Companies Phoning It In - Krystal

For the 2nd time ever, I recently went to a Krystal fast food.  I had to do some digging, but Krystal is owned by Argonne Capital Group, which is HQ'd in Atlanta, although Krystal's headquarters remains in Tennessee.  Why do I say Krystal is phoning it in?  First, their drive thru menu is a hot funky mess.  Sure, people who frequent there will probably know the menu by heart, but if they do then they don't need a menu. Who needs the menu?  NEW CUSTOMERS!

Ok, why is it a mess?
First, it's way too busy. It's like the person who built it played a lot of Tetris.
Second, it's trying way to hard (and too obvious) to steer you towards the combo meals.  All I wanted was a single burger and it wasn't listed. But every combo meal you can imagine was listed. I had to ask how much was a Krystal burger ($.79 in case you're wondering).  I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent, so I can imagine more than a few potential customers have given up and pulled off.  When I got to the drive thru window I commented on the mess of a menu. The response I got was "I agree, that's why I go to McDonalds."  Not oh snap. Double oh snap.

You might ask, how can I evaluate a whole chain based on one visit to one location?  Simple, and I'm going to make a few assumptions....

• The drive thru menu was not designed by the location I went to. Any company worth more than $20 would have menus at all locations consistent, so the menu board is the same at every, if not most of their locations. Someone in the corporate office signed off on this box of 64 Crayola Crayons. I think it is blatantly designed to push you towards buying combo meals. Did it even go through consumer testing?  
• The location is within 50 miles of Atlanta, where the parent company is headquartered.  If you let a location this close to the mother ship go, I can only imagine what more remote locations are like. Again, one of the employees felt no concern in referring a competitor. That says to me that there is no consistent hidden shopper program to assess quality. If there where, this employee would never have said that to a customer.

For most of my analysis, I consider 2 corporate models : Apple and Bradlees.  Why? Apple is doing it right, at every Apple Store, every minute of the day. Bradlees, before it closed down, was a perfect example of employees going through the motions (at half speed) and a corporation just trying to hang on long enough the distribute senior exec bonuses.

Avis used to have a slogan "We're #2, we try harder." I don't know where Krystal falls (not in the top 10) but I don't think their trying harder. They exchanged owners last year, so it might be that they are in the process of a massive redesign. The scary part is the current image was most likely part of some massive redesign.

As for an investment opportunity, Krystal is not publicly traded so even if I wanted to invest I could not. Why even write about it? Because the problems it has are not problems that would only be seen in a privately held company.  Sears (full disclosure, I used to work there) (SHLD) was $200 a share a few years ago, it's now $44. Have you been in a Kmart lately? Yeah, exactly.  I digress.
My point is if you consider investing in a company, one thing you need to consider is the customer experience.  When companies stop caring about what the customers experience, they've taken their eye off the ball. But I would imagine the corporate bonus structure is probably still intact.

Oh yeah, the burger was pretty good.

The Cost of Money

Because of the recession (and maybe even a layoff) there are a lot of people who find themselves in a lot of credit card debt, and trying to increase their savings.  How do you decide what should take priority?  Conventional wisdom with credit cards is that you pay off those with the highest interest rates first,  because they are carrying the highest cost of renting money (when I say renting money, understand that every time you use a credit card, not a debit card, you are renting money from the issuer of that card.  The interest rate is their charge for that money rental.), but you should also consider what return you can get on savings. It may be better to not try to save so much when the return is minor (around 2% in savings accounts) and you are borrowing at 19% or 29%.

For example, if you have a credit card balance of $5,000 at 29.9%, if you make the minimum payment it will take you 29 years and cost you over $18,000 in interest alone. If you have $5,000 in your savings account, you might be tempted to leave it there to collect interest. But unless you've found that unique bank that pays interest of 30%, you will lose a whole lot more than you gain by paying the minimum. By making the minimum payment you suffer "death by a thousand cuts". Each month over 80% of the minimum payment goes toward interest.  Read that again. The lender takes their cut first. Then pays off some of your balance.

