New Market Highs Are Easy To Handle [View article]
yes. buy as much aflac as you can get your hands on. mortgage the farm and sell the cows, ma! extremely solidly-run, conservatively financed company and relentless dividend raiser that is selling at criminally low prices. lots of good companies selling cheap in insurance right now in fact.
It should be noted that the GS4 just launched around this time last month, while the i5 is growing a little long in the tooth. You seem to only be comparing *present* sales without considering the product cycles.
It's probably better to hold off sales comparisons until the i5s comes out and to see how that does. Samsung, as the above poster notes, does not post hard sales numbers, which muddies the waters considerably. Plus, shipments to retailers != sales. The i5 sold 5 million in its first 5 days. The GS4 might not hit that in its first month.
I believe the S4 is a bit cheaper, no? But the point's taken. I think people tend to overshoot their criticism here. Simply because there's competition doesn't put Apple in a terminal state of decline. There's no iPhone killer yet -- which was the purpose of the Galaxy.
It should be noted that beyond all this, cellphones have evolved drastically in just the last five years. So we can't know what tomorrow will bring.
I tend to see it as a matter of company cultures. Samsung and Apple have different objectives. Switching industries, take a company like Toyota, which is all things to (most) consumer niches. A new Corolla will be a very good car for a long time. But it's never going to turn heads. "Ooooh, is that a Toyota?" You'll never hear it. A Maserati, on the other hand...
So brand recognition and the moat, which you are quick to perceive, is the primary factor here. It may be a bit much to say the Apple magic is "broken," and we do have to recognize that the company is coming off of what may be two of the most remarkable years in American corporate history. I sense this is a cooling-off period more than anything. Maybe "dormant" is a better word. But history is littered with once-dominant companies that lost their edge due to complacency. Atari, anyone?
The S4 is a mess of crapware and slapdash bells and whistles crammed together like snakes in a can of peanut brittle, with low memory and second-tier functionality. And a really big screen. My friend got one as schwag through her company on its release and she says new problems arise regularly, and she has to tailor her use of it around several glitches.
The i4 is the best consumer product released in the last 25 years. Full stop. There's simply no argument to be made otherwise. If anything, it's *too* good, nearly impossible to improve on, and that's why the i5 didn't similarly crush everything in its path. It's a good problem to have, I suppose. It essentially means that barring divine intervention, there is one company that can improve on the current iPhone, and that is... Apple.
Samsung, HTC, et al, have not matched or bettered the iPhone. You're simply wrong there, Paulo. All they've done is create lower-cost alternatives, which is very different from saying they are improvements.
The Most Misleading Words In Investing: You Can't Go Broke Taking A Profit [View article]
Peter Lynch makes the same argument in "One Up On Wall Street": if you automatically divest of a holding just because it's doubled, you're possibly missing out on your next ten-bagger. Especially with a company such as Apple, which will likely remain very profitable for the long haul.
It's a little bit different, I think, selling really excellent companies like Apple after they've met with meteoric increases, and selling companies that aren't quite world-beaters. Just recently I picked up shares of a small tech stock called Intelliquent that was selling at 50 cents on the dollar. About a week after I picked it up, other shareholders set out on what has become a raging proxy fight -- and the share price has increased 96% in the last two weeks with no signs of letting up. Normally, my strong urge to avoid cap gains taxes will keep me holding on, but if this thing keeps going -- oh yeah, I'm jettisoning this thing into space, you betcha.
7 Reasons To Look At Undervalued Publisher John Wiley & Sons [View article]
This is a very good investment thesis, didn't mean to detract from it one bit. Much of the said compensation comes from options and the like. Wiley is in good shape as a going concern.
7 Reasons To Look At Undervalued Publisher John Wiley & Sons [View article]
Good analysis. One thing I noted was its margins: the gross margin is high, but its operating margin is low. Among its peers - Scholastic, et al - it seems to have a higher GM and lower OM than the norm, and its net profit margin is lower, too.
Why could this be, I wonder? Immediately, cynical me thought "executive compensation." So I checked it out, and evidently CEO Steven Smith brought in $8 mil last year, double his 2011 compensation, and compared to average salaries of $800-900 thousand for Wiley's competitors. This might help to explain the margins! It should be noted as well that Wiley's return on investment numbers run fairly (but not abysmally) low.
All in all, though, Wiley is a respected publisher, and if WileyPlus can help them adapt to the future this should be a successful concern for a long time.
I recently checked out the soda company National Beverage Corp with a similar story -- fine business with at least decent future prospects selling at a bargain... with a chief executive that rakes it in! And maybe to the detriment of the common shareholder. But it's a good cash-generating company.
It seems you get to pick only two out of the following three, except in exceptional cases, among managers: competent, honest, and cheap. So I suppose honest and competent management is worth paying for.
