If Steve Jobs said that about cars and trucks, he didn't know the history of the automobile. Cars came first! And the first cars had very little space for hauling anything but people. Why make a spacious trunk when cars were so unreliable that you didn't dare go too far out of town with them?
The first trucks were simply a wooden cargo bed attached to a car chassis. No provision for the extra weight. Only later did trucks evolve to have heavier springs, beefier tires, wheels, drive train, and more powerful engines on a specialized chassis.
For me the main issues with computing devices are mobility versus task complexity. You can pack more features and power into a computing device that doesn't have to fit into a pocket, and doesn't have a severe weight limit to keep from breaking the traveler's arm when he carries it. For complex tasks you want a big screen and usually a real keyboard (sorry Surface, real keyboards have real keys.) You also want an operating system interface optimized for expert use, whereas consumer devices need easy-to-learn interfaces. (I would use the word intuitive instead of easy-to-learn, but intuitive is in the eye of the beholder, usually.)
Expect Apple To Surge In Coming Months [View article]
Good point Victor. I don't hear anybody saying "I'm short a shopping week this year so I'm going to have to trim down my gift-giving list." It just doesn't work that way. People short on time might cut corners by giving a gift certificate, (or the universal gift certificate--cash) but they still give. And people usually do redeem those gift certificates (and even cash) for real goods.
People might cut back on the costlier gifts if they don't have enough cash and credit though. Kids might be getting less expensive tablets than the Apple brand if the budget doesn't stretch that far.
Expect Apple To Surge In Coming Months [View article]
I agree. Apple has grown so big so fast that maintaining the same percentages going forward is almost impossible, therefore it must slow down and it is bound to disappoint no matter how wonderful the results objectively are. We've already seen a couple of quarters of that, and you're looking at the result in a stock price down at least 10% from its high.
It just so happens that now is also the time when the Steve Jobs product pipeline is emptying out. Can Apple keep coming up with home run hits without Jobs? Only time will tell, but the iPad mini product and launch weren't really good omens. The product didn't innovate, just put the same app platform in a smaller form factor to better match the competition. The launch itself was a yawner, not the "this product will save the world, and the whales, too" kind of launch that Jobs would have done.
U.S. Oil And Gas Royalty Trusts: Good Buys For Disciplined Investors [View article]
I'm long PER. I expect that eventually inflation and the next oil crisis will push the price of oil higher, again. So I'm not very worried that I would have to take a loss if I sold today. Plus, the distributions are quite healthy (over 10%). I know some of that represents a return of capital, but even so, as this article states, 7.5% is earnings.
Buyers should know that (PER) trades quite independently of the price of oil and the S&P. I would rate its volatility low. With the market's frequent downdrafts, that's been a good thing so far.
AMD: The Ugly Truth Behind The ARM 'Partnership' [View article]
To summarize, AMD lost the x86 race against Intel, and neither one made the grade in the mobile world. ARM is the hardware equivalent of Linux, an operating system for those who can't afford to write their own. ARM amortizes the major costs of a new architecture over a large number of small competitors, which is what AMD has become. AMD joins the ranks of the down and out, or as they prefer to think of themselves, the downsized and efficient specialists. Maybe they can do something useful with SeaMicro and their graphics and x86 expertise, but at this point they have no compelling story. Hence the downsizing.
Exposure To Gold For A Fraction Of The Cost [View article]
No, there is not a difference in tax handling.
Anybody thinking of buying either (GLD) or (IAU) should read the prospectuses first. What you will discover is that GLD is slightly more convoluted and IAU has a cheaper fee, but basically they are identical. This article tries to make you think they are somehow different when they are not. "The primary difference is that GLD is an exchange traded fund that attempts to replicate the value of the gold bullion while, as I previously stated above, IAU attempts to mock the day-to-day fluctuations in the price of the gold bullion." Since both are buying and holding gold bullion, there is no difference except possibly the trustworthiness of the participating companies.
An Argument For Gold 'Value' $4000 Plus [View article]
If you don't think we'll ever go back on the gold standard, then why are you trying to estimate its value in terms of an infinitude of worthless currency units? An exceedingly pointless exercise if you ask me.
