Rob Dupea

Innovate or Die: eBay at a Crossroads

"Product" has become carelessly applied to any service or article sold, thereby blurring the basic distinction between trading in an intangible and peddling a tangible object.

Thus the eBay role of intermediary in multiple marketplaces becomes indistinguishable from Eastman Kodak researching, engineering, manufacturing and marketing a succession of cameras, chemicals, and durable cellophanes, then devising profit-making alternates.

Dependence on a tangible or intangible source for generating sales revenue is as distinct as US Postal Service versus e-mail message delivery.

The Oppenheimer Effect: Conservative Guidance, Stellar Earnings from Apple

When you consider how many linear projections populate the pages of analyses churned out everyday, Apple's refusal to use exponential math doesn't seem so conservative.

Nothing hyperbolic about it, if you grasp the parable.

Payrolls Drop - And You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet

Hmm, Hollowman, I don't know about "normal recession.

dectra and Chuck seem a bit put out about something, but there is this matter of dubious sub-prime paper floating around in other nations that caused everyone to wonder for a while. Might have been easier to corral this critter, whether bull or bear, if Dubya & Co. had stepped in early, offered assurances that somehow, someday all that paper would be made good. Instead, Bernanke et al have been on their own while Dubya, Cox & Co. look for the water bucket to cool heated remarks and send out for cheerleaders.

Market's Volatility Indicates Gains are Near

All well to predict on recurrence of weekly, monthly, quarterly patterns. But how might we view shortening intervals between three episodes, the latest just 5 and 1/2 years. Twenty-seven years after 1960, the first episode burst open to flood us with uncertainty. Fifteen years later the second episode, and now less than six years later, a third.