Saturday, May 10, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
What's in your wallet? - Credit Cards
America is addicted to debt, so why not make a few bucks off this addiction. Here are three credit cards stocks that I am following. Which one do you like the best?
Master Card (MA)
Closing Price - $293.41
P/E Ratio - 29.95
F P/E - 26.46
EPS - 9.80
Yield - .20
Visa (V)
Closing Price - 87.30
Visa went public in March so no historical data is available
American Express (AXP)
Closing Price - 48.85
P/E Ratio - 14.64
F P/E - 17.67
EPS - 3.34
Yield - 1.47
Master Card (MA)
Closing Price - $293.41
P/E Ratio - 29.95
F P/E - 26.46
EPS - 9.80
Yield - .20
Visa (V)
Closing Price - 87.30
Visa went public in March so no historical data is available
American Express (AXP)
Closing Price - 48.85
P/E Ratio - 14.64
F P/E - 17.67
EPS - 3.34
Yield - 1.47
Monday, May 5, 2008
50 Best Stocks for 2008 - UPDATE
Only 11 of the 50 best stocks for 2008 are in the black! Click here for the original list. The 11 winners are CAJ, CHK, DKS, DNA, JPM, MTH, NKE, RIG, RIMM, TGT, & TOT. Overall the portfolio is down about 9.92%. I will continue to follow this all year, and hopefully we will go positive soon. I put in some limit orders today to peel back my AAPL position, but none have hit so far. As soon as I free up some cash I will be evaluating this list again looking for some winners.
Lunch with Greenspan
Do you have an extra $16,000? You could have lunch with Alan Greenspan & Andrea Mitchell at the Four Seasons in Washington DC. Check it out here.... The current bid is 16k
$360,000,000,000 Personal Check
My man Charles Fuller tried to cash a personal check for 360 billion dollars last week at a Chase bank in Dallas. This dude is awesome! What do you think the teller thought when she saw all the zeros on the check. Needless to say he was arrested and charged with theft, unlawful carrying of a weapon, and possession of a green leafy substance. Hat tip to Skeeter for the story...
Sunday, May 4, 2008
New Trades, Kentucky Derby Update
I plan on pulling some AAPL off the table tomorrow, if it continues to head north. I am way to heavily invested in one stock so I am going to be looking to spread the action. I have made huge gains in AAPL, so it may be time to peal down my position. Still love the company and where it is headed, but it is never smart to be to heavy in one stock. I will sleep on it.....
My wife cleaned up at the Kentucky Derby this weekend. She put all of her money on Big Brown to win! I may have her pick some stocks for me.
Microsoft Pulls Yahoo Offer
Microsoft withdrew its bid to purchase Yahoo for 42.3 Billion on Saturday. Bad news for Yahoo shareholders, who are going to take a hit on Monday. Microsoft will not pursue a hostile takeover of Yahoo. This was a smart move for Microsoft who was offering way to much for the struggling Yahoo. Microsoft should wait for a year and if Yahoo continues to struggle make a lower offer or a hostile takeover. Here is Steve Ballmer's letter to Jerry Yang.
May 3, 2008
Mr. Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Dear Jerry:
After over three months, we have reached the conclusion of the process regarding a possible combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!.
I first want to convey my personal thanks to you, your management team, and Yahoo!'s Board of Directors for your consideration of our proposal. I appreciate the time and attention all of you have given to this matter, and I especially appreciate the time that you have invested personally. I feel that our discussions this week have been particularly useful, providing me for the first time with real clarity on what is and is not possible.
I am disappointed that Yahoo! has not moved towards accepting our offer. I first called you with our offer on January 31 because I believed that a combination of our two companies would have created real value for our respective shareholders and would have provided consumers, publishers, and advertisers with greater innovation and choice in the marketplace. Our decision to offer a 62 percent premium at that time reflected the strength of these convictions.
In our conversations this week, we conveyed our willingness to raise our offer to $33.00 per share, reflecting again our belief in this collective opportunity. This increase would have added approximately another $5 billion of value to your shareholders, compared to the current value of our initial offer. It also would have reflected a premium of over 70 percent compared to the price at which your stock closed on January 31. Yet it has proven insufficient, as your final position insisted on Microsoft paying yet another $5 billion or more, or at least another $4 per share above our $33.00 offer.
