unfaire

Will Microsoft Get Squeezed by Chrome OS?

If my memory is correct, in the mid 80's, while IBM was offering $200 OS2 for PC, Microsoft came out with Windws 3 for only $27 or so including Words, Excel, and PowerPoint. I got both of them but I immediately abandoned OS2 for Windows for the latter's easy of use as well as integration of various aspects of PC operation. At the time, OMB OS2 was the defacto standard for big corporations and corporate IT people were looking down at Windows as cheap toys.
Now 20 years later, Microsft is behaving like IBM then, and worse. I do appreciate the new Windows 7 and the all the wonderful features of Windows. But Microsoft is now behaving like (and as) monopoly with little regards for users. For example, we have files which go all the way back to Windows 3 and Microsoft has abandoned the backward compatibility for their own products. It is like you bought a car and after a while you cannot get its parts anymore. But, cars get junked but our files do not.
Windows also got very intransparent about interface with non-Windows software and hardware and that interface keeps some vendors like Adobe tied so tightly with Windows. Of course, with each upgrade of Windows, we have to do the expensive Photoshop upgrade and that keep both of them very happy.
But, we start to see the terrible effects of this intrasparent interface. Just ask someone with Windows Vista or Windows 7, they suffered so much Blue Screen Of Death as well as Screen Freeze. And, they are VERY slow in fixing them and the vendors like HP are hanging their customer high and dry.
I believe many people are hoping Google Chrome OS or anyone else will come to relief them from the high cost and unnecessarily complicated Windows monopoly.
Someday, someone will succeed in dethroning Microsoft, as Microsoft did to IBM, big corporate users notwithstanding, if Microsoft keeps going the way they do today.

Small-Cap Smackdown: Russell 2000 Laggards Could Offer Future Opportunity

I made this comment elsewhere, but I think it is worth repeating here.
After the market crash of last year, the government rescue effort was concentrated in large cap companies. They let the small companies fall by the wayside. This is very clear from what happened to the banks. The large banks, even those which almost went belly up, got a large infusion of capital while the small banks were left to swim by its own. Before the crash, the conventional wisdom in the street was that the smaller companies have a greater possibility of leaping up their profits. But, now the conventional wisdom is that the smaller companies are more likely to fail under the present situation. No wonder, DJIA is outperforming S&P and other indices.

Large Caps Outperform While Small Caps Stumble

After the market crash of last year, the government rescue effort was concentrated in large cap companies. They let the small companies fall by the wayside. This is very clear from what happened to the banks. The large banks, even those which almost went belly up, got a large infusion of capital while the small banks were left to swim by its own. Before the crash, the conventional wisdom in the street was that the smaller companies have a greater possibility of leaping up their profits. But, now the conventional wisdom is that the smaller companies are more likely to fail under the present situation.

Stocks Soar, Unemployment Rises, Dollar Slumps

Ricard, yes, your are right.
Just look at what happened to Japan. I remember a time when it was 360 Japanese Yen to 1 US dollar. It is somewhere around 100 or less to 1 now. In the meantime, we 300 million or so of use raised the standard of living of 100 million or so of Japanese.
In other words, the US dollars develued to 1/3 relative to Japanese yen with a population ratio of 3/1.
Now, the Chinese population is about 1.3 billion or about 4 times ours. A simple math would tell us the US dollars would have to devalue 1/12 againist the Chinese RMB to reach some kind of balance. That would be about 0.6 RMB to a US dollar in the next decades or so.
I know things are not this simple. But, this is the direction where the US dollars are going.

Thursday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

The low interest rate of the Fed is hurting the economy! And, it is drying up the liquidity! Why?
If you are a small bank and having, say, $1 million of cash, would you lend it out today knowing Fed will have to raise the interest rate sooner or later when you will be able to make a lot more money at that time? You would just sit on it and do nothing. You won't finance a mortgage at today's rate and get stuck with it for the next 10, 20, or 30 years, if you think you can get better return after the Fed has hiked the rate.
On the other hand, the big investment bank turned holding banks take this costing-almost-nothing money and churn the stock market and making a zillions of dollars.
The net result is the this low interest rate is not creating liquidity. In fact it is hurting everybody except the big banks who can trade on their on account and those who have the gull to charge 30% interest on the credit cards.