The bottom line is this: If you can't lend money (invest) at a higher return than you can borrow it, then pay off your debts first.

Facebooked

It's been a couple months since its IPO and Facebook is looking like a shiny turd. Ok, maybe not too shiny. Did I see this coming?  Well, I won't say I saw it coming because there's no accounting for the crazy of the stock market, but I never could figure out a few things, like.

• How does a company making about $1-2 billion a year, warrant a valuation of $100 billion?
• Running a startup is one thing, running a real company is another. Everyone assumed Zuckerberg was up to it.Why?

I listened to a Planet Money podcast a few weeks back and it was pretty interesting. Talked about 2 guys who bought ads on Facebook and it's questionable whether it was worth it. They also talked about Facebook "Like" farms where, for a price, people will "Like" you. Kinda destroys the whole model.  Anyway, I didn't get in on the IPO or after, and I predicted in 4 years Google would buy Facebook for $4.

Leapfrog

Three months ago I bought some Leapfrog enterprises, they make the children's LeapPad toys.As for the why I bought it, here's their one year chart:

Yeah, talk about missing a train. It's tripled in a year and no one was paying attention.  It came to my notice because it's been in my watch portfolio for years and they reported earning that the analysts didn't like so they got punished. Not bad, but as I've said before, the fact that the stock price changes ANY day due to what an analyst says is about the stupidest thing I've ever heard.  No, I don't respect analyst's opinions very much. It's like looking in a kitchen through a window and describing what the food should taste like.  Yes, I know they do all kinds of interviews with "the supply chains" yet they still miss stocks that take off. Then they blame it on unknowns in the market. Newflash: It's all unknown!  And don't get me started on target prices. Kinda like telling someone the day, hour and minute they're going to die, then ignoring that statement when your wrong. As for how LP has done the past few months since I bought it....

Bam!  I'm up about 18%. 'nuff said....

Even a broke watch is right twice a day....

This week Wellpoint announce they would be buying Amerigroup. By way of full disclosure, I used to work for Amerigroup. I bought the stock a while back and pretty much sat on my +100% return.  When the Wellpoint announcement came out this week my returns shot to over 200%.

I had no idea this was going to happen, and I may not be the smartest bulb on the shelf, but I ain't the dumbest either. I bought at $28.78, the price is now $89, Wellpoint offered $92. Sell, sell, sell.   The question becomes, am I selling too soon?  Here are the possible outcomes I see.
1. The acquisition goes through and the stock goes for $92. I lose about $4 a share.
2. The acquisition doesn't go through and the stock falls back to about where it was before, about $63. I lose about $28/share.
3. Amerigroup decides it doesn't want to be acquired. Not likely, I would imagine this has been discussed for weeks if not months.
4. Another suitor jumps in and offers a higher price. Possible, but I also think not very likely.

So, take the money and run. Yes, even a moron can make money in this market if they are lucky.

Read this article on Netflix. Thinking of buying some stock, but gonna keep an eye on them for now.

Looking for investment opportunities....

Just read these 2 articles on Facebook & JC Penney. Both interesting. My take on Facebook is that bow the hoop dee doo is over I think it will be a generally adequately performing stock over the long run.  I think I might pick up a few shares in the next few days. As for JC Penney, apparently, they just jumped on the screwed train.  I'll wait for them to drop some more before taking a chance. I don't think they'll go bye bye anytime soon, but I don't see them at bottom yet.

My new darling at the moment is Leapfrog (LF). Even though this article says it's "trying to turn a corner" the stock has been buck nutty the last 10 months, I'm talking tripling in that time.

Even Apple hasn't done that! That's right, over the last 10 months this stock has outperformed Apple (see 2nd chart below) and nobody's talking about it. Granted, back in 2004 it was selling in the $50 range, but it seems someone figured out something last year and its kicking.

Inside Job

This is a great podcast on what happened when the markets collapsed! Very easy to understand.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/405/inside-job

Should we take the money and run?

