Frank Li

8 Market Trends For the Next Few Years

"Emerging markets will continue to progress, driving convergence with the developed markets."

This, I think, is the most interesting of the 8. Will investors in emerging markets do well relative to the US, or are emerging markets a high beta version of US growth stocks? (Do a search for Geoff Considine on this site and see what he says.)

And will the dollar rebound, in which case foreign assets won't look so great.

And will the Chinese economy wilt under the total destruction they're doing to their environment and human capital?

Currency ETFs and ETNs

Does anyone have any idea when we'll see some inverse currency ETFs, eg. that allow you to bet against the euro versus the dollar?

Ian McAvity on the Economy and Gold

Excellent article. And he has a sense of humour too: "denial is not just a river in Egypt". Great.

5 Reasons Why the U.S. Dollar Will Weaken Further

This is excellent -- it explains why the dollar is in short term free fall, while at the same time your final comments make total sense given the cheapness of US assets with the dollar at these levels.

PowerShares Joins the India ETF Party

Agree with Kurt -- but there's a reason for this. The ETF issuers are drawn by inflows, so they release whatever is hot at that time. By the time the ETF comes out, it often marks the top of the market for that asset class.

On the other hand... emerging markets have taken a hit along with the US markets recently.

Interactive Q&A: Joe Cross, President and CEO of Nanophase Technologies

One of the smarter people following your stock left this comment after your latest conference call:

"My first thought was, there was only 1 question from the call-ins. Looks like analysts have lost interest in NANX. Second, I'm glad they are going to be hiring a couple more sales people because income has always been the missing element. The effort to grow the company from 30+% per year to 50+% per year is laudable, but I think they are going to have to go after more companies that may ultimately compete with each other using NANX products. An example would be if BEHR paints were competing with Benjamin Moore for example. Other wise, they weren't real specific about where they are going to be selling NANX products to hit those growth numbers. Lastly, they mentined as much as a two year window from finding a customer to providing usable product for that customer. Since the sales force 2 years ago was pretty much what we have now, it looks like 2010 before we'll notice an expansion of product line sales. Thoughts and comments anyone....."

Would love to hear your thoughts on the issues raised here, Joe. Also, it would be helpful if your conference call transcript was available like so many others on this site.

TheStreet.com Q4 2007 Earnings Call Transcript

Full disclosure: I'm short TSCM.

The good news from this call:
- RPM rose 31% to $25.59, ie. they're squeezing more money from the page views they're getting.
- Revenue per paying subscriber rose 1% year over year to $382.

The bad news:
- Subscription revenue was down 4% year over year.
- Paying subscribers fell 7% to 86,000.
- Page views were up only 9% year over year, ie. down 17% sequentially.

In other words, the fundamental drivers of the business -- the traffic to the site and the number of subscribers to the paid products -- were horrible.

That's why the stock got crushed.

What’s Up With TheStreet.com?

"DOW JONES NEWSWIRES: TheStreet.com (TSCM) said Tuesday that it extended the employment term of its co-founder Jim Cramer to April 15.

Cramer, host of CNBC's "Mad Money," will continue to receive a $1 million salary, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Under the terms of a previous extension entered in December, Cramer's employment agreement with the financial news company was set to expire on Feb. 15.

Cramer serves the company as a commentator and as an adviser to Chief Executive Thomas J. Clarke Jr. He also serves on the company's board and is the company's largest shareholder."

Am I the only person wondering why the contract extension was for only 2 months, like last time?

Full disclosure: short TSCM.

TheStreet.com Redesign

"DOW JONES NEWSWIRES: TheStreet.com (TSCM) said Tuesday that it extended the employment term of its co-founder Jim Cramer to April 15.

Cramer, host of CNBC's "Mad Money," will continue to receive a $1 million salary, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Under the terms of a previous extension entered in December, Cramer's employment agreement with the financial news company was set to expire on Feb. 15.

Cramer serves the company as a commentator and as an adviser to Chief Executive Thomas J. Clarke Jr. He also serves on the company's board and is the company's largest shareholder."

Am I the only person wondering why the contract extension was for only 2 months, like last time?

Full disclosure: short TSCM.

TheStreet.com Redesign

Full Disclosure: I'm short TSCM, and this isn't my real name as I'd like to stay anonymous.

If you look at TSCM's new site, you'll see that Stockpickr seems to have almost disappeared.

Here's what I think is going on. According to Compete.com, Stockpickr's traffic has flat lined at 250k users per month, and is actually down from August. The chart is here:

siteanalytics.compete....

If TSCM has basically folded Stockpickr into its main site and downplayed it, that shows that TSCM isn't making headway with the next-gen platform that it spent a lot of time talking up on its calls, such as this one:

seekingalpha.com/artic...

I'm short the stock because:

1. I think TSCM will get hit hard in an ad downturn,
2. The stock has shown relative weakness,
3. TSCM seems to get most of its traffic from Yahoo Finance, which is risky in the long run
4. It's too dependent on Jim Cramer, whose stock picking record doesn't beat buying an index fund,
5. It's not having success in innovating, as Stockpickr shows.

Microsoft/Yahoo Deal Should Go Through

NWS + Dow Jones + YHOO

Now that's an interesting idea. And Murdoch pays up.

Under The Radar News - Friday

The Gordon Brown comment is interesting. Wonder who widely it was reported here, and whether the traders saying the market has bottomed are aware of it.

Murdoch Makes His First Digital Mistake

Note that Felix Salmon thinks the WSJ.com will still basically go free:

www.seekingalpha.com/a...

The Fed Capitulates, But Will It Help?

Looks like the Bloomberg story on Yahoo was based on this:
seekingalpha.com/artic...

Moving Beyond the Hype, SaaS Stocks Soften

Definitely not SuccessFactors:

"SuccessFactors is perhaps somewhat early in going public, and thus, this period prior to profitability will be harder to withstand under public market scrutiny."

www.seekingalpha.com/a...