John Heins and Whitney Tilson's 'The Art Of Value Investing' [View article]
Ooo, thanks for bringing this to our attention, Ms. Jubin, good catch and I'll look into it. I especially like the Bill Miller quote! I've been a longtime fan of Mr. Tilson's, and look forward to absorbing some of the wisdom these folks have shared over the years.
Right now, I'm reading "The Templeton Touch" about Sir John Templeton, and it is a very fine book -- Mr. Templeton was a remarkable man with a great mind. There is of course plenty of good investing advice, but he lived a good life and was at peace with himself as well. Half the book is a biography, and the other is devoted to short essays other investors wrote about Templeton, and Mohnish Pabrai is one of them (actually, his chapter might be the best one of these short essays). Well worth a look!
Apple: Time To Get Optimistic Again [View article]
But I think the obvious reason (to me) that Apple's been so quiet lately, is that they're winding up to unleash a storm of epic proportions on the marketplace.
Remember some years ago Jobs said something along the lines of that if you didn't come from a certain counter-cultural mindset, you'd never get what Apple was doing. I took that to mean: forget what all the analysts and TV talking heads and website armchair experts have to say, focus on producing the most amazing technological devices humanity has ever seen, and let the rest sort itself out later. Because people are always going to talk.
It's just my hypothesis here, but I think after this dormancy period - remember, the company just experienced what might have been the three most remarkable years of growth in the history of American capitalism - the company will explode all over again and we'll see things we're not even thinking about right now. I like to be optimistic. After all, Apple wasn't just Steve Jobs. Woz, Jony Ives, and hundreds of the best engineers, programmers, and designers in the world are just as much a part of that story, and the company culture has survived Jobs. Apple's products have certainly retained their best-in-class status. So we'll see what the future holds. I think this will remain a wonderful company for a very long time.
Apple: Time To Get Optimistic Again [View article]
Indeed. While we're playing "what I would do with a million dollars" here, aside from media content, put on the crazy ideas hat and imagine if... Apple bought Amazon outright, which it could theoretically do, with some financing...
Apple: Time To Get Optimistic Again [View article]
I am curious too as to what they will do in terms of acquisitions for iTV. Buying Netflix would make me flinch, as the stock is trading at such a high multiple, but that is a guaranteed game-changer right there. Time Warner is also an interesting possibility. Disney... is a fascinating possibility!
Apple: Time To Get Optimistic Again [View article]
Great job, this article is after my own heart. I bought in around $445, a little bummed I bought early before it dipped below 4 (oooh, that $50 just kills me!) but still think I got away with the stock exchange's steal of the year. Remember, the market in the short term is a voting machine. In the long term, a weighing machine... The hand of Mr. Market is clearly at work.
I don't want to overload my portfolio with AAPL, and I'm about as loaded up as I want to get, but now is a great time for a value-conscious investor who hasn't opened up a position to do so.
A little puzzled by Julian Robertson's decision to keelhaul his entire holding. Normally, you'd think someone who learned at the feet of John Templeton wouldn't sell into a slide, but who knows what his reasoning really was.
I agree, shorting anything in this market is lunacy. Especially a company like Ford, which has been performing very well in the last six months and is still trading at fair valuation. Consider me unsold on this thesis.
Jump On The Tesla Bandwagon Now And You May Get Burned [View article]
Due to pronounced masochistic tendencies, I like to check out the Yahoo finance boards -- just to know what I should stay far away from. High jubilation right now about this stock. And it's still in negative EPS! Forward p/e hovering around the 80s, even after yesterday's drawdown. Yikes.
I didn't short this because shorting anything normally entails more risk than I'm willing to take on (and in hindsight I'm glad I didn't), but I do sense that there will be some pain for Tesla investors, if not now, then down the road. Ghosts of "it" stocks from the dotcom era are rapping at the door.
New Market Highs Are Easy To Handle [View article]
Apple's Magic Is Broken [View article]
It's probably better to hold off sales comparisons until the i5s comes out and to see how that does. Samsung, as the above poster notes, does not post hard sales numbers, which muddies the waters considerably. Plus, shipments to retailers != sales. The i5 sold 5 million in its first 5 days. The GS4 might not hit that in its first month.
Apple's Magic Is Broken [View article]
It should be noted that beyond all this, cellphones have evolved drastically in just the last five years. So we can't know what tomorrow will bring.
I tend to see it as a matter of company cultures. Samsung and Apple have different objectives. Switching industries, take a company like Toyota, which is all things to (most) consumer niches. A new Corolla will be a very good car for a long time. But it's never going to turn heads. "Ooooh, is that a Toyota?" You'll never hear it. A Maserati, on the other hand...
So brand recognition and the moat, which you are quick to perceive, is the primary factor here. It may be a bit much to say the Apple magic is "broken," and we do have to recognize that the company is coming off of what may be two of the most remarkable years in American corporate history. I sense this is a cooling-off period more than anything. Maybe "dormant" is a better word. But history is littered with once-dominant companies that lost their edge due to complacency. Atari, anyone?