Also, after giving this week's conversations further thought, it is clear to me that it is not sensible for Microsoft to take our offer directly to your shareholders. This approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and eventually an exchange offer. Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo! undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.
We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a "hostile" bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:
-- First, it would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!'s own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system. This would also fragment your search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem surrounding them. This would undermine the reliance on your display advertising business to fuel future growth.
-- Given this, it would impair Yahoo's ability to retain the talented engineers working on advertising systems that are important to our interest in a combination of our companies.
-- In addition, it would raise a host of regulatory and legal problems that no acquirer, including Microsoft, would want to inherit. Among other things, this would consolidate market share with the already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce competition and choice in the marketplace.
-- This would also effectively enable Google to set the prices for key search terms on both their and your search platforms and, in the process, raise prices charged to advertisers on Yahoo. In addition to whatever resulting legal problems, this seems unwise from a business perspective unless in fact one simply wishes to use this as a vehicle to exit the paid search business in favor of Google.
-- It could foreclose any chance of a combination with any other search provider that is not already relying on Google's search services.
Accordingly, your apparent plan to pursue such an arrangement in the event of a proxy contest or exchange offer leads me to the firm decision not to pursue such a path. Instead, I hereby formally withdraw Microsoft's proposal to acquire Yahoo!.
We will move forward and will continue to innovate and grow our business at Microsoft with the talented team we have in place and potentially through strategic transactions with other business partners.
I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table.
But clearly a deal is not to be.
Thank you again for the time we have spent together discussing this.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Steven A. Ballmer
May 3, 2008
Mr. Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Dear Jerry:
After over three months, we have reached the conclusion of the process regarding a possible combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!.
I first want to convey my personal thanks to you, your management team, and Yahoo!'s Board of Directors for your consideration of our proposal. I appreciate the time and attention all of you have given to this matter, and I especially appreciate the time that you have invested personally. I feel that our discussions this week have been particularly useful, providing me for the first time with real clarity on what is and is not possible.
I am disappointed that Yahoo! has not moved towards accepting our offer. I first called you with our offer on January 31 because I believed that a combination of our two companies would have created real value for our respective shareholders and would have provided consumers, publishers, and advertisers with greater innovation and choice in the marketplace. Our decision to offer a 62 percent premium at that time reflected the strength of these convictions.
In our conversations this week, we conveyed our willingness to raise our offer to $33.00 per share, reflecting again our belief in this collective opportunity. This increase would have added approximately another $5 billion of value to your shareholders, compared to the current value of our initial offer. It also would have reflected a premium of over 70 percent compared to the price at which your stock closed on January 31. Yet it has proven insufficient, as your final position insisted on Microsoft paying yet another $5 billion or more, or at least another $4 per share above our $33.00 offer.
Also, after giving this week's conversations further thought, it is clear to me that it is not sensible for Microsoft to take our offer directly to your shareholders. This approach would necessarily involve a protracted proxy contest and eventually an exchange offer. Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo! undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.
We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a "hostile" bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons:
-- First, it would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!'s own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system. This would also fragment your search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem surrounding them. This would undermine the reliance on your display advertising business to fuel future growth.
-- Given this, it would impair Yahoo's ability to retain the talented engineers working on advertising systems that are important to our interest in a combination of our companies.
-- In addition, it would raise a host of regulatory and legal problems that no acquirer, including Microsoft, would want to inherit. Among other things, this would consolidate market share with the already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce competition and choice in the marketplace.
-- This would also effectively enable Google to set the prices for key search terms on both their and your search platforms and, in the process, raise prices charged to advertisers on Yahoo. In addition to whatever resulting legal problems, this seems unwise from a business perspective unless in fact one simply wishes to use this as a vehicle to exit the paid search business in favor of Google.
-- It could foreclose any chance of a combination with any other search provider that is not already relying on Google's search services.
Accordingly, your apparent plan to pursue such an arrangement in the event of a proxy contest or exchange offer leads me to the firm decision not to pursue such a path. Instead, I hereby formally withdraw Microsoft's proposal to acquire Yahoo!.