Tuesday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

We human being have been fighting against each other for territories, properties, powers, and sex all through down the history. We coerced, cheated, doublecrossed, murdered, whatever the ends that justified the means. It has been bloody. The stock market is the new fighting ground, only that it is bloodless on the surface. While the big boys are slugging out amongst each other making huge surges, us the little guys should try to ride the waves hopefully to make money on both the way up and the way down. You know the adage well: Only the pigs get slaughtered.

Tuesday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

I have been wondering how the computers or Hal 9000 whoever they are are programmed to make money on the way down. It looks like they behave crumsily in a down market than up market. We have heard so much about how to forerun a buy oder but haven't heard much about forerunning a sell order.

Next Up: Dow 10,000? Does Anyone Care?

There are many market indexes, each representing a different aspect of the market. Whether a market index is "better" or "more important" for you, it depends on your purpose and how you are making sense out of it. If you are looking for a fast rising index after the 2008 crash or a wider coverage of certain type of stocks, S&P is of course the one, not DJIA. However, as the saying goes, what goes up must come down, there may be a down side to S&P. As another saying goes, it is not the size but how you use it.

Wednesday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

My guess is that computers or Hal 9000 whoever they are are targetting someone who have to buy. That someone is probably 401k. There, money is still coming in and they have to buy something. With a thin market, Hal can nearly buy up everything before the mutual fund make their moves. With this scenario the market will keep on going up to no end until Hal is reprogrammed to make money on the way down at a certain level. DJIA at 10,000? 12,000? 14,000? Or, when we all jump in with our two feet. That is the biggest guessing game in town now. Recession is over? Who cares! Look, someone is hording all this stocks now. They just sit tight and watch their valuation go up until one day when they think enough is enough and jump out of the market for something else with better return.

Tuesday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

Re Ryu Mei Co:
My guess is that the market has been taken over by the news-independent (or event-independent) computer programs. These programs seem to trade "against" market movements. It means when the market (or, almost any stock) goes down, they buy. The consequence is that the market turns up. And, when the market goes up, they dump the stocks they have just bought and make an instant profit. The market then turns down. This works in "thin" market and "stabilizes" the market. The Dow Jones has been in the mid 9,000 and going nowhere for a while now. Nobody is making money except those computers.

Recent Oil Rally: Another Crowded Trade

You all may remember that in our high school science class we were taught the earth began with an atmosphere full of carbon dioxide, the green house gas. Over many eons, the vegetation on the earth converted them into hydrocarbons and oxygen and the atmosphere became almost all oxygen and nitrogen and it left only a trace of carbon dioxide. Where did all those carbon or carbon dioxide go? I guess they are all there under our foot in the forms of oil, coal, and other carbon-containing materials.
If what the scientists tell us is true, there is so much oil and coal around us it is almost inexhaustible. In fact it is not there are not enough oil and coal to go around instead we cannot afford to use up all those oil and coal. If we do burn them up, it would put our atmosphere back to its primordial carbon dioxide. However, before we even began to burn up some of them, as we are doing now, there would be enough green house gas to cause significant climate changes to make us human beings extinct like the dinosaurs did some million years ago.
Therefore, as we start to see such catastrophic climate changes coming on, we will have to simply stop burning oil and coal. We have to survive on alternate energy sources. There is no other choice.

Friday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

The following is just a mumbling from a stream of unconsciousness.
We had oil bust created by trading frenzy with volume far exceeded the oil inventory. Now we have option trading of all stocks with volume far exceeding the underlying stocks, not just U.S. stocks but also of stocks of the world all over through ETF and other means. Could there be a huge U.S. and world market bubble followed by a tsunami crash in not so distant future? It would take more than trillions to fix, more likely mega-trillions? Remember it was only billions just a few years ago?
With all this high frequency trading and other new market manipulations which we don’t know, has the fundamental of the market changed? May be Hal 9000 has already factored in all the technical analysis we now know and depend on and found a way to circle around us. The shares and the stocks are now just like the oil, which by the way is floating on the high seas by the boatloads, a mere trading vehicle to make money?

Commodities, Global Markets

To quote from "How I made money during the great market crash of 2008" by Jamin Chen (www.lulu.com/content/p...):

"There is no guarantee that the past will repeat itself. But, sometimes, the past is a good indication of what is to come. The past is the only information we have and it may provide us with a glimpse into the future."

Tuesday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

Funny that UNG is only one quarter of what it used to be but my gas heating bill for my house didn't budge a bit.

Friday Outlook: Commodities, Global Markets

Is our government now setting up Pimpco to be the next too-big-to fail, or rather, too-big-not-to-offend?