Summer doldrums. Little volume. Many people at the beach. This may be a time to be patient. My portfolio — see right hand column — is ebbing. Not doing well. But not badly. Big index funds like FMILX and Vanguard funds doing fine. BX and UNH are up. Even GoPro (GPRO). Time to go through the holdings one by one. Should I dump Whole Foods? Its’ doing horribly. Why didn’t I dump it when it had dropped 8%? Why did I violate my inviolate stop loss rule? Idiot.
We shop there every day. We enjoy their food. Why should that influence my decision on the stock? Never fall in love with a stock. Never.
P/E is still far too high — at 24.
Fire 18,000 and watch your stock explode. Good stock pick, Harry.
Oh, you didn’t pick Microsoft? You slammed it, saying the new CEO lacked vision. Brilliant, Harry.
So, is it too late to buy? Perhaps not, says he ( thinking for a change). P/E is 16.5. Maybe Naydella (new CEO) will spin off a division or two, give stockholders some free shares, and allow some real entrepreneurs to run the spin-offs. Free shares would be great for shareholders.
Microsoft owns Skype, which is a super service for free videoing with your children and grandchildren. This phone doesn’t work on Skype. But it’s a wonderful photo.
1,200,000+ apps. That’s how many apps are available from Apple’s App store for your iPhone and iPad. Some are free. Some cost big money. All have transformed how we interact with mobile devices and built many successful businesses — many of which are run from home, from a garage, from a traveling laptop. I have one app (Newton’s Telecom Dictionary) and have ideas for more. Apple is very professional how it deals with its developers — after you’ve learned Apple’s quirky rules.
I spent last night with a successful, long-time programmer. He’d designed one of the first stock trading programming and is now working on the new field of predictive data analytics — helping big companies predict what they might sell to their biggest customers. I asked him, “If I had ideas for an Apple app, what programming language should I first learn?” He suggested Mathematica by Wolfram. (For more, click here.) Apple also has a new language for writing its apps. It’s called Swift. Click here.
Remember Uber? Best limo service ever.
This piece from the Economist talks about another exploding area:
Smartphone apps. The antisocial networks
A bunch of new apps test the limits of the sharing economy
PARKING can stir intense passions, especially in San Francisco, where demand for public spaces often exceeds supply. Hence the outcry over apps that let occupants of slots on streets make money by alerting other drivers that they are about to drive away. As we went to press, one of the apps, MonkeyParking, was seeking an understanding with San Francisco’s city attorney, Dennis Herrera, who had given it until July 11th to cease operating on the city’s streets or face a lawsuit. Another app, ParkModo, which also attracted Mr Herrera’s attention, is not currently operating in San Francisco, though it says it intends to roll out nationwide in future.
At the heart of the dispute over these services is whether apps should be able to use a public asset to make a profit. Users of MonkeyParking’s service bid between $5 and $20 for spaces about to be liberated by other users. The firm has also launched the app in Rome, another city where parking is scarce. San Francisco’s authorities point to a local law banning efforts to sell or rent public parking spaces. The app firms say it is not spaces that are being sold, just information about their availability, which thus reduces the number of cars circling the streets searching for them.
MonkeyParking wants its app to be seen as part of the “sharing economy”, like those of Airbnb, which lets people rent rooms or houses to others, and Lyft, a ride-sharing service. These also help maximise the use of existing assets. The difference, however, is that the homes and cars are privately owned. Jeremiah Owyang of Crowd Companies, which advises firms on the sharing economy, thinks apps that monetise public assets are “not in the spirit” of the sharing movement.
Even trying to monetise private assets is proving controversial in some cases. Another outfit in San Francisco, ReservationHop, has come under fire for making fake bookings at hard-to-get-into restaurants and then selling them via an app. Buyers are given the false names to use when they turn up to dine. The worry here is that restaurants could lose out if no one buys the fake reservations. Ticket Scalpr is an app incarnation of the age-old business of reselling tickets for popular events, though it says its aim is to cut out conventional touts and let fans swap surplus tickets directly.
There has been a heated debate on Twitter about such arguably antisocial networks, using a new hashtag, #JerkTech. What the apps seen so far have in common is that their creators have identified things that are regularly being priced below their market-clearing level, ie, that at which demand equals supply. And, in Silicon Valley’s spirit of “move fast and break things”, they are conducting a rapid test of the public’s, and regulators’, appetite for shifting the boundaries of what is acceptable business practice. Uber, a taxi-hailing app which has no doubt been called a jerk and worse over the “surge pricing” it imposes at times of high demand, agreed this week with New York’s attorney-general that it would curb its peak rates.