My biggest barometer into how the stock market is doing is my Apple stock.  But over the past month or so, it's not been the only holding of mine that's down. "The market" itself is down about 100 points.  I don't see much reason for it at the moment, but I think it's a real good time to develop an exit strategy.  I wouldn't put it past this market to hit us with a 3-400 point one day drop and have everyone pooping bricks.

Should you leave stocks along?

Just read this article from USAToday, it talks about how people are turning away from stocks as investments after getting burned badly in 2008-2009.  Let's we honest, these people got burned because they weren't paying attention to their stocks. Yes, the stock market tanked in about 2 days back then, but there were more than enough warning signs. I got smacked a little and jumped out. When the be can or whup booty showed up, I was already on the sideline, and able to jump back in.

The moral is, you have to watch your investments every day, and keep your ears open.

The Return of Apple

Yesterday Apple shot up about 7% after losing 13% over the last few weeks. Yes, Apple, the darling of all investors was slowly losing market cap. I had been watching this phenomenon (and crying) and trying to figure out why. I spent a few days searching but came up empty. Then on Tuesday Apple announced quarterly earnings. Sales of iPhones and iPads were ridicu-stupid. I mean iPad sales up 150% year over year. That's WTF territory.  But why had the shares been dropping? 

Apparently, "analysts" were concerned that sales of iPhones to US carriers were slumping.  Maybe they were, but overseas Apple turned this muthuh out.  What's sad is that for the last 2 weeks Apple's stock price, and the millions of investors who own APPL have seen their assets decline because some analysts had a gut feeling. A gut feeling that was wrong. They were only looking at one aspect of the company. Kinda like saying GMs in trouble because blue Chevy Volt sales might be down in Chicago on Tuesdays.  The US market is not the end all and be all.

Too bad that these same analysts will be making more predictions today. Even worse, people will be listening.

Etch-a-Sketch: The stupid continues

I've said before, many times, that the stock market is NOT logical. There are whole networks, websites, blogs (like this one) and every other kind of social media devoted to explaining, predicting an "understanding" the stock market. And just when everyone starts believing they got it nailed down, stupid rears it's ugly head.

This past week, one of the officials for one of the presidential candidates mentioned "Etch-a-Sketch" during an interview on TV. I can't say that was the total cause, but on Thursday Ohio Arts (OART.PK), the company that owns the Etch-a-Sketch, went from $4/share to $9/share. And they hadn't made any announcements.  And the volume that day was about 800 shares traded. That's not a typo. What about the PE ratio? What's Ohio Arts' beta?  Did the sector see a boost? None of that mattered. As it never has.  The stock went up over 100% because it's product was mentioned. Period.  Nobody necessarily bought any more Etch-a-Sketch's, the company didn't announce record earnings. Their product got mentioned. And somebody with 800 shares sold them and made about $4,000.

Today the stock is back around $4. Stupid went back to sleep.

Unexpected Consequences

Recently the restaurant across the street from "my office" (Panera Bread) shut off their free wifi for about 2 weeks.  Since my office only allows you to be online for 30 minutes at a time (to cut down on traffic), it's common knowledge that if you have to stay online longer you log onto the other restaurant's wifi (I'm on it now) and surf all day.  I wonder if Panera saw a decrease in business over the last 2 weeks, and if so, did they realize it was because of a competitor?

Smackdown

I don't know why, but the market opened and is down between 1-2% in 15 minutes. Good time to look for bargains. Those stocks that are getting beat down because the rest of the market is.

Linsanity: there's gold in them thar benches

Jeremy Lin is the hottest ticket in NY right. You know the story, this guy was undrafted, cut from 2 teams this year, sitting the bench, got a chance and has been averaging over 20 points a game every since.  The Knicks have only lost once in their last 10 games, prior to that their record was 8-15.  Now the question everyone is asking is "how did so many teams miss that he was that good?"  I'll tell you how. The same reason coaches flock to the NFL Combine every year looking for the next great talent, but miss on pretty much 90% of their picks. Here's an article on the top 100 worst NFL picks. Granted, it's just someone's opinion on how bad these picks are in the realm of badness, but there's no disputing none of these guys set the world on fire. Yet they all went to the Combine and they all did well in it. 