For me, the attractive thing about gold is that I don't have to know how valuable it is, I don't have to estimate how much income it might possibly produce over the next ten or twenty years, I don't have to worry that rising costs will shrink margins, or customer demand may shift to a competitor or even an entirely different industry. I don't even have to know how much is still in the ground or in the vaults of all the central bankers.
All gold has to do is sit there until someone digs it up and forms it into a pretty bar, properly weighed and assayed. It has worth in and of itself. It need not prove itself profitable to be of value, it IS value. You need not look for convertibility to a currency or any other rationale than it is a pretty and scarce yellow metal that serves admirably as a convenient store of value.
An Argument For Gold 'Value' $4000 Plus [View article]
We may get a partial gold standard sooner than you think. Right now China would love to set up a system of international exchange that does not involve using dollars as a reserve currency. That's why they are buying up all their own gold production and then some. But because the People's Republic of China did not inherit the Imperial gold reserves they had to start from scratch rebuilding their reserves and they've still got a long way to go to have a credible amount of gold per yuan.
Even if central banks continue to hoard gold as a store of value without ever explicitly backing their currency, gold continues to have value as money just because they choose to hoard it. Now, with the latest Fed rules, ordinary banks can hold gold bullion as reserves as well.
Since gold is a depleting asset, unlike dollars, it should rise in value as it gets scarcer over the years and harder to find and to mine, unlike paper currency. Thus, on a cost basis alone, gold has intrinsic value.
An Argument For Gold 'Value' $4000 Plus [View article]
I'm looking at your column labeled "USD Equivalent" and reading:
Russia 190,762,000,000 Indonesia 315,375,000,000
In other words: Indonesia, even after applying a minuscule conversion factor, has its total currency in circulation valued at about twice as much as Russia's. This is ridiculous because Russia is a much larger country with a much larger economy and many more natural resources under its control. Just in terms of gold reserves, Russia has about 15 times as much in its vaults as Indonesia does. The FX rate is wildly unrealistic in this comparison.
With such a hideously inaccurate starting point you can't possibly produce reliable numerical results. Garbage in = garbage out.
I reiterate my objection: the whole approach is wrong. When a central bank can produce an arbitrary number of "assets" at will they become meaningless as a standard of value. The only meaningful way to arrive at a fair value for gold is to compare how much of various commodities and consumer goods an ounce of gold would historically have bought you versus today.
Intel's Mobile Strategy: A Tough Road To Victory [View article]
I consider it quite an accomplishment that Intel was able to so completely dominate the server (and PC) markets, especially considering the x86 architecture was already an antiquated design when IBM chose it for the PC.
That said, I'm not at all sure they can pull off the same stunt again in the mobile market. They rather deliberately neglected it until now because the low-performance devices are also low-margin. They may have to resort to an ARM architecture chip in order to gain acceptance with mobile software developers, who have already produced two or three generations of apps for iOS and Android ARM machines.
Yes, it's relatively easy for a small gold producer to show better margins than a large producer like Barrick. If you've only got one project and it's already explored and developed so all you're doing is digging and refining then you're not spending a lot of money. You're also not investing in the future for when the current deposit runs out. Gold is a depleting asset, as are the other minerals mined with it. If you don't spend the money to develop new projects, you eventually run out of ore. Right now Barrick is still in the construction phase at Pascua-Lama. What would you have them do? Not develop this huge ore deposit? Of course not, so the roads must be built, the tunnels dug, etc.
I guess it depends upon your definition of "hard" and how long you want to keep the manipulation going. You're talking about a handful of betting websites that can be swayed with relatively few dollars because they have only light activity. For the person with enough motivation, it's entirely do-able, and thus not hard enough if you want to prevent such manipulation.
More to the point, since the title of the article is "Market Manipulation 101", such manipulation can happen in the financial markets, and on occasion it does so happen. It is particularly easy to do on COMEX and FOREX where, perhaps not coincidentally, there are investors motivated to do so for various lengths of time.