5 Picks From The Delivering Alpha Conference:
5 Picks from yesterday’s Delivering Alpha Conference: Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO), Petrobras (NYSE:PBR), Citigroup (NYSE:C), National Oilwell Varco (NYSE:NOV), Flextronics (NASDAQ:FLEX) Other stocks mentioned: Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A), (NYSE:BRK.B), Vale (NYSE:VALE),
Jim Cramer was the moderator of a panel at the Delivering Alpha Conference with 3 managers: Lee Cooperman, Larry Robbins and Michael Novogratz. These managers were “thoughtful and constructive without being promotional about themselves and their funds.” Lee Cooperman’s ideas at this conference have substantially outperformed the market. Cramer remembers his early days as a hedge fund manager when Cooperman recommended Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), (BRK.B) when it was trading at $200.
Novogratz is a contrarian who plays with big picture macro ideas. Now he likes the 2 most hated markets: Argentina and Brazil. Argentina is too unstable, but Cramer thinks Brazil is “intriguing.” Things are so bad, that the government might be ousted, reasoned Cramer, in favor of a more pro-business regime. Cramer asked Novogratz about Vale (VALE), but the latter did not want an iron ore trade. Petrobras (PBR) is a stock Novogratz recommended; Cramer thinks the stock could rise 50% with a new government.
Lee Cooperman and Larry Robbins both recommended Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO), which is a company that has delivered and has fast growth. Robbins thinks the stock is cheap, because the sequester affected health research, since a major client is the government. With sequester problems placed in the past, TMO may be a buy. Cooperman recommended Citigroup (C), which is a stock the market has not liked. Management is fixing its problems, and since interest rates seem to be headed higher in the future, it should benefit.
National Oilwell Varco (NOV) is a stock Cramer has liked and has recently sold off a division. Its strong balance sheet and low interest rates have enabled NOV to secure funding. Cramer thinks it could go from the mid-80s to $100. Robbins recommended Flextronics (FLEX), which is a contract assembler of high-tech devices. The company is buying back 20% of its stock annually and trades at a cheap 9 times earnings.
Time Warner (NYSE:TWX), Twenty-First Century Fox (NASDAQ:FOX), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), EOG Resources (NYSE:EOG), CBS (NYSE:CBS), Disney (NYSE:DIS), Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY), Anadarko Petroleum (NYSE:APC), Whiting Petroleum (NYSE:WLL), Kodiak Oil & Gas (NYSE:KOG), Pioneer Natural Resources (NYSE:PXD). Other stocks mentioned: J.C. Penney (NYSE:JCP), Royal Caribbean (NYSE:RCL), Globalstar (NYSEMKT:GSAT)…
Old tech is the low risk, high reward place to be right now. Intel (INTC) is a stock Cramer recommended a few days ago, it reported a fantastic quarter and the stock rallied 9%. Companies are spending on computers again, and Intel is a main beneficiary. Cramer thinks the upside on Intel is capped, because it lacks a mobile strategy, and he prefers Cisco (CSCO). Microsoft (MSFT) is good, but it ran so much on Wednesday that Cramer would wait for a decline.
Bank of America (BAC) reported a strong quarter and settled fears about its lawsuit. The company made sufficient money to deal with the Justice Department. BAC ran up going into the quarter, so it didn’t see uptick. Oil has dropped 10%, and chartists say this is only the beginning of a decline. However, oil stocks soared because they are true growth stocks. EOG Resources (EOG), Occidental Petroleum (OXY), Anadarko Petroleum (APC), Marathon (NYSE:MRO) and Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) are buys on this trend. Whiting Petroleum (WLL) would be a buy, but it is up on news of its acquisition of Kodiak Oil & Gas (KOG). These stocks are undervalued, according to Cramer. Companies with strong buybacks, low multiples and growth are stocks to put on a buy list….
to read the full piece, click here.
Manual typewriters boom
Patrick Sensburg, chairman of the German parliament’s National Security Agency investigative committee, now says he’s considering expanding the use of manual typewriters to carry out his group’s work. … Sensburg said that the committee is taking its operational security very seriously. “In fact, we already have [a typewriter], and it’s even a non-electronic typewriter,” he said. If Sensburg’s suggestion takes flight, the country would be taking a page out of the Russian playbook. Last year, the agency in charge of securing communications from the Kremlin announced that it wanted to spend 486,000 rubles (about $14,800) to buy 20 electric typewriters as a way to avoid digital leaks.
Time to kill the xerox machines also?
Harry Newton.