sfk

The Investment Circus: Why Mean-Ignorant Monkeys Beat Median-Jumping Clowns

refreshing to read such a humorous article here, thank you.
and its interesting too! :)

It's Not a Recession, It's the New Reality

the question is, how DO you safe for your retirement knowing the markets will never return to what they were? :)

It's Not a Recession, It's the New Reality

i agree, i think the more growth -> more credit -> more growth cycle is broken, and it wont spin as fast as it did before, things will slow down from here

JOLTS from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

well the dynamics are interesting, but they are a constant, arent they?
then why cant we ignore them and look at whats left at the end of the equation, people who left a job and didnt start a new one yet?

4 million are 4 million are 4 million, no matter how many people change their job, thats the amount of people without a job in the end.

i agree that the why is important since there arent simply unemployed people, there are many categories and some are likely to work again very soon while other might never work again in the rest of their life. but we can get lost in details and analyze this forever, it all boils down to this, 4 million more people without a job.

Why It's Better to Bail Out Borrowers than Banks

interesting idea... by bailing out the borrowers the situation balances itself as well, as banks will suffer the more they get bailed out this way, and banks that barely need assistance, cause they did the right thing to begin with, wont suffer as much.

it would shift the debt balance up without resetting all banks to 0, which benefits the bad banks most and the good banks the least.

Why Apple Belongs in Every Portfolio

apple is a great company nad has great products, but no, they wont continue to grow as fast as they did in recent years, and if you look back in their history they had a very rough ride with barely any growth and actually a slow but continued loss of market share for most of the companies existence.

you make it sound as if we can expect another 5000% increase in stock price in the next decade, which is very unlikely. you say sky is the limit, well, if you start to hike up out of a deep hole like apple did in recent years it sure looks that way, but this can be very deceiving. you mention all the pros but none of the cons, which shows just how biased this analysis is, whether its on purpose or not.

Netbooks: The Device of Today and Tomorrow

the only problem with all this cloud talk i see is that you lose any and all privacy and data security. google and other sites tend to remove content they find inappropiate for one reason or another and clearly state they arent responsible for data loss and "accidentally" or sometimes even purposely sharing private user data with corporations and other users.

and another problem is that there is no netbook that is fast enough to offer a full internet experience. but they are getting there...

netbooks are pretty much portable clients that use the internet as backend server, thats the future, no doubt... but what we know as netbooks today is still to slow and crippled to really replace laptops.

Does Google Really Control the News?

am i the only one who is surprised that those numbers seem to be stagnating?

Skype: Selling the Company Back to Its Founders

i think ebay bought skype as an investment, not for strategical reasons. how would skype ever fit into ebays structure in any way?

they pokered and they lost, now they will be lucky if they get their investment back.

for skype things went well i suppose, they had the big brother sharing his wallet with them to expand their company. but it was a bit quiet around them so im not sure if management might have been influenced by ebay which eventually slowed down skype, as they have slowed down.

for ebay this wont be a loss nor win in the future i think, for skype it was a big win, and the parting will be a big win as well

Lead Acid Batteries: How Cheap Beat Cool at Google

john, you completely fail to realize that what drives li-ion and other modern batteries is not that they are new and "cool" but that they are much lighter and more compact. while the "cloud" hype is the latest fad people talk about all day, technology is, and for several years still will be, driven by the trend to mobility. and for mobility lead acid batteries are simply useless.

your not stupid, so im sure you know this but didnt mention this and explain this for obvious reasons... please dont do that... :)
most people on here are far too smart to fall for this

The Great Bubble of China: Next to Pop?

one more thing, ctk, something like BUYING google is yet another typical asian thing. you cant just BUY innovation and creativity, thats the main issue that slows down companies and industries that try to aquire those skills, they continue thinking in their old way of buying everything they want, which doesnt work.

just look at lenovo, sure, you can buy a creative company, but keeping that creativity inside the company and multiplying it or applying it to other departments or companies is far from easy...

The Great Bubble of China: Next to Pop?

you never know if the bush administration would have attacked if the press wouldnt have caused them such a headache about it, im sure it was based on something and not made up... but i agree with your point of view overall. i have a lot of respect for you to speak your mind and criticize your home country, this is the first time i actually saw a chinese who had the balls to really criticize and not just moan and complain.

jim rogers... great guy, but this isnt a vs thing, there isnt one truth and what jim writes doesnt necessarily contradict this. dont forget that exactly because jim has had so much insight in the past and hes well known for it, it may be easier to mislead and manipulate him. this is a typical asian thing btw, rallying behind one guy, a great leader which i wouldnt recommend... im sure even jim himself would agree that neither he nor anybody else is right all the time.

ctk, interesting idea, but while hong kongs administration seems to work better than taiwans, its in deep something right now as well and things have gone worse and worse over the past years with the chinese authoritarian influence growing. and yes, democracies all around have their flaws and issues, democracy is far from perfect since the media and government are not independant enough from the economy, yet, as of today, democracy is still the best system humanity managed to put together... democracy sucks, but its still the best we had so far...

thanks everybody for the insight! very interesting!