MINYANVILLE ORIGINAL "In particular, I'm concerned that one of two things must happen in the years ahead. Either the US dollar must further devalue, as it has to the tune of 25% since 2002, or asset classes will deflate in synch. I'm unsure if these are mutually exclusive events but we'll likely jockey between the two as we figure it out. I will also offer that the greenback will serve as a proxy of isolationism as America delicately dances through a difficult war and sets protectionist policies in place." A pretty sharp guy made those observations seven years ago. While I wasn't there at the Minyans in the Mountains retreat to hear Todd Harrison give that speech, I read those words and they struck a ... Continue reading →
Apple CEO Tim Cook is proving himself as much a master of employee and investor relations as he is of operational efficiency. His decisions to create a charitable matching program for Apple employees and to grant a long pined for dividend to company’s shareholders have won him a lot of favor among both groups, while putting his own stamp on Apple. And now he’s made another move for which he’s likely to win accolades. Cook is forgoing a $75 million dollar dividend to which he’s entitled. In a Thursday SEC filing Apple announced plans to award a $2.65-a-share quarterly dividend on restricted stock units held by its employees. It’s a nice — and unusual — perk to offer (and one certain to cement employee loyalty ... Continue reading →
Facebook: a lower quality advertising medium says Professor Byron Sharp Speaking at an event held by TV marketing body Thinkbox on Friday (23 March), Sharp said to grow, brands needed to reach people who didn't buy their category very often. However, Facebook fans "skew massively to the heaviest buyers, the people who are the easiest to reach". Sharp said: "They see you more often, they notice everything you're doing. You should pay less to reach those people. TV reaches your normal category buying base, but earned media skews to your heaviest buyers. It therefore, is a lower quality media." The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute is part of the School of Marketing at the University of South Australia and has one of the largest numbers of marketing scientists ... Continue reading →
Making the rounds is The Facebook Fallacy, a killer essay by Michael Wolff in MIT Technology Review. The gist: At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium than traditional media. Facebook, with its 900 million users, valuation of around $100 billion, and the bulk of its business in traditional display advertising, is now at the heart of the heart of the fallacy. The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the strength of Web advertising is that the value of digital ads decreases every quarter, a consequence of their simultaneous ineffectiveness and efficiency. The nature ... Continue reading →
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matterhornbob @nancefinance affected investment "decision making"....I have close to 20,000 "time stamped" tweets in Excel (time and market price) it is Continue reading →
Dick Fuld to Have a Wonderful Memorial Day Weekend Joshua M Brown May 24th, 2012 Looks like Lehman's former execs are in the clear... From Bloomberg: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigators have concluded their probe of possible financial fraud at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and determined that they will probably not recommend any enforcement action against the firm or its former executives, according to an excerpt of an internal agency memo. The agency has been grappling with the case for more than three years amid questions from lawmakers and investors as to whether Lehman misrepresented its financial health before filing the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history in September 2008. Under a heading reading “Activity in the Last Four Weeks,” the undated document reads, “The ... Continue reading →