The saying is "cutting off one's nose to spite their face" not "cutting off one's nose despite their face."
I agree with the assessment of this article, and disagree with elsrmp56 that you must be living on another planet, or in 5th grade.
IBM made much the same mistake when they brought out the original PC. It used ASCII instead of EBCDIC, used x86 instead of the 360 instruction set, and used an outsourced operating system and CPU chip. The PC wrecked havoc on the mainframe market because they hadn't thought through how the new device would integrate into their new product line. It also gave birth to two major competitors, Microsoft and Intel.
Microsoft didn't consider its customer base (its OEM manufacturers) when it decided to develop its own hardware platform. Instead it brought out its own hardware that will have to compete on price, in other words it is suddenly in a slim margin commodity business. Alienated hardware manufacturers are more likely to turn to Android for an OS for their competitive systems, which means that Microsoft just cannibalized the operating system sales it would have had. Plus it risks alienating end users who don't want their desktop computing device to act like a smartphone, they want it to act like the Windows XP or Windows 7 system they know and love. Microsoft also did not take into account that people don't necessarily want to run Office on a dinky screen with no real keyboard or mouse, and they don't want to have to clean a large touchscreen daily or hourly to remove smudge marks.
IBM: We Can See Why Buffett Tried To Keep This A Secret Last Year [View article]
That's a good story now, but we all lived through the PC era too. We know that IBM would have dearly loved to have held onto the PC business but it didn't have the foresight to keep a firm grip on the OS and BIOS. It became a commodity business because IBM let it become a commodity business by outsourcing too much.
PC: Not Dead Yet! [View article]
If Steve Jobs said that about cars and trucks, he didn't know the history of the automobile. Cars came first! And the first cars had very little space for hauling anything but people. Why make a spacious trunk when cars were so unreliable that you didn't dare go too far out of town with them?
The first trucks were simply a wooden cargo bed attached to a car chassis. No provision for the extra weight. Only later did trucks evolve to have heavier springs, beefier tires, wheels, drive train, and more powerful engines on a specialized chassis.
For me the main issues with computing devices are mobility versus task complexity. You can pack more features and power into a computing device that doesn't have to fit into a pocket, and doesn't have a severe weight limit to keep from breaking the traveler's arm when he carries it. For complex tasks you want a big screen and usually a real keyboard (sorry Surface, real keyboards have real keys.) You also want an operating system interface optimized for expert use, whereas consumer devices need easy-to-learn interfaces. (I would use the word intuitive instead of easy-to-learn, but intuitive is in the eye of the beholder, usually.)
Expect Apple To Surge In Coming Months [View article]
People might cut back on the costlier gifts if they don't have enough cash and credit though. Kids might be getting less expensive tablets than the Apple brand if the budget doesn't stretch that far.
Expect Apple To Surge In Coming Months [View article]
It just so happens that now is also the time when the Steve Jobs product pipeline is emptying out. Can Apple keep coming up with home run hits without Jobs? Only time will tell, but the iPad mini product and launch weren't really good omens. The product didn't innovate, just put the same app platform in a smaller form factor to better match the competition. The launch itself was a yawner, not the "this product will save the world, and the whales, too" kind of launch that Jobs would have done.
U.S. Oil And Gas Royalty Trusts: Good Buys For Disciplined Investors [View article]
Buyers should know that (PER) trades quite independently of the price of oil and the S&P. I would rate its volatility low. With the market's frequent downdrafts, that's been a good thing so far.
AMD: The Ugly Truth Behind The ARM 'Partnership' [View article]
Intel Blew Its Mobile Business; More Losses To Come [View article]
Exposure To Gold For A Fraction Of The Cost [View article]
Anybody thinking of buying either (GLD) or (IAU) should read the prospectuses first. What you will discover is that GLD is slightly more convoluted and IAU has a cheaper fee, but basically they are identical. This article tries to make you think they are somehow different when they are not. "The primary difference is that GLD is an exchange traded fund that attempts to replicate the value of the gold bullion while, as I previously stated above, IAU attempts to mock the day-to-day fluctuations in the price of the gold bullion." Since both are buying and holding gold bullion, there is no difference except possibly the trustworthiness of the participating companies.