Apple's Magic Is Broken [View article]
The S4 is a mess of crapware and slapdash bells and whistles crammed together like snakes in a can of peanut brittle, with low memory and second-tier functionality. And a really big screen. My friend got one as schwag through her company on its release and she says new problems arise regularly, and she has to tailor her use of it around several glitches.
The i4 is the best consumer product released in the last 25 years. Full stop. There's simply no argument to be made otherwise. If anything, it's *too* good, nearly impossible to improve on, and that's why the i5 didn't similarly crush everything in its path. It's a good problem to have, I suppose. It essentially means that barring divine intervention, there is one company that can improve on the current iPhone, and that is... Apple.
Samsung, HTC, et al, have not matched or bettered the iPhone. You're simply wrong there, Paulo. All they've done is create lower-cost alternatives, which is very different from saying they are improvements.
The Most Misleading Words In Investing: You Can't Go Broke Taking A Profit [View article]
It's a little bit different, I think, selling really excellent companies like Apple after they've met with meteoric increases, and selling companies that aren't quite world-beaters. Just recently I picked up shares of a small tech stock called Intelliquent that was selling at 50 cents on the dollar. About a week after I picked it up, other shareholders set out on what has become a raging proxy fight -- and the share price has increased 96% in the last two weeks with no signs of letting up. Normally, my strong urge to avoid cap gains taxes will keep me holding on, but if this thing keeps going -- oh yeah, I'm jettisoning this thing into space, you betcha.
7 Reasons To Look At Undervalued Publisher John Wiley & Sons [View article]
7 Reasons To Look At Undervalued Publisher John Wiley & Sons [View article]
Why could this be, I wonder? Immediately, cynical me thought "executive compensation." So I checked it out, and evidently CEO Steven Smith brought in $8 mil last year, double his 2011 compensation, and compared to average salaries of $800-900 thousand for Wiley's competitors. This might help to explain the margins! It should be noted as well that Wiley's return on investment numbers run fairly (but not abysmally) low.
All in all, though, Wiley is a respected publisher, and if WileyPlus can help them adapt to the future this should be a successful concern for a long time.
I recently checked out the soda company National Beverage Corp with a similar story -- fine business with at least decent future prospects selling at a bargain... with a chief executive that rakes it in! And maybe to the detriment of the common shareholder. But it's a good cash-generating company.
It seems you get to pick only two out of the following three, except in exceptional cases, among managers: competent, honest, and cheap. So I suppose honest and competent management is worth paying for.
Is J.C. Penney Beyond Help? [View article]
John Heins and Whitney Tilson's 'The Art Of Value Investing' [View article]
Right now, I'm reading "The Templeton Touch" about Sir John Templeton, and it is a very fine book -- Mr. Templeton was a remarkable man with a great mind. There is of course plenty of good investing advice, but he lived a good life and was at peace with himself as well. Half the book is a biography, and the other is devoted to short essays other investors wrote about Templeton, and Mohnish Pabrai is one of them (actually, his chapter might be the best one of these short essays). Well worth a look!
Apple: Time To Get Optimistic Again [View article]
Remember some years ago Jobs said something along the lines of that if you didn't come from a certain counter-cultural mindset, you'd never get what Apple was doing. I took that to mean: forget what all the analysts and TV talking heads and website armchair experts have to say, focus on producing the most amazing technological devices humanity has ever seen, and let the rest sort itself out later. Because people are always going to talk.
It's just my hypothesis here, but I think after this dormancy period - remember, the company just experienced what might have been the three most remarkable years of growth in the history of American capitalism - the company will explode all over again and we'll see things we're not even thinking about right now. I like to be optimistic. After all, Apple wasn't just Steve Jobs. Woz, Jony Ives, and hundreds of the best engineers, programmers, and designers in the world are just as much a part of that story, and the company culture has survived Jobs. Apple's products have certainly retained their best-in-class status. So we'll see what the future holds. I think this will remain a wonderful company for a very long time.
Apple: Time To Get Optimistic Again [View article]
Hm.
Apple: Time To Get Optimistic Again [View article]
Apple: Time To Get Optimistic Again [View article]
I don't want to overload my portfolio with AAPL, and I'm about as loaded up as I want to get, but now is a great time for a value-conscious investor who hasn't opened up a position to do so.
A little puzzled by Julian Robertson's decision to keelhaul his entire holding. Normally, you'd think someone who learned at the feet of John Templeton wouldn't sell into a slide, but who knows what his reasoning really was.
The Market May Favor Shorting Ford [View article]
Jump On The Tesla Bandwagon Now And You May Get Burned [View article]
I didn't short this because shorting anything normally entails more risk than I'm willing to take on (and in hindsight I'm glad I didn't), but I do sense that there will be some pain for Tesla investors, if not now, then down the road. Ghosts of "it" stocks from the dotcom era are rapping at the door.