Coaches missed Jeremy Lin because instead of looking for talent they played it safe. They had certain players that were highly paid so they went with them.   The Knicks had Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire but could only win 8 of 22 games. This guy comes off the bench and leads them to 7 out 7, including a 38 point performance against the Lakers.  Is he all that special?  Not really, there have been many players who have led their teams to a string of victories. But how many people have dropped 38 points on Kobe Bryant's Lakers?   Every team has their 7 man rotation, meaning unless the game is a straight up blow out, these are the only guys who will get any meaningful minutes. How do you evaluate a performer who's getting 4 minutes a week out of a possible 240?  You don't. You pick your 7 and let the rest of the team get scraps, garbage minutes.  You focus on your starting 5 against your opponent's starting 5 instead of using all 10-12 of your players to attack his 5.  You can't tell me a fresh, hungry Troy Murphy is not better than a tired Pau Gasol.  If not, why is he on the team? When the Dallas Cowboys had their last great Superbowl run (2 of 3) it was mostly because Jimmy Johnson was rotating players every down. As a result, they were always pretty fresh, facing guys who had been pounded on for the last 6-7 straight plays.

My point is that if more coaches coached instead of "giving the fans what they want" (newsflash: fans want wins.) more coaches would probably find more gems on their benches.  Guys who could change the team for the better if given the opportunity.  Had it not been for fluke injuries, Jeremy Lin would still be sitting at the end of the bench, or at home, and the Knicks would be looking at yet another really, really bad season.  Instead, the word "Playoffs" is being not whispered, but yelled in MSG.

Why is this important to investors? Because it's easy as an investor to have this same play it safe mentality..  Pick one or two stocks and let the rest of your portfolio languish. Remember, every stock has the opportunity to be a star.  Watch them all, and act accordingly.

We gonna ride this business model until it completely dies....

This coming weekend is the annual NFL Pro Bowl in Hawaii. Yeah, they still play it. I watch about 2 plays every 4 years.  Here's my problem with the Pro Bowl. Well, I got a few actually:
- The best players aren't there.  Years ago, the Pro Bowl was played the week after the Superbowl and included everyone chosen. Given the 2 weeks between the season and the Superbowl, the Pro Bowl was almost played in March. That's a lonnnnnnnnnnnng season.  Not to mention pretty anti-climactic after the Superbowl. So, someone had the bright idea to play it BEFORE the Superbowl.  Here's the problem, football is a contact sport. So the two teams in the Superbowl (the two BEST teams in the league) don't send anyone because the last thing a coach wants is his starting QB hurt in the Pro Bowl and missing the Superbowl. And you can't blame him one bit. So the Superbowl teams don't send anyone, and the alternates now get to go to the Pro Bowl.


- Nobody plays hard.  In 1998 Robert Edwards tore his knee up in THE ROOKIE FLAG FOOTBALL GAME ON THE BEACH at the Pro Bowl.  He was able to return a few years later, but you have to wonder how much shorter his career was due to that injury. If you watch the game now, linemen aren't really blocking, more likely they grab each other and stand up. And you can't blame them one bit.  Yes, there is a lot of prestige associated with going to the Pro Bowl, but it's still the Pro Bowl and if you are going to get hurt in a game, better it be during the season when it counts than in the Pro Bowl when it doesn't.

If you ask the organizers of the Pro Bowl, they'll point to the record rating that the game still gets. They will probably ask "why can't we have an All Star Game?  Every other sport has one."  I repeat, football is a contact sport.  Ratings aside, I think it's kinda boring.  I think it would liven things up to have a skills competition for the linemen ala "The Superstars", and the backs & receivers can go against the defensive backs in a passing competition.  When you minimize the potential for injury, players will embrace the game.
Now I think it's more a "just don't get hurt" game.

