve decided post articles from way back in the day, for two reasons.
1. To demonstrate how hated and wrong pundits can be. If you believe in something, backed by intelligent research, ignore the skeptics.
2. Pure comedy relief.
By the way, AMZN used to trade nuts when it first IPOd. I’d trade in and out of it, wild swings and very, very illiquid. Like AMER (or AOL), no one believed they could pull it off and constantly doubted them.
Online bookseller Amazon.com‘s push to sell some 3 million shares for as much as US$13 per share would value the company at $300 million – a pretty penny for a firm that lost about $6 million last year. And Amazon.com’s prospectus suggests those losses could grow larger.
Bill Bass, an analyst at Forrester Research, attributed the high valuation to “Internet inhalant” – the extra high that Net-related stock offerings can carry with investors. “Some people smoke Internet inhalant and their judgment gets bizarre,” Bass said.
Whatever else, Seattle-based Amazon.com approaches its initial public offering with the heady glow of having carved out a niche as the Web’s leading bookstore. The company offers more than 2.5 million titles, as well as CDs, videotapes, and audiotapes. Sales last year reached approximately $16 million, compared with just over $511,000 a year earlier. The company pioneered low-overhead book sales on the Web – by keeping inventory at a minimum and avoiding costly retail outlets, Amazon.com is able to sell large quantities of books at a substantial discount to cover price.
The trouble is, Amazon.com is filing just when some dark clouds are gathering on the horizon. The company’s prospectus contained a stock phrase among Internet start-ups about sustaining operating losses for the forseeable future, but follows with another, more unsettling caveat: “The rate at which such losses will be incurred will increase significantly from current levels, and its recent revenue growth rates are not sustainable and will decrease in the future.”
In short, Amazon.com has thrived as the only game in town, but its fortunes may soon be challenged by gatecrashers such as Barnes & Noble, Simon & Schuster, and Borders, who are enhancing their online presence. Barnes & Noble opened its first online bookstore on America Online last week and plans a presence on the Web later this year. The book giant, which has driven many independent booksellers out of business, announced predatory discounts of up to 30 percent for many hot titles, which Amazon.com boldly trumped by slashing 40 percent from its own bestseller prices.
That may prove to be a shrewd business strategy for Amazon.com. It understands online book sales better than anyone thanks to its lead-time on the Net. But it may be a costly financial move, since it will delay the company’s move into the black at a time when investors are losing patience with Internet companies long on promise but short on profits.
The big boys also have hefty profits from their superstores to protect them from the bruising that a price war can inflict. Barnes & Noble’s stores took in $883 million in the fourth quarter alone, while Borders took in $342 million. Those dollars will buy a lot more band-aids than the $8.5 million Amazon.com took in for the same period. And while Amazon.com will have lots of cash to cushion it during the rocky times ahead, much of the money will go to offset the $6 million operating loss the company has racked up so far.
What’s more, the knowledge gap between Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble may narrow faster than Amazon.com would like. Its founder and CEO Jeffrey Bezos is a computer whiz-kid from Bankers Trust, not a bookseller. Amazon.com has only one person with a book background among its executives – Scott Lipsky – who joined the company from Barnes & Noble.
In its favor, Amazon.com has a unique goodwill among Net shoppers that corporate giants will find hard to invoke for themselves. And, as Bass points out, an edge than only a hungry start-up can offer. “If they don’t make online work, they don’t eat,” Bass said. “Fear of bankruptcy really focuses the mind.”
In the end, it may be Amazon.com’s focus on the Internet that gives it the upper hand. “Let’s say Borders has a couple of billion in sales,” Bass said. “Online they do only what Amazon does. Their CEO will focus on retail because that’s where they’re making the most money.”
Amazon.com is now in the “quiet period” that by law must precede a stock offering, which means the company must refrain from commenting on the pending IPO. “We will wait for the review by the SEC and move forward,” said Jennifer Cast, an Amazon.com spokeswoman.
The share offering will be underwritten by Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, along with Alex Brown & Sons and Hambrecht & Quist. The shares would be traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol AMZN.
There aren’t any weak cogs in the iBC wheel of fortune.
The boys over at 12631, ever so quietly, have been making an embarrassment out of you online gurus, lurching in the darkest corners of Yahoo finance and Twitter. I do not intend to belittle you. Instead, I am going to eviscerate you (the sounds of the penis guillotine can be heard over the loud chants of the reading class population).
Here is the profit and loss sheet for the Chess and RC, for the month of september.
If you haven’t given their professionally managed “twitter-like” chat room a shot, you’re being a miser and literally taking food out from your children’s mouths.
In other news, EGLE is straight up ridiculous now. I am not feeling this downtick at all, with YELP barely down and POWI, ANGI, EGLE and CVV up. As a point in fact, I am at the days highs, right now, as we speak.
This isn’t a real sell off. People didn’t lose confidence in the Fed. This is manufactured by the ball jugglers on CNBC (my favorite enemy after Seeking Alpha), in an effort to drive ratings.
There isn’t going to be a prolonged government shut down. Quit fooling yourselves.
It’s POMO, all day, every day.
This dip will end like all of the others, with bears marinating in their own tears.
