> blackfish was out at a maximum of 100 theaters and has made about 2 million in half a year
Yea, but it is now on Netflix and the story has received a lot of media and social media attention that extends the information to millions more people.
As of December 30 it has been viewed over 490,000 times on Netflix.
> seaworld owns 11 parks and reports a record year of revenue and attendance
They have only released Q3 financial statements that cover the period following the release of the documentary (July 2013), but this is before it began to receive real attention on media/social media due to its Neflix release (Dec 13, 2013).
Costco's a great company, treats people well, offers a fun/novel experience where - for better or worse - product selection changes fairly often.
That said: ultimately Costco wasn't really for me after a while; prices aren't always the best and I didn't need to be buying the amount I was buying. That doesn't mean it isn't a good company, but I do think that it serves some people extremely well and isn't quite as useful for others.
The stock has always seemed fundamentally rather expensive to me, but I think people do value the company's quality and consistency over the years. However, when it's valued the way it is and they miss, it's a fairly decent decline when something doesn't deliver.
I definitely don't think Costco is going anywhere, but I do see Amazon Prime eating into some of Costco's business. Costco has admitted that they are not Amazon proof. (http://seekingalpha.com/article/4009628-costco-amazon-proof). Costco has never seemed very concerned about technology in any regard - the website isn't great and it wasn't that long ago that they moved from that coupon book to an app.
As for the fee increase, it's not really surprising. Costco has extremely thin margins; the membership is where the money is at. They also want/rely on people buying things aside from just coming in there for paper goods and some groceries.
Looks like a classic pump and dump scheme to me. See this SA article for a good breakdown. If you're willing to make risky bets OP, I'd get out IF the stock pops.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3245496-sunvault-energy-late-filings-arent-the-only-problems
> top 1% who control about 90% of the wealth?
Whoah. Let's not start saying things that aren't true.
/u/Hoogles isn't wrong. Tractor trailers have huge blind spots. Seriously, you don't want one behind you or to your left. To your right is even dangerous. Driving around a vehicle with an unladen Class 8 trailer that weighs an average of 40,000 lbs moving at 55mph (realistically 65mph) is no joke. Your little Honda or "massive" SUV will not win. Let alone the guy and kid on the bike in this video.
edit - adding weight source: http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/227454-john-petersen/2323012-data-on-class-8-tractor-trailer-combination-weights
Could be. Here's Musk on the quarterly call:
> ...we’re going to unveil the Tesla home battery [indiscernible] consumer battery that will be for use in and people’s houses or businesses, fairly soon. We have the design done and it should start going into production probably about six months or so. We probably got a date to have sort of product unveiling, it’s probably in the next month or two. It’s really great. I’m really excited about it.
This wasn't in the article but still quite interesting. Boom!
Lisa Su : >In terms of long-term roadmap we are extremely committed to high performance x86 CPUs. And there should be no confusion on that point. Mark Papermaster is currently directly engaging with the team on that execution and we’ll have more details to come. But overall pleased with the execution and it continues to be our number one priority for the company.
>As we stated in the Financial Analyst Day we had a target of 40% IPC performance of Zen over our previous generation. We believe we’re on track for that. Relative to process technology we've tapped out multiple products to multiple fabs in FinFET, and we believe that they are also on track in terms of overall ramp. So we continue to focus on both of those aspects, both the architecture of the process technology but so far so good.
It's mildly amusing that whenever there is a problem, in Krugman's opinion, it is always the fault of the Republicans.
Obama's stimulus bill passed without a single House Republican vote and only 3 Republican votes in the Senate (Snowe, Collins, and Specter).
0 Republican votes were actually required, which means that whatever was in the bill was completely up to the prerogative of the Democrats, and if it ended up being a bad and ineffective bill...it's the fault of the Democrats.
Furthermore, Krugman is dead wrong his "Excuse No. 2: Fear the bond market" point. We have already had several failed Treasury auctions, and the only reason why interest rates are "low" is because the Federal Reserve is printing money and using that money to buy Treasuries...a rather "crafty" slight of demand to hide the fact that at current interest rates, there simply isn't market demand to satisfy all of the debt requirements of the U.S.