Who's to blame for 2008 and why banks still don't get it?

I watched 60 Minutes a while back and they talked about how even though Sarbanes Oxley was in effect in 2008, no CFOs have yet to be prosecuted for signing off on false or incorrect information. It's kinda like folks have been complaining for  years that you shouldn't play with matches in the house, you still do, your house mysteriously burns down, but no one's to blame.  The problem, as the President put it, is that unfortunately most of the deeds that were done on Wall Street were not illegal. That's scary.  You can tank a global economy and not have done anything illegal.

Because of what happened, ie, a ton of crap mortgages were written, many large banks have found themselves in the position of holding mortgage portfolios worth billions on paper, but worth used toilet paper in real life. The really  crazy thing is, and maybe it's an attempt to placate their shareholders, the banks are willing to slowly let these mortgages continue to drag down their balance sheets for years or decades to come.  Here's an example:

Homeowner X has a mortgage worth $200,000.  The house is only worth $125,000. Homeowner X, for whatever reason, cannot pay the $200k mortgage.  The bank doesn't offer to really work with Homeowner X, and as a result he or she is foreclosed. The bank loses the $200k mortgage and its associated cashflow, and now has a house they have to sell for something, anything, to get some of their money back.  Until the house sells, if this is a responsible bank, they have to keep the grass cut and keep vandals and squatters out of the property. And every month they get more and more of these properties.  Best case, they sell the house for $125k and write off $75k loss.Homeowner X, who would have been willing and able to pay a mortgage based on $125k has his credit beaten. And every month banks are taking a nibble of the turd sandwich they helped make.

Here's what the banks should do:
First communicate with their shareholders that they have X billions in suspected mortgages that will likely not be repaid in full.  The choice is either to keep nibbling at them for the next 20 years, or bite the bullet turd write them all down over the next 6-12  months.  Then they go to Homeowner X and renegotiate his principal to $125k. And Homeowner X cannot refinance the mortgage for 10 years.Yeah, it sucks, but that's life. In addition, they make the deal that if in the next 20 years he/she or their estate sells the house for more than $125k they split the additional revenue 50/50 with the bank.  It gives the homeowner an incentive to still try to get the best price possible in a sale and the bank still has the potential to recoup some of what they've forgiven.  But the real beauty is that the bank gets the crap off its books, while still having upside potential, and Homeowner X doesn't get a credit rating of 142.

The problem is the banks are trying to have their cake and eat it too.   So long as they drag this out, it will continue to be dragged out.

The Apple of my eye

Caveat, I'm a big Apple fan. They just announced a press event for October 4. The assumption is this is the new iPhone (oh please oh please oh please let it run on Sprint!). I digress.

I doubled down, buying more around the time that Steve Jobs announced he was retiring as CEO, at around $380/share.  Today it's $419.  That's over 10%. In a month. Why, because even without him, the company is very well run.  And I still think it's a good deal, Some things to consider:  It's the largest publicly held company in the world by market capitalization, and it doesn't have a monopoly in any segments. Including iPads as computers, it's only got about 12% of the market. But it has the vast bulk of the profits. Let me repeat that. Apple is making all the money. This year Apple captured two thirds of available mobile phone profits in Q2.

The analysts are putting prices like $500-$520/share on the stock. As I've said before, I don't believe in analysts for a few reasons, primarily, they are not inside the company, and don't have a real clue as to how the day to day operations are going, nor do they know what products might or might not be in the pipeline.  Morgan Stanley feels Apple should buy back some of it's shares, because it has too much money on hand. With all due respect to the probably very intelligent analysts at Morgan Stanley, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard.  We're going through a recession/depression/giant suck of an economy and they're saying someone has too much cash on hand?  Really?  Hm, I bet Circuit City, Blockbuster or Borders wished they had too much cash on hand. Sometimes people talk to keep the quiet from enveloping them. 

I've been a shareholder for over a decade. I've never gotten a dividend, and I'm cool with it. When I originally bought the stock around $4 I didn't expect one, nor do I now. I don't want one. I want them to keep that money in the bank, keep making great stuff and keep getting more valuable. My point is, this train ain't stopping no time soon....

