Benito Camela

Microsoft Fined By the EU; Stock Implications

We all knew the EU fine was coming -- The issue that scared people is the company's inability/unwillingnes... to deal with regulators. In general there is not much to gain fighting against bureacrats.

In this case the tree is not letting us see the woods -- This company is in front of a very strong product cycle that will increase EPS over the next few years.

Also, buybacks will continue to be acreetive --- remember with CF generation arroudn $1 billion or more per month they can reduce shares outstanding by 4 to 5% per year.

All in all you are talking about signifcant earnings and CF growth.

Microsoft's iPod Killer Emerges -- Should Apple be Scared? You Bet! (AAPL, MSFT)

Apple and Microsoft are companies with a high level of creativity -- While they may compete on a segment that has been strong for Apple, it would be highly speculative to write the company off.

Both of them are buy if you believe that their ideas would turn into profitable products. Yes MSFT will put pressure on AAPL but it would not sit still and it has the first mover advantage.

Also IPods have not yet become popular in emerging markets and hundreds of million of young customer can be tapped with low price products (which would still be highly profitable for AAPL.