So I've kept saying that I think the ETF will be approved given multiple indicators, the most compelling of which is detailed here - http://seekingalpha.com/article/4053177-betting-sec-will-approve-coin
Look at the names & titles of the attendees. Why on earth would they invite the people that they did to deny the ETF? Is it typical to hold meetings with high level officials to relay denial notices? -
" John DiBacco, Global Head, Equities Trading, KCG Holdings; Laura Morrison, Senior Vice President, Global Head of Exchange Traded Products, Bats Global Markets; Kyle Murray, Assistant General Counsel, Bats Global Markets; Phil Nanof, ETF Product Specialist, State Street Global Services; Eric Noll, President and Chief Executive Officer, Convergex Group, LLC; Damon Walvoord, Head of ETF Capital Markets and Global Portfolio Trading, Susquehanna International Group, LLP; Edward Baer, Ropes & Gray LLP; and David G. Tittsworth, Ropes & Gray LLP."
If denial were the case, then why not just notify the twins and offer withdrawal? Why the delay of announcing the meeting 8 days after it took place? Why the lack of withdrawal after 3 days into the final week of the deadline?
Price action from 14th to now (vertical line of crosshair marks Feb 14th) - http://imgur.com/a/938OH - Note that the 22nd (day of memo release) is also the day we made new ATH's.
Maybe I have been smoking a bit too much hopium (#ConfirmationBias), but I still see more indications in favor of approval than not. If you have any facts or indications to the contrary please share them.
EDIT: Oh and the PBOC about face on exchange regulations and margin trading/fake volume (specific concerns of the SEC) out of the blue is another large factor in my sentiment.
Gold is not a great investment generally speaking; there's been a rise in gold prices due to people hoarding it as an investment, but that's unusual. Here's a chart with year-by-year comparisons of S&P index funds, gold, and silver.
It's a reasonable investment if you think the stock market and government are going to collapse without Mad-Max style anarchy ensuing (the value of gold depends entirely on rich people; if there are no rich people, you definitely should have invested in some means of producing food instead).
That's the problem though. Both Sony and Microsoft are making a very slight profit on day 1 with this generation. Microsoft makes $28 a console and Sony makes $18 a console. I know that doesn't sound like much, but let's take a trip back to 2005/2006.
Microsoft launches the Xbox 360 at $399. It cost Microsoft roughly $525 per unit. They were losing $126 a console. That seems bad right? Sony on the other hand launched the PS3 at $599. They were estimated losing almost $300 a console! The increased cost of including an expensive Blu-ray drive drove their cost up.
Now I felt the previous generation consoles were actually ground breaking, the graphics were really good, and this generation you can REALLY tell it's all about the money. They are making a profit on consoles from day one where it took YEARS for them to even out previously, because they wanted to push something CUTTING EDGE to their players.
EDIT: I'm obviously just talking about the parts and not the labor and shipping and all of the overhead, so technically they are selling at a loss, but not NEARLY as much as they were losing in the previous generation.
Sources: http://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-squeezes-little-profit-out-of-each-xbox-one/
Ron Paul's return on investments. Professional investors don't even come close to the returns Dr. Paul has made in the last decade.
First of all, congrats on your gains. But I would say that this is a "picking up pennies in front of steamrollers" strategy.
Charles DeMuth had a great article on XIV over at SeekingAlpha: http://seekingalpha.com/article/3242146-the-1-stock-in-the-world
I almost bought in, but I realized that the risk of going to 0 on any given day is too high. I wonder, what would XIV have done on September 11th, or in 2008?
I'm starting to fear that nothing is keeping this from moving sub $40 and possibly into the mid to lower $30's - there's a significant glut of supply - and any idea of a turnaround is just being pushed further and further out. If oil goes sub $40 for a considerable period, you're going to see way more distress in the energy sector.