Netflix - WTF?

On July 23, Netflix stock hit $298/share.Today it's at $130. The stock had tripled since 2010. Well, scratch that. What happened? A couple things... They had already vanquished Blockbuster, who was too stubborn to see streaming as a viable alternative to physical stores.  So they were BMOC in video.  From everyone I talk to, the biggest problem with their streaming service is lack of popular/current titles. That isn't totally their fault, the content creators don't want movies streaming too fast, it undercuts the DVD market.  So, in the middle of all this, they are in ugly negotiations with STARZ, one of their MAJOR content providers. They double down: raising the price on streaming to current customers, even though never raising their content from suck to less suck. There's a backlash, they pretty much ignore it. Then they triple down: separating the streaming and DVDs by mail into 2 separate business units, calling the DVDs by mail Quickster. Wow. Bet that took a long meeting to come up with. The price will be the same for the combined service (the new, higher price), but now you will have 2 debits on your monthly credit card bill versus one.  Anyway, the STARZ negotiations imploded, so the library will be going from suck to more suck. And as I understand it, that's the streaming and the DVD libraries.  So more suck 2012 costs more than suck 2011. Good move. The sad thing is, there's no one to take advantage of the missteps. Blockbuster, a shell of it's former self, isn't set up to do streaming or large volume DVDs by mail. But Coinstar and Amazon, not to mention that other company, Apple's iTunes are all out there

Bottom line, I don't think Netflix is going away, but they really need to get their act together. The stock is probably a buying opportunity right now because at $298 it was probably over rated, and at $130 it's probably under rated.

Occupy Transition: A New World Order

This is also posted today on my job transition blog...

Cue the Death Star music....


I think the NBA could not have picked a worse time to go on strike.  Those in the top 1% income bracket, arguing with those in the top .001% income bracket over how to split the money they get from the other 99%.  That is our fault. Don't get me wrong, I love the NBA, it's fantastic. But really.


Bank of America backed down from $5/mo debit card use fees because people started withdrawing their funds.  Banks are now raising their fees as well, and requiring minimum balances to get free checking or accumulate interest.  The funny part of this is that the banks are in effect penalizing you because you aren't giving them enough money to invest. They are still investing it, though.  And paying you one or two percent interest on that money while they invest it at much, much higher rates.  They look at your savings account as free money.  The banks can invest it, but if they mess up and lose it, the government will step in and pay you back what they lost. Want an idea what their spread is? Ask your bank what their interest rates are on auto loans. Subtract from that what they're paying you in interest on your savings. That's what they're making on your money.  And since many people keep most of their money in a checking account that gets no interest, that's an even wider spread.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.  The Occupy demonstrations have spread around the world. Why?  Because Occupy Wall Street is a venue, not a movement.  It's people giving voice to their anger. Anger? Over what?  In a nutshell, the same people who cratered the global economy, wiping out 401k's by the tonnage, walked away with nary a scratch. The US taxpayers paid to make them whole and now they're taking huge bonuses again.

But they have opened people's eyes.  We are now realizing that credit card companies and banks don't lend to people who need money, they lend to people who can repay the money.  Many people have found themselves without jobs, and need to use credit cards to pay for monthly living expenses. That's when reality hits and they find out that as their credit is slowly destroyed, so is their ability to borrow to keep a roof over their heads. Or, as their credit score drops faster than RIMs stock price, these same companies who enticed them with offers of low interest rates, no annual fees, etc., are raising these same interest rates.  Kinda like not getting water from a stone, so you raise the required amount of water you want the stone to produce.  If it's not making water now - oh, nevermind.What's in your wallet?  A bag of hurt.