We will move forward and will continue to innovate and grow our business at Microsoft with the talented team we have in place and potentially through strategic transactions with other business partners.
I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table.
But clearly a deal is not to be.
Thank you again for the time we have spent together discussing this.
Sincerely yours,
/s/ Steven A. Ballmer
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Turning Positive
Based on the recent headlines it appears the market may be turning positive again. You be the judge:
Stocks Ready for Better Times?
The Building Blocks of a Stock Rally
Stabilizing Signs in Housing
The Bulls are Back
Monday, April 28, 2008
The World's Most Innovative Companies
Business Week has released it's list of the fifty most innovative companies in the world. Most of these are not a big surprise but it is interesting to look over the list and then research the stock activity over the past few months. Many of the innovative companies are more resilient to a down turn in the market. Here are the top few from each category:
Financial - GS, BOA, C
Pharma/Biotech/Health care - PFE, MRK, DNA
Technology/Telecom - AAPL, GOOG, ATT
Entertainment/Media - DIS, AAPL, NWS
Consumer Products - AAPL, PG, SNE
Autos - TM, GM, Tata Group (Private)
Industrial/Manufacturing - GE, MMM, BA
Retail - WMT, TGT, AMZN
Energy - BP, XOM, Royal Dutch Shell (Private)
Travel/Tourism/Hospitality - MAR, Hilton Hotels (Private), Virgin Group (Private)
A few that I think should have been added to the list or further up on the list are: AXP, PEP, NTDOY, CHK, & ERTS. Sorry for not linking the stocks, but you can pull them up here if you would like...
Financial - GS, BOA, C
Pharma/Biotech/Health care - PFE, MRK, DNA
Technology/Telecom - AAPL, GOOG, ATT
Entertainment/Media - DIS, AAPL, NWS
Consumer Products - AAPL, PG, SNE
Autos - TM, GM, Tata Group (Private)
Industrial/Manufacturing - GE, MMM, BA
Retail - WMT, TGT, AMZN
Energy - BP, XOM, Royal Dutch Shell (Private)
Travel/Tourism/Hospitality - MAR, Hilton Hotels (Private), Virgin Group (Private)
A few that I think should have been added to the list or further up on the list are: AXP, PEP, NTDOY, CHK, & ERTS. Sorry for not linking the stocks, but you can pull them up here if you would like...
Ben Bernanke
The Fed's upcoming policy-setting meeting this week has left investors a little shaky. It has been widely anticipated that the Fed is going lower interest rates an additional quarter point to 2%, but inflation concerns may keep the interest rate flat. The acquisition news released today regarding Mars Inc's purchase of Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. for a reported $23 billion dollars has done little to excite the market. So once again the fate of the market lies in the hands of Ben Bernanke. Here are a few facts about our friend Big Ben:
- Born in Agusta Georgia in 1953
- Taught himself calculus
- Received a 1590 out of 1600 on his SAT
- Received an undergraduate degree from Harvard with a BA in economics in 1975
- Received a PhD from MIT in 1979
- Taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business, New York University, and Princeton University
- Joined the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in 2002
- Appointed Chairman of the Federal Reserve on Febuary 1, 2006, by President Bush
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Apple on Wallstrip... Again
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Presidential Pay
Does George need a pay raise? Lets take a look...
For 2007 George and Laura Bush had taxable income totaling $719,274 while the average CEO compensation was $15,200,000 from the 500 largest US Companies. The United States government is arguable the largest company in the world, so why isn't the president compensated adequately? As a percentage of our GDP even our current president is a steal. Granted Air Force One is pretty sweet, but maybe if we were to raise the compensation package for presidents we would attract more qualified candidates. Just a thought...
For 2007 George and Laura Bush had taxable income totaling $719,274 while the average CEO compensation was $15,200,000 from the 500 largest US Companies. The United States government is arguable the largest company in the world, so why isn't the president compensated adequately? As a percentage of our GDP even our current president is a steal. Granted Air Force One is pretty sweet, but maybe if we were to raise the compensation package for presidents we would attract more qualified candidates. Just a thought...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)