BeachRider

Thursday Options Recap

This ORCL/JAVA work just sends some chills through the JAVA stockholders. What if JAVA burns through a substantial amount of its cash-on-hand to keep the company viable while the EC 'fiddles'.

Ellison could simply go-away and watch MySQL lose a ton more money (and staff). It only costs him $165MM (or so) to do that. He has clearly lost much more than that in lost-value due to the delay in the acquisition.

Don't even get me started on what this has done to SPARC...

This Advance Will Be Measured in Days, Not Months

Some of the SA articles show how companies (like IBM) are doing the math to post higher margins and profits, even if revenues are going down. IBM will be criticized for smiting costs (jobs!) with its corporate cudgel. The hardest part will be the churning of the workforce. Each company will need to adapt to survive.

As to investing, do the math carefully. If this author is advising that fundamental stats don't apply to stock pricing, then he is advising that sentiment about the stock is a bigger part of valuation than company performance. Both certainly affect security value, but company future & company performance will always be the biggest factors in setting the value of its securities. These hi-demand, low-demand squeezes give opportunities for trader-income, but they were also the biggest part of what put many of those hedge funds under water.

The Death of Buy and Hold Is Greatly Exaggerated (Part 2)

Mr. Bigoldave,
I have soured on Index fund and am snakebit on Mutual Funds, in general. My trust in the management of these funds has dropped significantly because they rode the slides so-far-down. At least 40% of mutual funds underperformed the S&P500 dramatically! There is no excuse for that happening. Right now, my employer is offering a T-bill plan alongside the Fidelity and other stuff. Stocks could certainly go down, but the funds have gone down even more.
I suppose that I am buy-and-hold, but with a sell-level, until I see where better managed-financial opportunities arise.

'Too Big to Fail' Should Not Exist

A lot of people are surprised by American Bankruptcy law.
Many are comfortable with 'Chapter 7' style bankruptcy where a company is liquidated and the assets are distributed according to a hierarchy. Bankruptcy courts can elect for 'Chapter 11' style instead (more below). Individual bankruptcy has 'Chapter 7' and 'Chapter 13' (comparable, but not the same as 7 & 11 for corporations).
Writers often cite company documents that show a proposal for a specific bankruptcy, but a court/judge inspects the entire proposal before either accepting, rejecting or modifying the proposal. During the court's arbitration of the bankruptcy, the state takes possession of all the assets to redistribute them. Bush & Obama took special steps with banks and auto-manufacturers. They made special investments, using special classifications that matter when bankruptcy is before the court. They make those investments for political reasons (usually jobs), but hopefully set the terms of the investments so that the investment is not lost.
Because both Bush & Obama made these investments, it is not possible to ascribe them to solely-Republican or solely-Democratic interests. It is certainly expected that Obama will get back the people's money, within a reasonable period of time.
It looks like Chrysler will get out of court soon, BAC never went into bankruptcy and GM is also headed out of court. Once these resume their status as non-bankruptcy companies, the investment will be sold. I don't know where the story got started the the USA never intends to see its share of a new-GM or of a revitalized BAC. Obama will never be re-elected if this has been badly botched and a substantial part of the investment is lost.

51 Option Ideas for Bears

HPQ is showing up in too many bear-scenarios. There must be some kind of negative sentiment on their future success with EDS and Computer Storage. The IA-32 server business is still sound, but not much growth in CY2009. There is no clear signal with their IA-64 (Itanium) stuff.

The New Dow Jones Industrial Average: Calculations and Individual Weightings

Marco,
Nice spreadsheet. I love spreadsheets. Thanks.

How to Profit from Possible U.S. Credit Downgrade

Interesting scenario. Other than political alignment, the UK & USA don't have much similarity in their financial underpinnings, though. Credit is more than just measuring the amount of spending for this kind of technical analysis.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Oracle is buying Sun...
This is an amazing turn of events. It is a substantial change in the orientation of Oracle. They need to show the market that they know how to plan for such a change. That is why ORCL is down 5% right now.
I am surprised, so is Microsoft's CEO. This is an amazing turn of events.
Onward and upward!