The problem is that in the 80s and 90s we as a society stopped saving (correction, the other 99% of us did). We spent every dime we made "enjoying the good life" and when that wasn't enough, we got credit offers from our "friends who just wanted us to keep on enjoying."  Sure, they offered very low introductory or final rates, but as soon as we missed a few payments, or went over our credit limit, all bets are off. They sometimes even raised your rates because you were late paying someone else.  That's right, a totally unrelated, unconnected company.  Kinda like your cable gets shut off, so the utility company, who is being paid on time, shuts off your heat. I guess that's solidarity.

Why were we encouraged to spend ourselves almost into oblivion?  Welcome to capitalism. Capitalism requires people to spend money, not save. To keep a capitalist society rolling along, people have to keep buying stuff. That makes companies rich, they hire more people who can spend even more money.  After 9-11 we were encouraged to go out and spend to forget the beat down we just got. Every Black Friday we rush out like lemmings at 3 AM because we absolutely have to have that thing, whether it's a 60" plasma TV or new furniture or whatever. Every car commercial I see show the lease price. When I was growing up, the only people who leased cars were business owners and companies.  The biggest draws were 1) it wasn't their money, and 2) they could write it off as an expense on their taxes. Now leasing is the norm. Why? because it allows people to get into vehicles they probably couldn't afford paying for directly. See a trend?



The same people on Wall Street who "the other 99%" are mad at for getting multi-million dollar bonuses are the ones we happily give money to in the form of credit card interest payment and brokerage fees.  We fed this monster, we have to starve it.  We have to find a happy balance between spending and saving. But we also have to become more financially savvy in general. While it might be good for Wall Street if we constantly spend, borrow and spend, it might not be good for the Joneses. Among the many lessons learned in the crash of 2008 is that the experts on Wall Street may not be as financially intelligent as they may have led people to believe.  How else would IAG, Leman Brothers and others be wiped out? The answer is that individual greed was more important than practices that were in the interest of the firms themselves. In effect, a company with 10,000 employees had 10,001 agendas.  And we were the fodder.

If your company offers a 401k with matching, it's a great opportunity to accumulate retirement savings. But you have to consider that your money and you have to take as active a stance as possible in it.  For my own reasons, I'm against mutual funds (I can lose my own money for free, why pay someone to do so?)

But you can't stop there. Learn how to invest. Newsflash: It's not rocket science. If the brainiacs on Wall Street showed us anything, it's that it doesn't take a genius to wreck an economy, so it sure won't take one to invest your $20.  That's a joke, but don't miss the seriousness of it. It's your money, learn to invest it.  As for your credit cards, pay them off and cut them up. Not as some symbolic gesture. Remember, when you needed them, they weren't there. Be selfish. Instead of saving 5%, shoot for 30%. Sure, you may not get there in a month, but keep striving for it.
Don't live within your means, live under them. Well under them.  You might think I'm being extreme, but know that if Ebenezer Scrooge got laid off, dude probably didn't miss any meals.  Be selfish. It's not your job to keep the economy going. It will run over you if you falter.

I have a theory. When they retired, the people who survived the Great Depression (#1) were probably well off. They saw what happens when you don't look out for yourself financially. When they got back to work, they probably saved every penny they could.  They never forgot what it was like. Fast forward 80 years and we have forgotten. This giant suck of an economy is the wake up call. Wake up.

The Apple of my eye & Netflix - Huh?

Caveat, I'm a big Apple fan. They just announced a press event for October 4.

The assumption is this is the new iPhone (oh please oh please oh please let it run on Sprint!). I digress.

I doubled down, buying more around the time that Steve Jobs announced he was retiring as

CEO, at around $380/share.  Today it's $419.  That's over 10%. In a month. Why, because even

without him, the company is very well run.  And I still think it's a good deal, Some things to consider:  It's the largest publicly held company in the world by market capitalization, and it doesn't have a monopoly in any segments. Including iPads as computers, it's only got about 12% of the market. But it has the vast bulk of the profits. Let me repeat that. Apple is making all the money. This year