An Argument For Gold 'Value' $4000 Plus [View article]
For me, the attractive thing about gold is that I don't have to know how valuable it is, I don't have to estimate how much income it might possibly produce over the next ten or twenty years, I don't have to worry that rising costs will shrink margins, or customer demand may shift to a competitor or even an entirely different industry. I don't even have to know how much is still in the ground or in the vaults of all the central bankers.
All gold has to do is sit there until someone digs it up and forms it into a pretty bar, properly weighed and assayed. It has worth in and of itself. It need not prove itself profitable to be of value, it IS value. You need not look for convertibility to a currency or any other rationale than it is a pretty and scarce yellow metal that serves admirably as a convenient store of value.
An Argument For Gold 'Value' $4000 Plus [View article]
Even if central banks continue to hoard gold as a store of value without ever explicitly backing their currency, gold continues to have value as money just because they choose to hoard it. Now, with the latest Fed rules, ordinary banks can hold gold bullion as reserves as well.
Since gold is a depleting asset, unlike dollars, it should rise in value as it gets scarcer over the years and harder to find and to mine, unlike paper currency. Thus, on a cost basis alone, gold has intrinsic value.
An Argument For Gold 'Value' $4000 Plus [View article]
Russia 190,762,000,000
Indonesia 315,375,000,000
In other words: Indonesia, even after applying a minuscule conversion factor, has its total currency in circulation valued at about twice as much as Russia's. This is ridiculous because Russia is a much larger country with a much larger economy and many more natural resources under its control. Just in terms of gold reserves, Russia has about 15 times as much in its vaults as Indonesia does. The FX rate is wildly unrealistic in this comparison.
With such a hideously inaccurate starting point you can't possibly produce reliable numerical results. Garbage in = garbage out.
I reiterate my objection: the whole approach is wrong. When a central bank can produce an arbitrary number of "assets" at will they become meaningless as a standard of value. The only meaningful way to arrive at a fair value for gold is to compare how much of various commodities and consumer goods an ounce of gold would historically have bought you versus today.
Intel's Mobile Strategy: A Tough Road To Victory [View article]
That said, I'm not at all sure they can pull off the same stunt again in the mobile market. They rather deliberately neglected it until now because the low-performance devices are also low-margin. They may have to resort to an ARM architecture chip in order to gain acceptance with mobile software developers, who have already produced two or three generations of apps for iOS and Android ARM machines.
Barrick Gold Disappoints - Again [View article]
Market Manipulation 101 [View article]
More to the point, since the title of the article is "Market Manipulation 101", such manipulation can happen in the financial markets, and on occasion it does so happen. It is particularly easy to do on COMEX and FOREX where, perhaps not coincidentally, there are investors motivated to do so for various lengths of time.
The Upcoming Microsoft Train Wreck [View article]
I agree with the assessment of this article, and disagree with elsrmp56 that you must be living on another planet, or in 5th grade.
IBM made much the same mistake when they brought out the original PC. It used ASCII instead of EBCDIC, used x86 instead of the 360 instruction set, and used an outsourced operating system and CPU chip. The PC wrecked havoc on the mainframe market because they hadn't thought through how the new device would integrate into their new product line. It also gave birth to two major competitors, Microsoft and Intel.
Microsoft didn't consider its customer base (its OEM manufacturers) when it decided to develop its own hardware platform. Instead it brought out its own hardware that will have to compete on price, in other words it is suddenly in a slim margin commodity business. Alienated hardware manufacturers are more likely to turn to Android for an OS for their competitive systems, which means that Microsoft just cannibalized the operating system sales it would have had. Plus it risks alienating end users who don't want their desktop computing device to act like a smartphone, they want it to act like the Windows XP or Windows 7 system they know and love. Microsoft also did not take into account that people don't necessarily want to run Office on a dinky screen with no real keyboard or mouse, and they don't want to have to clean a large touchscreen daily or hourly to remove smudge marks.
IBM: We Can See Why Buffett Tried To Keep This A Secret Last Year [View article]