There are some fuzzy statistics going on here, but it’s still a funny article: Excluding Bill Gates, Dec. incomes seen rising 2.6%
Excluding Gates’ $3.3 billion gain, personal incomes probably rose by 2.6 percent, with 0.3 percentage point of the increase going to just one really smart but not so tall man.
Microsoft paid out $32 billion of its massive cash hoard to stock holders. Guess who owns 10% of Microsoft?
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I just noticed an interesting new feature on Froogle: Froogle Shopping List. Froogle recognized my gmail account and allowed me to easily set up a Froogle account to store my shopping list. The feature itself is not that exciting (Amazon has certainly been doing this for a while). But, I do find it interesting that Google is starting to sneak out more personalized services.
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Plimus appears to have nice features, and their rates are excellent. As I get close to release, I’ll have to take a better look at this one.
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I’ve just switched our long distance service to bigredwire. 2.7 cents per minute, no fees (though there are some taxes added to that). I’ve been meaning to switch ever since Sprint started charging a monthly fee. It’s crazy to pay Sprint $5 per month, given that I don’t even use their service! We’ve been using One Suite, which is a pre-paid service that offers super low rates (2.4 cents in the US, 9 cents per minute to Bangalore, India!). Unfortunately, One Suite’s call quality has been dropping drastically. I’m pretty sure they’re using VOIP on the back end and not at a good quality level.
bigredwire, by the way, offers 20 cents per minute calls to Bangalore, and free member-to-member calling.
brw is also interesting because they hae these little hexagon faces that they use to represent everything. I got email from “jack”, their customer service face. Kinda weird, but mildly pleasant as well.
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Normally, companies announce events, as in something actually happening. In today’s age of blogging, I decided that I’ll go ahead and announce that the name of my new company will not be Zesty Software. This is literally a non-event.
For a while now, I had been thinking of using the Zesty name. I’ve been pretty sure all along that zesty.com would be taken. That’s a strike against, for sure, but not a deal-breaker. Sure enough, zesty.com is owned by a “Zesty International”. Who knows what they do, though, because they haven’t actually put anything at zesty.com.
The deal-breaker came when I did a Google search for “zesty software”. There were no matches, so it looks like the name was not in use. But, a few matches down I saw a reference to spyware that apparently opens up people’s browsers to a site called ZestyFind (no link provided, because I don’t want to support those who support spyware). I don’t know how common the ZestyFind spyware is, but I don’t want to be associated with that.
Back to the naming drawing board, I guess.
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Way back (in August, I think), when Google was floating potential prices for their stock, they talked about as high as $135 per share. I remember the press thinking this was ludicrous. Google, of course, ended up selling their shares via Dutch Auction at $85. It turns out that they may not have been off in their original pricing… Google today hit $135 per share. GOOG is a great company with great market positioning, so they have good reason to be a Wall St. darling.
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Here’s a good Motley Fool commentary by Whitney Tilson that shares how I feel about the current state of investing: Fool.com: The Joy of Cash. One interesting thing to get from this: mutual funds are not always the best place to have your money. A Vanguard index fund is good because it’s cheap, but if the stock market goes sideways for the next few years, you’ll basically get no return.
Recognizing that high stock prices, rising interest rates and other factors mean that there aren’t many good investment choices, cash is not a bad place to have a chunk of your portfolio right now. Tilson says that he’s got 35% in cash. Berkshire Hathaway has $70 billion in cash and bonds. Do you want to second guess Warren Buffett?
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The Market According to GARP says:
The experts say this is a stock picker’s market. By that they mean the market could move sideways for some time, and offer its biggest rewards to those investors who know how to select good stocks.
I definitely believe that we’re going into a sideways market. Even the term “sideways” makes things sound somewhat pleasant. Stocks will move down, then up, then down, then up until we finally reach the “hey things have moved sideways” point. With that setup, the article goes on to say:
Reams of research show that long-term investors who keep their money on autopilot in low-cost index funds will beat most stockpickers and market timers over the long haul.
I think there’s a disconnect here. A “sideways” market, by definition, produces no return. Rather than going up or down, it just goes sideways. So, for the next few years, those index funds will go up and down, ultimately producing no return at all. I, for one, don’t plan to let my money sit around in stocks earning 0% for several years, when I could just move it into a money market account to earn something. Series I US Savings Bonds are very nice as well.
I’m content, though, with large groups continuing to leave their money in indexes. It just provides less competition for other investments…
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Lately, I’ve been seriously thinking about where I think the stock market is going to go. Everyone says “you can’t time the market”, and staying in stocks pays off in the long term. However, I really think that most large cap stocks are overvalued. It doesn’t matter that the economy is doing fairly well right now. Stock prices are just too far ahead of corporate earnings.
Right now, I’m reading Bull’s Eye Investing by John Mauldin. I’m certain that many people out there disagree with Mauldin’s bearish outlook on today’s market. I think he’s right on. Prices are quite high relative to earnings, and there are many factors that will be pressuring earnings over the next few years that will make it next to impossible for most companies to catch up. This means that a correction (or stagnation at least) is in order. I’d rather not be a part of that. I’ll probably write more about Mauldin’s book after I’ve finished it.
One way to correct the imbalance is to invest in stocks that are selling at a discount to their fair price. The Motley Fool (which is where I learned of Mauldin’s book) has compiled the Value Investing 10 Commandments in All You Need to Know for Value Investing, which includes a number of quotes and thoughts from Warren Buffett.
In other interesting money news, Buffett has signed on as Kerry’s economic adviser. Groovy.
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Here’s an inspiring (in a businessy sort of way) tale of JetBlue’s CEO doing steward duty on one of their flights. This CEO, Dave Neeleman really puts the customer first, relying on first hand knowledge of customer wants instead of statistics in customer surveys and the like. His tactics are also great for motivating employees, who see their CEO taking all sorts of jobs seriously.
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