Apple captured two thirds of available mobile phone profits in Q2.The analysts are putting prices like $500-$520/share on the stock. As I've said before, I don't believe in analysts for a few reasons, primarily, they are not inside the company, and don't have a real clue as to how the day to day operations are going, nor do they know what products might or might not be in the pipeline.  Morgan Stanley feels Apple should buy back some of it's shares, because it has too much money on hand. With all due respect to the probably very intelligent analysts at Morgan

Stanley, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard.  We're going through a recession/depression/giant suck of an economy and they're saying someone has too much cash on hand?  Really?  Hm, I bet Circuit City, Blockbuster or Borders wished they had too much cash on hand. Sometimes people talk to keep the quiet from enveloping them. I've been a shareholder for over a decade. I've never gotten a dividend, and I'm cool with it. When I originally bought the stock around $4 I didn't expect one, nor do I now. I don't want one. I want them to keep that money in the bank, keep making great stuff and keep getting more valuable. My point is, this train ain't stopping no time soon....

Netflix - Huh?

On July 23, 2011 Netflix stock hit $298/share.Today it's at $130. The stock had tripled since 2010. Well, scratch that. What happened? A couple things... They had already vanquished Blockbuster, who was too stubborn to see streaming as a viable alternative to physical stores.  So they were BMOC in video.  From everyone I talk to, the biggest problem with their streaming service is lack of popular/current titles. That isn't totally their fault, the content creators don't want movies streaming too fast, it undercuts the DVD market.  So, in the middle of all this, they are in ugly negotiations with STARZ, one of their MAJOR content providers. They double down: raising the price on streaming to current customers, even though never raising their content from suck to less suck. There's a backlash, they pretty much ignore it. Then they triple down: separating the streaming and DVDs by mail into 2 separate business units, calling the DVDs by mail Quickster. Wow. Bet that took a long meeting to come up with. The price will be the same for the combined service (the new, higher price), but now you will have 2 debits on your monthly credit card bill versus one.  Anyway, the STARZ negotiations imploded, so the library will be going from suck to more suck. And as I understand it, that's the streaming and the DVD libraries.  So more suck 2012 costs more than suck 2011. Good move. The sad thing is, there's no one to take advantage of the missteps. Blockbuster, a shell of it's former self, isn't set up to do streaming or large volume DVDs by mail. But Coinstar and Amazon, not to mention that other company, Apple's iTunes are all out there

Bottom line, I don't think Netflix is going away, but they really need to get off their act together. The stock is probably a buying opportunity right now because at $298 it was probably over rated, and at $130 it's probably under rated.

Inside Info On Why Walmart Will Eventually Fail

Before you call the authorities because I have "insider" info, I got mine the old fashioned way: I went inside a Walmart.  Let me back up. The first time I went into a Walmart was maybe 10 years ago. I was blown away.  It started with the "greeter" as you walked in, and went uphill from there.  In the last decade, I've seen the place decline.  The greeters and stores aren't as inviting, they seem to be employing some screwed up version of Just In Time Staffing, maybe based on dollars per hour wrung up or some such. Whatever they're using, it's an epic fail in my book. We have an unemployment rate around 8%, Walmart's making money, yet 99% of the time I'm at my local Walmart. no more than 4-6 of the 24 cash registers are open.  And the lines are crazy sometimes.  If it's after 11 PM or in the wee hours of the morning,  then we're talking 1 register is open.  If you go to Walmart after 11, be prepared to stand in line for 30-45 minutes.  They close the self serve lines whenever the person watching them has to go home.  My point is, and this is not just my opinion, people tolerate Walmart because they usually have the best prices. But there is going to come a point when we are going to stop tolerating it for the sake of saving a few dollars.  And yes, it is a bad omen when your customers "tolerate" you.

To be fair, I looked at Walmart's stock performance.  It hit $69/share in December 1999, and is now finally getting back to that point.  Walmart is famous for squeezing  pushing their supplies to cut costs so they can pass the savings on, but if you make enemies, you should also make friends. Walmart has annoyed it's suppliers and its customers. I'm going to keep my eye on it. If I do buy some, I'm not planning to hold it forever. I still feel like it's going to go down eventually.