Though many pundits, analysts, and (reportedly) employees liked Apple's (AAPL -2.3%) big management shakeup (I, II), shares have fallen below the $600 threshold today. Scott Forstall had plenty of critics, but he also earned a lot of respect on account of iOS' success over the last 5 years. Today's decline comes as Chinese regulators give their approval to iPhone 5 models meant for China Unicom (CHU) and China Telecom's (CHA) 3G networks. [View news story]
Apple: Tim Cook Failed, But Learned From It [View article]
For the time being, they are likely to sell every mini they can make for $329 and up. Believe it or not, many people will find this very same product more appealing priced at $329 than at $299. (If you don't understand that, perhaps I could introduce you to my wife.) After an upgrade, then they'll sell the old minis for $279 or something, when they can crank them out for less.
Analyzing Cramer's Stock Picks: A Booyah Lookout [View article]
Smalls, since you *have* done DD, could you explain the -20B in levered-free cash flow? If this is due to expansion with new plants, then the next question is when will net cash flow (i.e., levered-free) turn positive? (Personally, the LEAST useful metric for me is EBITDA.)
The Next 10 Years: Much More Misery [View article]
FDR gave away money for people who didn't want to work? You might be thinking of men like my grandfather, who worked at everything from to day labor to carpentry, supplemented with gardening and hunting to keep his family fed. At one time he relied on WPA work, earning one dollar per day for heavy, manual labor in a quarry. My grandmother also took any work she could find, waitressing, cleaning, whatever, and made most of their childrens' clothing. I have to laugh whenever i read the revisionist ideas of free-marketeers who proclaim that the only reason the depression lasted so long was that the unemployed refused to accept sufficiently low wages!
ARM In Servers: Be Skeptical In Buying The Hype [View article]
Cincinnatus, you have been lucky. x86 might be backward compatible, but Windows versions generally are not. I have kept old computers running in the lab because new versions of Windows don't support older software that would require a significant waste of money to "upgrade". I finally bit the bullet to replace one old machine running Windows 95 (which, by the way, performed better than the latest PCs due to the absence of bloated security software mandated by IT). I still have one ~10-yr-old Windows XP machine running microscope software that i won't give up because of the cost of new software.
AMD -7.8% AH after warning it expects Q3 revenue to fall 10% Q/Q, well below prior guidance of -4% to +2%. Gross margin is expected to be just 31% vs. prior guidance of 44%, partly thanks to a $100M inventory write-down. The chipmaker says it's seeing weak demand across all product lines - slumping PC sales are having an effect, but the size of the drop also suggests share losses to Intel and/or Nvidia. INTC -0.4%. [View news story]
Ashraf, the inventory write-down was a decision they probably postponed as long as they could.
Apple's Cash Position Is Overstated By $70 Billion [View article]
Impressive research. Thanks for the article. I agree that over the long haul, Apple could have trouble keeping up with new technology that Samsung might develop. Or suppliers might lack the capital to expand enough to keep up with the sales growth that is needed to meet Aapl stock price targets in the future. But when? Your article lacks any reason to believe that sales will be hurt enough over the next few quarters to derail growth.
AMD Launches 'Trinity' For The Desktop - A Zero Or A Hero? [View article]
"AMD is betting the company on APUs", but I couldn't find a definition of "APU" in the article. So I searched and learned that it is (Accelerated Processing Units, apparently AMD lexicon?) and that said chips began shipping one year ago. So if AMD is betting its future on APU, does the last year tell us anything, and is there any reason to own this stock before earnings in two weeks? Anything we should be watching to get a clue as to whether AMD will turn things around? Or is buying AMD like buying a call option and flipping a coin?
Intel: Buy The Market's Over-Reaction [View article]
Funny that your conclusion -- to wait for the market to give a signal that it has changed its mind -- contradicts the headline. No problem; i agree. Your analysis says that Intel has been run well. What's needed is improving revenue.
Your article makes some reasonable points (which can be argued, of course.) Most comments are emotional, religious eruptions, which you should ignore. Unfortunately, you have repeatedly stooped to the level of your attackers by name-calling ("bagholders"), which lends credence to their attacks upon your objectivity.
Microsoft's Big Announcement On Monday: Rumors Are Swirling [View article]
Recall why Wintel won in the 90s to become a near monopoly. It was mainly because of price, with products that were for the most part inferior to those of Apple and other software vendors. With IT won over, there has been great inertia and resistance to change at workplaces. The popularity of iPhone is changing that. Will Windows 8 now, together with Windows phones and tablets provide an ease of use and integration that will bring those of us who are not IT geeks to love MSFT? That's hard to envision. Why will a new tablet gain any more traction than Android tablets? Why will it be any more popular than Windows phones? Will the new msft tablet need to be sold at a breakeven price (like Windows phones) just to gain any market share at all? I don't know; i only ask.
Kim, you do a great job with these articles and have worked out a nice approach, but you need to tell people from the outset that it won't work with most brokerages. Typical fees will eat all of your profits and then some -- you'd be losing money. I don't know of a brokerage in the US that charges as little as the deal that you have (0.70 per contract with no set fee.) TD Ameritrade charges 0.75/contract + 9.99 (the 9.99 gets charged only once for straddles, strangles, or spreads). Well, 9.99 is 1% of $1000, which becomes 2% for the round trip. If the per contract fee adds only another 1.2% typically as you have stated, then the deduction is 3.2%. So in 2012, if I had been able to match all your fills, my average gain from 72 trades would be just 0.1%. Yikes -- that's $1 x 72 = $72, for all of that trouble. But it's worse than that if there were many condors, where the set fees are ~$40 per round trip. If one-third of the trades were condors, I would have lost ~$408.
Though many pundits, analysts, and (reportedly) employees liked Apple's (AAPL -2.3%) big management shakeup (I, II), shares have fallen below the $600 threshold today. Scott Forstall had plenty of critics, but he also earned a lot of respect on account of iOS' success over the last 5 years. Today's decline comes as Chinese regulators give their approval to iPhone 5 models meant for China Unicom (CHU) and China Telecom's (CHA) 3G networks. [View news story]
Apple: Tim Cook Failed, But Learned From It [View article]
Analyzing Cramer's Stock Picks: A Booyah Lookout [View article]
The Next 10 Years: Much More Misery [View article]
The Next 10 Years: Much More Misery [View article]
ARM In Servers: Be Skeptical In Buying The Hype [View article]
ARM In Servers: Be Skeptical In Buying The Hype [View article]
AMD -7.8% AH after warning it expects Q3 revenue to fall 10% Q/Q, well below prior guidance of -4% to +2%. Gross margin is expected to be just 31% vs. prior guidance of 44%, partly thanks to a $100M inventory write-down. The chipmaker says it's seeing weak demand across all product lines - slumping PC sales are having an effect, but the size of the drop also suggests share losses to Intel and/or Nvidia. INTC -0.4%. [View news story]
Apple's Cash Position Is Overstated By $70 Billion [View article]
AMD Launches 'Trinity' For The Desktop - A Zero Or A Hero? [View article]
Intel: Buy The Market's Over-Reaction [View article]
Apple's Pricing Power? Questionable [View article]
Microsoft's Big Announcement On Monday: Rumors Are Swirling [View article]
Microsoft's Big Announcement On Monday: Rumors Are Swirling [View article]
SteadyOptions 2012 Performance [View instapost]