Honestly, I've just gone with CME (which has a delightful dividend policy) and ICE (which has done very well) and betting on the financial/commodities casinos instead, with much more focus on ICE than CME. I'm not going to be investing in oil production companies going forward. Pipelines and infrastructure companies yes, but probably no more than I already have and will probably not add further to what I have.
I have to say I'm increasingly of this philosophy:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3667996-buy-the-exchange-not-what-is-traded-there
Visa had an investment in Square very early on, around 5 years ago. I'm guessing this is a reveal of the existing investment now that Square is public, but it becomes whether Visa has added since the early investment and perhaps they have as the stock has gone down since IPO.
Edited to add: as I thought was probably the case, this is just Visa now having to disclose the stake it purchased years ago. (http://seekingalpha.com/news/3106116-square-strongly-visa-disclosure-stake-stems-2011-investment. "Of note: Visa only has a 9.99% stake in Square's Class A shares. Its total stake in the company is estimated to be around 1.1%.") Again, wouldn't be buying Square because of this, although a lot of the financial media is acting like this is a big thing and that Visa recently bought. Visa did not recently buy, this is just Visa filing the investment it made years ago.
Visa also famously had an investment in a UK company called Monitise. Monitise also attracted the likes of famed hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman, Doug Kass (Kass: http://www.thestreet.com/story/13019858/1/doug-kass-analyzes-a-failed-trade-a-requiem-for-monitise.html), large banks, Mastercard, Visa Europe and others. Visa even installed a Visa executive as a co-CEO of Monitise. Visa then sold their investment believing that it could do things in-house instead. Monitise then proceeded to go down 97% or so since. Visa left and that was it.
I'm not saying that's going to happen here, but I will say that I'd much rather suggest investing in Visa (which will get you some exposure to Square, plus a dividend) than Square.
Direct content for mobile users:
Question: >Tim Willi - Wells Fargo
>Wanted to get your thoughts, if you could, around Bitcoin. Obviously, that’s sort of the new rage. We get a lot of questions from investors. I’m sure you do as well. But can you just talk about how you think about it, whether it is something that potentially could be a broad consumer application, or if it’s more of a niche around cross-border business? Or just how how you might think about that, and how Visa might interact or support that, or not at all.
Answer: >Charlie Scharf - Chief Executive Officer
>I guess I would start with, it’s early days in terms of what Bitcoin is, and what it will be. We’re certainly paying attention to it. It’s very early to understand exactly what all of the implications are for it.
>We will say, when we look at our network and the people that we compete with in terms of what people think of as a traditional network, the established network rules we have, the understanding of how things operate, understanding who the participants are, the fact that business that we do has financial institutions on either side of the transaction, you know, the success of our payment system and our primary competitors is that for a reason.
>And there’s certainly some interesting things about Bitcoin and other things like it, but there’s also a great deal of complexity. People talk about things like frictionless and things like that, and when you actually dig through it, it’s really not the case. It’s far more complex than that. And we feel very comfortable with the business that we have here.
Link to single page view (full transcript): http://seekingalpha.com/article/1980641-visas-ceo-discusses-f1q-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single
Pastebin mirror (full transcript): http://pastebin.com/a48FHKJJ
The Buffett worship is a little absurd at times and ignores some of the double-speak. Buffett has often bashed gold ("Buy stocks, America is always going to be wonderful forever and ever and ever" as he always says when on CNBC.)
No one brings up the idea that he tried to corner the silver market not that long ago.
"I repeat: There is substantial evidence that Warren Buffett cornered the silver market. Cornered, as in manipulated. Yes, Saint Warren was almost certainly a manipulator.
The story in a broad outline. Beginning on 25 July, 1997, Buffett began to accumulate large quantities of silver via Phibro, a subsidiary of Salomon Brothers, an investment bank in which Buffett had a big stake, and which he had saved from extinction when Salomon traders cornered the Two Year Treasury note market in 1991. He eventually acquired nearly 130 million ounces of silver.
He stood for big deliveries in February, 1998. The market went nuts. All of the inidicia of a corner were present. Nearby prices skyrocketed relative to prices for delivery in the spring."
