One Family's Blog

Leveraged ETF Performance YTD

The perceived underperformance is just that - perceived...

The 3X inverse financial ETF inversely tracks the performance of the underlying Russell 1000 Financial Index on a DAILY basis 3X leverage. The volatilty however works against you.

Below is a quick example assuming indexes at 100 as the starting point:

1st day (index up 3% - 103) - FAZ at 91
2nd day (index down 3% - 99.91) - FAZ at 99.19
3rd day (index up 5% - 104.9) - FAZ at 84.3
4th day (index down 10% - 94.41) - FAZ at 109.59

So, over the course of just 4-days, there is a perceived underperformance - FAZ should have been at 116.77. But, the index tracks daily performance and so volatilty works against you. Moral of the story - leveraged indexes should only be used as short-term trading tools (not suitable for anything more than a holding period of a few days or for intra-day trades)...

Regards,
www.onefamilysblog.com

Owning Cypress Over SunPower Makes Sense; EMC Over VMware Doesn't

The article erroneously mentions "VMware Inc., which EMC purchased for $625M in 2004, was spun out on April 2007". The spin-off timeframe was August 2007, not April. Alan Feldman kindly pointed this out to us yesterday:

www.vmware.com/company/

Regards,
onefamilysblog.com

Google/ Microsoft Ad Wars: A Contrarian Viewpoint

Hi yohoho:

Here is the information you are looking for - Below is the chart from Google (click on the 10-year link):

finance.google.com/fin...

If you look at the time period between 2001 and mid-2004, the price saw a low-point of $4.4 on 9/28/2001 and stayed in single digits till well into 2003. MSFT had plenty of cash to fund the acquisition at even 5 times the price at the low point and still come out ahead. The special dividend was given out the 2nd half of 2004. Please see the link in the article (pasted below for your convenience) for the exact details:

www.usatoday.com/tech/...

Regards,
One Family's Blog.

Owning Cypress Over SunPower Makes Sense; EMC Over VMware Doesn't

sssrosss: You are correct. One times revenue valuation may be conservative more so in the case of EMC as compared to CY. A better way to value these companies might be using DCF analysis after coming up with a CAGR value for the businesses after taking out the spin off figures from their financials. Please see our article on Google for an example: www.onefamilysblog.com...


User 1839: The sum-of-parts market valuation can be done as follows using the formula column values in the tables in the article:

Spin off + Parent enterprise value = B
Spin off enterprise value = D
Parent enterprise value = B-D

Regards,
One Family's Blog
www.onefamilysblog.com

Asure Software: Transforming a Classic Patent Troll

Sorry to have not responded. Every time we try, it goes round & round.

The conference call said they have cash of $19.5M which was somewhat low. Also, the headcount at 189 which converts to $64/employee on a forward basis (12M projected revenue) was a surprise. As far as growth, management projected revenue in 5-6 years to be at $100M - there is no real basis for such a projection and so the value of that projection is questionable. We should also mention that we traded out of the stock immediately after the earnings announcement.

Google: A Hard Sell For Superior Returns

You are absolutely correct. The calculation should use nominal GDP. That number for 2006 was $13.2T. 10 years out, it will grow to $21.5T at 5%. Google valuation will have to be between 5.4% and 12.6% depending on the growth assumption of 23% and 34% respectively - again, a highly unlikely scenario...

We have changed our blog post to reflect this as well - www.onefamilysblog.com .

Thanks a lot for pointing out this error.

Regards,
One Family's Blog

Suntech Power: A Solar Cell Behemoth in the Making

Yes, we are long STP as indicated in the article. Also, as indicated in our blog (www.onefamilysblog.com), the stock was purchased 3/14/2007.

Based on our own analysis that it is only an average investment, we might exit the position at an opportune moment in the future.

Regards,
One Family's Blog.

Look Here For An Inflation Proof Currency

The point about holding gold instead of a currency is pretty convincing. As an investment, it is a good option only as a short-term hedging instrument - the long-term inflation adjusted return on it is 0.

Regards,
OneFamilysBlog@gmail.c...
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There Are Some Real Estate Opportunities

Living in a very low cost area with growth potential is a great way to stretch your dollars.

Regards,
OneFamilysBlog.blogspo...