Target plans to add a “mini apple store” inside its stores. It’s a brilliant move for both Target and Apple. Apple computers are available in Frys and Best buy stores. By making its computers and devices available in Target, Apple is going to benefit from Target’s presence all over the U.S.
BTW, Apple’s chart shows the uptrend. I guess it’s time to pick up some more Apple shares.
Disclaimer: I own Apple shares.
Related Link: Apple Insider
All right folks.. Zynga IPO is coming soon. The company sets the offer price in $8.50 – $10 range. The IPO is expected to hit Nasdaq in mid-December under the ticker ZNGA.
Zynga recorded earnings of $30.7 million for the first nine months of this year, on revenue of $828.9 million. It’s anybody’s guess whether Zynga will go in the way of LinkedIn that trades better than its debut price or Pandora that trades 33% lower than its debut price. I would be a buyer if Zynga really trades at $9 – $10 range on the first day. Zynga’s underwriters have an option to sell additional 15 million shares if the demand is strong. If the underwriters artificially increase the demand and hike the stock price, it’s better to stay away from that game. You can play Zynga games, but don’t play with your money! If the stock shoots up to unreasonable level on the first day, wait till it comes back down to earth.
Although there is no net change in U.S. unemployment rate, many cities reported drop in unemployment rates. Unemployment rate in Mansfield, Ohio fell from 11.4% to 10.1%. Bismarck, N.D. reported the nation’s lowest unemployment rate, at 3%. Yuba City, CA and Modesto, CA also reported the drop of 1.6%.
Although the drop is not very significant, it’s a good start. News like this always come with a caveat — in this case, lots of people stopped looking for a job, they are not counted as unemployed.
Stock market is bleeding. Even the gold price is going down. I would stay away from the stock market until there is a strong evidence of job growth and improvement in overall U.S. job market.
Markets tanked…miserably. There is a fear, uncertainty and what not. The prices have come down a lot. Is it a good time to buy?
To answer this question, ask yourself another question “would you buy anything just because the price is cheaper compared to historical prices?”. Most sensible people would say no!
Price is just one part of the equation. If the fundamentals are good and you like the stock, it’s ok to buy the stock during dip. It may be even a better idea to sell puts for the stock you like.
Buying on the dip may make you feel better. But, would it grow your investments? Proper research is essential before you start buying on the dip.
Google proved that it’s still a growth company. Google posted a quarterly profit of $2.51 billion, or $7.68 a share, up from $1.84 billion, or $5.71 a share, a year earlier. Total revenue was $9.03, up from $6.82 billion a year ago. Solid earnings boosted the stock price up by $67 after-hours.
Google CEO Larry Page mentioned that 10 million people have profiles in Google+ in just few weeks after its launch. 135 million Android devices have been activated so far. Android sees 550,000 activations per day meaning that consumers are buying that many new android phones per day all over the world.
For now, Google’s search business contributes most of its profits. However, Android and Google+ is going to contribute more profits to Google in the years to come.
Disclaimer: I own Google stock.
Related Link: Bloomberg Article
Following Linkedin IPO and its crazy valuation, Groupon is preparing for its IPO. The IPO could value Groupon in the border of $20 billion. Groupon filed form S1 with SEC. IPO may happen in 2-3 months. In the form S1 (page 12), Groupon mentioned that it spent $179 million in the first quarter of 2011 for online marketing. However, when the company calculated its first quarter margin, it conveniently ignored the $179 million online marketing expenses and calculated the profit for Q1 2011 as $82 million. If you include the online marketing expenses, the company really had the loss of $82-$179 = $97 million.
These IPOs definitely look sexy based on all the hype surrounding them. However, if you had burnt your fingers in dot com crash of 2000, you better stay clear of all these web 2.0 IPOs until the companies’ profit picture is more clear.
LinkedIn is opening its doors to public investment (and scrutiny) on Thursday. Its IPO is the hot topic today. It increased the offering price range from $32-$35 to $42-$45. It’s rare to see a company increasing the IPO price range by $10! It shows the real hot demand for a piece of LinkedIn. If all these hype reminds you of dot-com bubble of 90s, you are not alone. Many people think like that. This could be another hype that could end badly.