Buffett bashes gold to the public and would also buy the fucking shit out of it if he thought it would benefit himself and/or Berkshire shareholders.
Buffett is an enormous example of "watch what I do not what I say."
I've never done this for TSLA. I'll do it now:
G Finance: what stands out are $27.5 bn market cap, -$6.90 EPS. I extended the chart to 10 years, WOW the stock exploded in value in mid-2013.
Financials: quarterly income statement doesn't tell a clear picture, going yearly. Now i see the reason for the share price explosion, revenue exploded in 2013. Rate of growth has slowed down a lot since. Still growing pretty fast. Losses are accelerating rapidly, I'd like to see the opposite.
Balance sheet looks neither bad, nor good. It's about a wash on cash/investments to debt.
Back to Summary: they are valued at about 6:1 on revenue. If they were turning a 10% profit, that would be a PE of about 60:1. That's not all that crazy for a fast growing tech company.
Not ready to dismiss this one. Digging deeper:
On SeekingAlpha, this article catches my eye. He links to this article which also looks interesting.
After reading both of these articles, it seems some important levers that move this stock are things that are out of my comfort zone technically. I know dick about batteries and all of this stuff they are talking about.
I'm going to assume a lot of other important levers are the same. For that reason, I'm stopping here. I need to be able to deeply understand a business and their products to invest in it.
I think you're starting to see this already with how Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch are or are shaping up to be. I believe someone mathed it out that Hearthstone's pulled in around a half a billion dollars or so for Blizzard to date. The earnings call http://seekingalpha.com/article/2891046-activision-blizzard-atvi-q4-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single (start listening at 6:30 or so) gives you some numbers to construe the data.
Just out of curiosity...
I see a lot of talk about Chinese people spending beyond their means on luxury purchases. I know from personal experience in China that it definitely happens. However, the Chinese household saving rate is high and getting higher. Any observations on how these seemingly opposed trends can coexist? By the statistics, Chinese are much more financially responsible than people in the US.
Alternately, they could just force Western Union and the like to help enforce current law.
^( https://www.ice.gov/bulk-cash-smuggling-center/faq)
^(http://seekingalpha.com/article/4038618-western-union-bigger-problems-586-million-settlement)
I think they did have lots of great ideas planned but their development budget got cut whilst their marketing budget increased dramatically.
"I believe this apparent lack of quality stems directly from Activision Blizzard's cuts to its Product Development budget. Instead, the company is filling the void with mass marketing through its Marketing budget in order to juice anticipation for games. In the long run, what will make or break the company is quality games, not a billion dollar marketing budget."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3186766-activision-blizzard-setting-up-for-a-tumble
Because we refuse to pass a law to prevent this. The same thing happened with Goldman sachs. The only thing the president could do was become outraged about it.
"What is going on with this company?"
Less customers, mo' problems.
"Is it ripe for an acquisition?"
I highly doubt anyone's buying CMG.
"How much more room does it have to fall?"
Don't have a crystal ball but current valuation is not appetizing. I think one of the more concerning things to me was the Morgan Stanley survey, where 25% of respondents said they simply found another restaurant option they liked better. (http://seekingalpha.com/news/3193462-chipotle-watch-troubling-morgan-stanley-survey, ""The key reason for not going back is still food safety (33%), but nearly a quarter say they've just found other restaurants they like better," writes Glass.")
I've gone into much more detail on this in other threads if you search. CMG has been brought up a lot in the past. As I've said, I'd rather own Middleby (MIDD) than any of these individual restaurants. That stock is by no means cheap either, but I'd rather own the company that sells cooking equipment to potentially everyone (Chipotle, McDonalds, Chik-Fil-A, Panera, Subway, Costco, Dominos and many others are customers) than an individual restaurant. (CEO presentation from Baron Funds conference 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL-jQwpZ5Ag).
Hate this kind of thing in terms of Chipotle (I just think consumers are fickle and invest accordingly) and have no interest. I do see a best case where it recovers, but people have to have patience. People acted like its problems would be forgotten about quickly (that would be...https://media.giphy.com/media/3o7ZevjSw2imvW94ZO/giphy.gif), but it's going to take real time and there's no guarantee that they return to prior form.
