Frank Li

This Week's IPOs: CAI International, Trimas Corp., TechTarget

The Tech Target IPO filing is particularly interesting for anyone watching the online media space, and blogs in particular, because Tech Target acquired Ajaxian.com, a leading tech blog:

<blockquote>On February 27, 2007, we acquired substantially all of the assets of Ajaxian, Inc., or Ajaxian, from Ajaxian for a purchase price of $1.0 million in cash. Ajaxian is a provider of a website and two events dedicated to providing information and support for the community of developers for "Ajax" (Asynchronous Javascript and XML), a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. In connection with this acquisition, we recorded $1.0 million of intangible assets related to customer relationships, non-compete agreements and the trade name with estimated useful lives ranging from three to five years.</blockquote&...

Five Steel Stocks from Industry Maven Michelle Applebaum

"Conservatively upbeat"??? Sounds like hedging your bets to me.

BTW, these summaries are outstanding -- thank you.

A Slew of New ETFs, Including a Different Take on Water

In what way do these ETFs differ from the index ETFs that already exist?

Overbought/Oversold Currency ETFs

I'm also interested in how you define over bought or over sold. The discrepancy between ETF price and the currency exchange rate that Michael comments on above can't be sustained over time, because these are ETFs, so an institution can come in and arbitrage the difference at any time (in contrast to a closed end fund).

TheStreet.com Acquires Stockpickr: A Web 2.0 Success Story

There's way too much mutual back-slapping between chummy entrepreneurs in this article. I tried Stockpikr, and stopped using it, and I don't know any other money managers who use it. The pro portfolios are just taken from SEC filings, but are full of errors. And the amateur portfolios and social networking elements are totally useless. Since when has anybody ever bought a stock because someone who owns a stock you own also owns something else?

What would make the amateur portfolios more useful is if the site tracked their performance. But many of the "portfolios" just report one time events like this weekend's barron's picks or some stock screen, so you can't track the performance of that.

The success of stockpikr is due to the traffic sent to it by thestreet.com -- they link to it after ever stock symbol, and james altucher frequently uses half the links in his "blog watch" column to link to the site, although it's not a blog. (I bet that drives real bloggers mad.)

This doesn't mean the acquisition of stockpickr isn't good for thestreet.com. Looks like they are selling the ads on stockpikr themselves, and they've got a lot of traffic and need more content on their own site, so the synergies make sense, and word on the street is they bought it for only a couple of million bucks.

But "arguably the premier site at the intersection of blogging, technology, investment management, and social networking"? Gimme a break -- if it is, that just shows the total lack of imagination in this space. Wake up, Seeking Alpha guys -- you've got a big readership among hedgies, and should be doing much more exciting stuff. The opportunity is there, and you've completely failed to take it. Your site design is crappy, the site goes down too much, and there's nothing new or innovative about it other than a ton of great articles. Wake up, guys, wake up.

The "Incredible" Israeli Shekel

This is a great article -- thanks.

Jim Cramer's Mad Money Lightning Round Picks, May 11

How does this fit with what Cramer said about BBI in Jim Cramer' s Mad Money In-Depth Stock Picks, Feb. 23: "Cramer says investors should sell BBI before Tuesday and buy some back after a selloff"???

Well, if you look at the chart the sell-off seems to have happened.

In fact, it's well documented that Cramer's picks aren't any good, and you guys have even carried articles about this on your own web site:

Cramer Podcaster: Jim's Picks Underperform

And even more damning:

Can You Make Money From Jim Cramer's Picks?

I don't understand why you keep publishing Cramer's stuff. You should link to these articles as a health warning in every article about him.

Washington Post Net Falls 16%, Misses Street Estimates, Newspaper Division's Struggles Continue

Surely these results suggest that the rise in many newspaper stocks after the News Corp bid for Dow Jones will be short lived?

Another Blow To Newspapers: Facebook Classifieds

One other quick point: isn't this really a much bigger threat to the newspapers via their investment in CareerBuilder.com, because graduating students form a large jobs market? And for that reason, isn't this also incrementally negative for Monster.com?

Yahoo Purchase of Right Media Gives It Added Liquidity, Exit From DoubleClick

Yahoo is using its critical mass in page views to strengthen its position in the online advertising technology market. The strategy is: buy online advertising firms, use them to monetize Yahoo's own properties, and thereby create a liquid market place for advertisers on those platforms by guaranteeing publisher inventory.

The question for investors in Yahoo's stock is whether this strategy will work. Sue Decker's claim that Yahoo is the industry's technology of choice for search and display advertising is just ridiculous. The industry's technology of choice is Google, hands down.

So there's a risk that Yahoo's bundling its ad solutions with its own ad inventory won't work, because if Yahoo's acquired and own-developed ad technology can't attract enough publishers and advertisers in its own right, then bundling in Yahoo inventory won't change that in the long run.

Worse, this sort of bundling means that Yahoo may be undermonetizing its own content inventory. If Google has better technology and more advertisers, then Yahoo would get higher ad rates on its own sites from Google ads than from its own ad platform (excluding the revenue share).

All of which raises an interesting prospect: at some point, <b>Yahoo might become an interesting break-up play</b> if the value of its content business would be higher when separated from its search and advertising business. In other words, bundling in two highly competitive markets (ad inventory and ad technology) might destroy value rather than generate value.

The jury's out. This acquisition would make me more, rather than less nervous about owning YHOO. Which I don't...

Laptop Sales Will Drive Western Digital Shares - Barron's

Hard to see how flash memory can replace hard drives when new digital cameras have over 7 megapixel images and people start to download more video.

The Top Dividend Paying ETFs and Stocks

3 reasons to question the assumption here that high dividend yielding stocks or ETFs must be good:

1. As Joe comments above, there's no discussion of dividend coverage.

2. The theoretical case for dividends is weak. See Why Dividend Paying Stocks Are a Mistake.

3. There's no discussion of the expense ratios of the ETFs -- even though the expenses are deducted from the dividends, and therefore lead to higher risk or lower growth for a given level of dividends.

TheStreet.com Diversifies Away From Cramer With Stockpickr Acquisition

Couple of points:

- Didn't they buy the Weiss ratings business before this? I think they discussed this in the earnings call -- it's in the most recent transcript: TheStreet.com Q1 2007 Earnings Call Transcript.

- Looks like most of stockpikr's traffic comes from TheStreet.com itself, not organically. For example, James Altucher uses about half his links in his blog watch column on thestreet.com to drive traffic to stockpikr (which he started and owned), even though it's not a blog. (So much for disclosing conflicts of interest!) And TheStreet links to stockpikr after every mention of a stock.

- Word on the street is they only paid a couple of million dollars for stockpikr. The acquisition wasn't large enough that they had to disclose the sum paid on their conf call or in an SEC filing, so it definitely wasn't a "major acquisition", particularly given how much cash the company has.

Perhaps the low price was related to the lack of organic traffic.

Blue Nile: Compressed Margins Leave Little Room For Error

Not sure how this is a long idea -- looks like your editors made an error with that tag.