Archive for March, 2006

  • Motley Fool on Dell
    , March 3rd, 2006 at 6:35 am

    Yesterday, the Motley Fool had five entries on Dell.
    Danger! Horror! Get Out!
    (Originally published on Jan. 13, 2005)
    Mentions Dell in passing.
    The Quandary of the Double
    Mentions Dell in passing.
    The Market’s 10 Best Stocks
    (Originally published on Dec. 29, 2005)
    Dell’s on a chart of best stocks for past 10 years.
    An Astonishingly Cheap Stock
    Mentions Dell in passing.
    The Next Big Thing in Investing
    (Originally published on Dec. 12, 2005)
    Mentions Dell in passing.
    These are five consecutive “news stories” under the Headlines feature on the Yahoo Finance quote for the stock. In total, only two are original and all five merely reference the stock in passing.
    You won’t learn anything new about the stock by reading these. What will you learn about? Well, the Motley Fool’s newsletters like Income Investor, Inside Value, Hidden Gems and Rule Breakers are all heavily promoted in the entries.
    I hope Yahoo Finance bans this garbage from their site, or at least takes it away from the news section.

  • Google: Holla Back Girl
    , March 2nd, 2006 at 5:16 pm

    From 2004: Google’s Letter to Prospective Shareholders

    We will make decisions on the business fundamentals, not accounting considerations, and always with the long term welfare of our company and shareholders in mind.
    Although we may discuss long term trends in our business, we do not plan to give earnings guidance in the traditional sense. We are not able to predict our business within a narrow range for each quarter. We recognize that our duty is to advance our shareholders’ interests, and we believe that artificially creating short term target numbers serves our shareholders poorly. We would prefer not to be asked to make such predictions, and if asked we will respectfully decline. A management team distracted by a series of short term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour. (So they’re saying I’m fat??)

    Today: Google Executives Exude Optimism

    Google Inc. executives provided investment analysts with a bright outlook Thursday in a display of confidence that appeared aimed at defusing growth concerns raised by the search engine leader‘s chief financial officer earlier this week.
    Schmidt underscored his optimism at one point by saying Google someday might generate $100 billion in annual revenue as it expands into a variety of new advertising channels, including television, radio and publishing. The 7-year-old company‘s revenue totaled $6.1 billion last year.

    Consider the scale stepped on.
    Another metaphor dies a painful death. I never though I’d see a large multinational corporation sell out for the almighty dollar.

  • NYSE To Go Public
    , March 2nd, 2006 at 3:31 pm

    After 213 years, the Big Board will hit the Big Board. The NYSE will have its public offering next week. The ticker symbol will be NYX.
    If you’re curious, the shares will trade on the NYSE.

  • Let Me Hear From You!
    , March 2nd, 2006 at 1:00 pm

    As always, if you have any stock questions (or tips), please feel free to e-mail me at eddy@crossingwallstreet.com. I’m happy to give you my opinion on any stock or investing in general; however per SEC rules, I’m not allowed to give personal portfolio advice.

  • Chico, Don’t Be Discouraged
    , March 2nd, 2006 at 12:52 pm

    What’s happening?
    Another “Can’t Miss” stock…misses. This time it’s Chico’s FAS (CHS), which earned 24 cents a share, one penny below the Street’s forecast.
    Apparently, one of penny of earnings is worth about 650 pennies in equity. The stock is currently down over 13%.
    CHS.bmp

  • The Midday Market
    , March 2nd, 2006 at 12:20 pm

    Another good day for energy, and not much else.
    Energy…………………….+0.65%
    Basic Materials…………-0.12%
    Telecom…………………..-0.12%
    Tech………………………..-0.31%
    Industrials……………….-0.42%
    Health Care……………..-0.48%
    Utilities……………………-0.58%
    Consumer Goods………-0.59%
    Financials………………..-0.70%
    Consumer Services…..-0.80%

  • ECB Raises Rates
    , March 2nd, 2006 at 10:34 am

    The European Central Bank just raised interest rates for the second time in the past few monhts, and it looks like they’re far from over. However, not everyone is pleased.

    Politicians and some economists see a risk that higher ECB rates will choke growth. French Finance Minister Thierry Breton said Feb. 13 that “we don’t see an increase of inflation in the euro zone.”

    Welcome to world of a unified currency! The French economy has been stuck in neutral for some time.
    Here’s more unilateralism from France:

    Paris has been increasingly accused of pursuing a protectionist agenda, particularly after its outspoken opposition to Mittal Steel’s E18.6 billion bid for Luxembourg-based rival Arcelor.
    Mr de Villepin said: “There is no reason that our American, Japanese or British friends should have tools that we do not. All I want is for France to fully play its role in globalisation and that our country can defend itself with all the tools needed to succeed, within the respect of the rules, European or international.”
    Mr de Villepin also outlined plans to boost employee shareholdings by allowing companies to issue free shares to staff, make profit-sharing share schemes more advantageous, transform overtime into shares, and create multi-company profit-sharing share schemes for specific projects.
    France is also granting companies the right to use “poison pill” defence strategies to protect themselves from hostile bids.

  • Don’t Overlook Line 45
    , March 2nd, 2006 at 10:26 am

    Do you have to pay the alternative minimum tax?

    “There’s no one thing that one can say for sure ‘this is going to be an AMT problem,'” said Mark Luscombe, a principal analyst with CCH, a tax-research, publishing and software firm in Riverwoods, Ill.
    That means some are likely shocked to find they’re in the AMT, a parallel tax system created in the late 1960s to target a handful of wealthy Americans who had managed to avoid paying income tax.
    “You don’t even have to be making a lot of money to fall into the alt-min anymore. It’s not about the big-income guy anymore,” said Barbara Steinmetz, a certified financial planner and enrolled agent in Burlingame, Calif.
    “Property taxes help boost you there. State income taxes help boost you there,” she said, noting that one client who formerly self-filed came to her for help with a $30,000 bill for unpaid AMT.

  • Worst. Conduct. Ever.
    , March 2nd, 2006 at 7:24 am

    Every day I wish I would have stepped up from that table and walked out. That was the worst conduct I had ever been part of and everybody knew exactly what was going on at that meeting.

    So said David Delainey yesterday in his scathing testimony against Skilling and Lay.

  • Which Fed Members Move the Market?
    , March 2nd, 2006 at 6:12 am

    Seriously geeky analysis from Macroeconomic Advisers. They looked at the speeches of Fed officials to see who had the biggest impact on the financial markets.

    Greenspan, who was replaced as chairman by Ben Bernanke on February 1, hit markets the most. But his importance dropped sharply compared with previous years, while the influence of St. Louis Fed President William Poole climbed into second place from third in a previous survey conducted between November 2001 and December 2004.
    Poole was followed by Board Governor Donald Kohn, up from fourth in the prior survey, with Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher in fourth place and New York Fed chief Timothy Geithner in fifth. Philadelphia Fed President Anthony Santomero placed sixth in both 2005 and in the previous survey.
    “The most provocative interpretation (of this change) is that market participants anticipated that the Committee was going to become more democratic once Greenspan departed, and hence began to pay more attention to the comments by other FOMC members,” Meyer and Sack wrote.