Seeking Alpha is not a carefully curated magazine. Anyone can publish on Seeking Alpha. There's an approval process on articles, but (as I'm sure you've noticed) it's not terribly strict. They also have a reasonably nice reward scheme that incentivizes bloggers to publish there. The outcome of this? Great variance among the quality of blog posts.
Why does Seeking Alpha not curate their content more carefully? Because they make money from ads, and more articles = more search results linking back to SA = more page impressions = more ad revenue. Beyond that, there's a honeymoon effect to news articles: people will keep coming back to a site even if only 1 in 10 articles is good. (Hello, Reddit!) The bad ones you stop reading after a few seconds, the good ones you're impressed by for minutes. You keep coming back in the hopes of occasionally reading a worthwhile article.
Consequently, the editors of the site can allow plenty of low-quality articles -- these articles earn them ad revenue from page impressions, but don't discourage readers from leaving the site permanently.
Yes. Steve Jobs famously had a $1 salary since 2003, and didn't sell a single share of his Apple stock for additional income, but his Disney stock gave him $48 million in dividends each year. Source
It's a nice gesture, but don't assume that these CEOs are experiencing even the tiniest of squeezes on their monthly budget as a result of the gesture.
>What matters for a nation is its GDP. That's a country's equivalent of personal income.
This is an absolutely ridiculous misconception.
GDP is a terrible metric by which to judge an economy.
The equation:
GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)
Government spending means the people in power will never let GDP fall until they are absolutely forced to, especially if they have a central bank willing to monetize like Helicopter Ben. (He referred to a statement made by Milton Friedman about using a "helicopter drop" of money into the economy to fight deflation.)
Let's take the United States, for example. If you subtract the deficit from the GDP calculation, we're in a depression.
You can live high on the hog for quite some time using credit cards, but the bill eventually comes due.
The only differences between Spain and Greece and the United States is that the United States can print the currency in which its debts are denominated and the United States has that huge military that can take the world down with us. The US will try to inflate away its debts. Spain will get the ECB to monetize for them too. The ECB already jumps into bond markets.
Just think about it this way: Would you lend money to the US for ten years for a paltry 1.985% return?
Spain is doomed, but so is the entire world. Interesting times.
This is just the start.
A fun Tweet from Overstock's CEO:
— Patrick M. Byrne (@OverstockCEO) January 10, 2014
And on his CNN appearance (http://bit.ly/19l0kkO) he specifically called out Amazon and said the major retailers will have to accept Bitcoin because otherwise they will be giving up this market segment without a fight and he doubts they will do that. Considering Bitcoin's first 24 hours of sales at Overstock accounting for about 4.5% of annualized revenue, far greater than the 2.7% based on Reddit's numbers, I think any retail CEO worth his salary has to be seriously considering Bitcoin now.
>So a company that is on track to make roughly $10Bln this year, just lost about $25 BILLION in value
To correct a possible misconception: Google didn't lose 25 billion. The company is now valued at 25 billion less. This is relevant only for people who want to sell shares in Google. The company still has just as much in the bank, and just as much in revenue, as it had before this.
This will have little or no impact on Google as a company, even if it should become a trend. In most such cases, there would be major pressure from the shareholders, who own the company, to do something about it. But as this article describes, Google's shareholder vote majority remains with the three founders. This means that even though the vast majority of Google shares are not owned by the founders, the founders are under absolutely no obligation to give a single shit about what the rest of the stockholders think.
Google could be valued at $0.00 and its ability to function would not be impacted in the slightest. The founders would be less rich, but they would still control a company that earns around $10 billion a year and has $100 billion sitting around. The company has tremendous revenue and tremendous prospects. It is waaay past having to worry about stock price.