LinkedIn earned $15.4 million last year; its revenue was $243 million. If it can fetch $45 price tag per share, the market valuation would be approximately $4+ billion. In that case, market cap will be 258 times greater than 2010 profit and 17 times greater than 2010 revenues. LinkedIn warns that revenue gain would slow down this year and a loss is possible.
I am going to stay away from this IPO if the stock is priced at $45. You will see a lot of day traders hiking up the price on Thursday. Institutional investors that got into LinkedIn early also would try everything possible to hike up the first day price so that they can make huge profits. Invariably, the stock price will come down.
When Google went ahead with IPO, its market value was 16 times higher than previous year’s revenue. Google had better business model than LinkedIn. The hype surrounding LinkedIn is that it is the “first U.S. social media company going for IPO”. It doesn’t matter whether this is the first social media company or third one. What matters is how much money you can make if you buy the stock at inflated price.
The company’s stock ticker will be LNKD in New York Stock Exchange.
Every year we come up with new year resolutions. Most of the resolutions’ vigor fade away as the days pass by. But, we never give up! We make another set of resolutions when the new year approaches.If you want to do this right, an interesting article from Wall Street Journal could help you.
Here is the summary of that article:
Read the article here for more details.
There are many bond strategies, and the laddered portfolio is an excellent way to structure your interest payments and to reduce your interest rate risk.
One of the few risks involved in bond investing is the risk that interest rates will raise and investors will not have cash to take advantage of new bonds with higher interest rate (coupon). The problem can be solved by having a laddered portfolio.
When you structure your laddered portfolio the idea is to have bonds that mature every year or two, that way if rates raise you will have bonds maturing which will free up cash to buy the new bonds with a higher coupon payment. If rates are dropping you still have long bonds that have a higher rate than is currently available in the market today.
The other nice thing about having a laddered portfolio is that it is possible to structure your portfolio with bonds that pay their coupon payments every month or so. Since nearly every bond issue pays only twice a year you need at least six different issues if you want to insure that you have monthly income.
The only drawback here is that it takes a fair sized lump payment to get started. It can be tough to buy only one bond, or even five at a time. In general you need to get a lot of ten bonds at a time, which means you will need to spend $10,000 for each bond issue. This means you will need about $60,000 to build your laddered bond portfolio. Once you have made the initial investment then you only have to buy a bond when one matures and you will have the cash to do so from the maturing bond. If you don’t have the initial capital to structure a laddered portfolio but still need monthly income, you should look into one of the many bond mutual funds.
Good luck and happy investing.
You may like the company, but do you trust your Financial Advisor? Any given company is really only as good as they guy’s advice on the other end of the line when you call. Before working with any advisor there are some things you can do.
First go to this website: www.finra.org it totally free and easy to use. You can search for information about a firm or about individual Financial Advisors and you don’t have to know the brokers Rep Number either. Just input their first and last name in the search field and you’ll find your person. Here you will find employment history, tests they have passed, states their licensed in, and any customer complaints and disputes, as well as the outcome for those events.
Just because your Advisor has had a complaint or dispute lodged against them does not mean they are a rogue broker as they used to call them. It’s a tough business as sometimes not easy to avoid unhappy customers trying to make someone else responsible for bad decisions. No one complains about their Financial Advisor in a bull market, but when a bear market hits people point fingers.
I can over look one complaint or dispute if it was resolved in favor of the broker, but it there are a string of them, that’s not a good pattern; maybe look elsewhere. You should feel free to ask your advisor for clarification of what you find on his report as well.
This is just the first step to finding a good Financial Advisor. Check out the company, check out the man; you could save yourself a lot of headaches. If he checks out okay on the website ask what his philosophy towards investing is. Remember, Financial Advisors are similar to self employed workers and each has their own philosophy that may or may not be in line with the company they work for.
Good luck and happy shopping