>some of the most profitable companies in the world
actually, the oil industry has one of the lowest profit margins. the reason why their profits are so high is because their revenues are so high. for ex. if you sell $100B worth of goods and your costs are $94B, you still make $6B which sounds like alot, but really, it's only a 6% profit which is about the average for oil.
compare that to Beverages - Brewers at 16.5% or Publishing - Books at 16.1% or hell look at Publishing - Periodicals at 51.7% profit rate
article showing top 114 industries' profit margins
Exxon's latest income statement if you don't know how to read one, look at the last 3 months Revenue ($121B) and the net income ($10.6B) so Exxon is about 8.5% profit rate.
You do realize, that there is a company that could go public at a $20B valuation built on the Facebook platform?
http://seekingalpha.com/article/298082-zynga-vs-electronic-arts-activision-blizzard
I mean, even if it's not $20B, and even if Zynga has some other revenue sources now, there has been a ridiculous amount of revenue earned off the Facebook platform.
I honestly remember thinking when Facebook first released their APIs "crap, they're going to be the next Microsoft." It was so clear that they understood the importance of owning a platform that other people could build in in order to grow their business.
Remember millions of people giving each other vampire bites?
Can anyone present any kind of data, at all, that supports the claim that "most people" hate Facebook apps, taken as a whole?
Seriously? It was very widely reported. And nobody ever said "never," but certainly not initially. They announced it on their October earnings call. Here's the transcript: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2576865-apples-aapl-ceo-tim-cook-on-q4-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript
It's more of a philosophical debate, which is why it can often feel like you're talking to a wall when debating a Keynesian. Keynesian economics work great in the short-term and allow the status quo to be maintained by appeasing the masses. Collectivism versus individualism comes into play too.
I mean, Bernie Madoff's scheme worked great in the short-term too, though.
The trouble is that we're now in the long-term and the bill is due.
That doesn't even consider state debt, local government debt, and private debts.
If the government wasn't spending like a drunk sailor on coke and the Fed hadn't drastically expanded their balance sheet, we'd be in a very serious depression where store shelves would run empty. This will work in the short-term. In the long-term, we're looking at a complete failure of the world's monetary system, which will put is into probably the worst economic depression humanity has ever seen.
Last time I heard, their $74 trillion Merrill Lynch derivative transfer to FDIC-insured accounts (translation: they can gamble with money, and if they lose, they send the bill to the taxpayer) is still happening. See story here
8 ounces for $1? Are you fucking kidding me? You can go to the grocery store and buy a 12 pack of 12oz coca-cola for $6. I bet the 24-packs are even more economical (I don't really know the price cause I just throw 10 of those bitches in my cart along with a bunch of rainbow doritos and call it a day)
Edit: There's more, in addition to the $100mm /u/Y3808 says they put into the idea, it appears they acquired Bevyz Global for the tech for $300mm last year: http://seekingalpha.com/article/3500846-the-keurig-kold-folly-will-end-badly-for-many
Edit2: one source for the $100mm number: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/09/28/keurig-debuts-cold-drinks-machine-after-years-development/bo2qetzKkFczecfetZPzMK/story.html
It's a disgrace that boy scouts are so vehemently shamed nowadays. Meanwhile girl scouts are using young girls to sell cookies for $700m profits per year and simultaneously causing a PR nightmare for any other cookie companies trying to compete (at half the price even) during their sale season. [Source]
^Edit: ^Added ^source
No rational leadership wants to eliminate a revenue source that pays for itself. Instead, Hastings seems to be wanting to justify the price-hike by separating the charges its customers incur into two price points.
As this is backward and demonstrates no understanding of NFLX's consumer's concerns, it further merely underscores that as a business entity NFLX is living on borrowed time. The pressures its content providers are putting on it to raise its rates and its consumers are putting on it due to its attempts to maintain revenue by raising prices suggest that soon NFLX is going to go the way of most unnecessary middlemen.
As of this writing, its stock price has collapsed, by approximately 50%. I rarely see such obvious opportunities to short, but it'll collapse by at least another 50% before this debacle is over. Then of course, barring a buy-out by one of the content providers, it'll dissolve into a penny stock.
Reports that its insiders were selling like mad only increases the likelihood of these possibilities.
No question there's a market for an affordably-priced streaming video service with a substantial library. However, many companies want a piece of that market--ranging from the content providers to Amazon, Apple, Google, and the broadband providers. That's one of the reasons why, for instance, broadband providers in the U.S. have begun capping data usage--because they'll want to push customers toward their services once the various issues are resolved. Thus, any successor to NFLX that doesn't consist of a consortium of all of those companies or which doesn't price its service far more expensively than NFLX is going to face the same pressures as NFLX.
Greed provides opportunity for innovation, but it also can kill innovation.
Very exciting, something I've been waiting to see for a while.
An excellent article by Randy Carlson explains how free charging is possible.
/u/FredTesla - Great article. I'd absolutely love to see details of the financials for this deal. Is it revenue neutral, positive, or negative for Tesla?
Your friend is both an idiot and an asshole. He's an idiot if he truly believes what he told you, because he's essentially gambling that oil prices will explode. He's an asshole because he didn't tell you that holding leveraged ETFs over a long period of time will cause you to lose money to leverage decay.
Either way, you shouldn't be playing with leveraged ETFs unless you know what you're doing, and you shouldn't be gambling on the price of oil unless that's your intention.
Don't average down, that would be silly. You should take this as a lesson in blindly following what others say when they tell you how to invest your money.
Wow I've got beef with this article. There is a definition: When 50% or more of the revenue is generated downline and not through external accounts a company can legally be defined as a pyramid scheme. This article obviously has done absolutely no research into the matter, just highlighted that the FTC can't comment and that the company doesn't think it's a pyramid scheme. There are definitely different companies in the MLM space and not all of them are pyramid schemes because THEY ALL TRACK THIS NUMBER AND IT IS ALWAYS IN EXCESS OF 50%. The ones who don't? Just HLF.
I like this article - it rings true 2 years later:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1078321-is-ackmans-hatchet-job-on-herbalife-justified
Thanks for this article from the NYT, but the research into it was pathetic.
1) Did you actually just link Softpedia as a credible news source!?
2) Seagate's manufacturing plants were not damaged by the flooding in Thailand
Just saying
The merchandise is actually selling crazy well.
They released some reports for the past few quarters and g4 pony stuff is their fastest growing division.
Definitely not because things are dying down.
They haven't even started taking down youtube videos more actively recently either. Assuming it hasn't been trolls in the past (which is the recent claim apparently) they've been filing small time reports on a very small amount of channels passively for quite a while.
Basically, nothing new. Not sure why it's been getting more attention lately. The only thing that's happened recently that's outside the norm is ponyarchive being taken down and that was a site dedicated to violating copyright on a download product they were selling. Everything else is still business as usual.
Nasdaq just published a favorable article that hit all the key points. They even referenced Michael Sheikh's $3,200 price target for an approved ETF.
Schwab's 6% cash requirement is a de facto fee much greater than any of the other robo's.
https://thefinancebuff.com/schwab-intelligent-portfolios-the-true-cost-of-a-cash-drag.html
There was the IMF leak about destabilizing Greece yesterday
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-02/imf-discussed-pressuring-germany-on-greek-debt-wikileaks-says http://seekingalpha.com/news/3171116-leaked-imf-considering-destabilizing-europe-triggering-credit-event-greece >Greek spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili said that the IMF must clarify whether it intended to create conditions of bankruptcy just before the U.K referendum, and that PM Tsipras will contact IMF head Christine Lagarde asking for explanations.
Officially? End of this month. Actually? Who knows...
> Operator: Our next question in queue comes from Ben Kallo with Robert W. Baird. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
>Ben J. Kallo - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker) Hi. Thanks for taking my question. As far as the Model X goes, last time, Elon, you talked about configuration in July and I understand with the slippage. But when can we start thinking about configuring cars – we have orders out there? Customer have orders. And then with about a month away from deliveries, when do you expect to show it to people?
> Elon Reeve Musk - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer We're probably into upper configuration and two or three weeks of the X. So that should go live on the website before the end of August. In terms of the initial deliveries of the X, that's sort of consistent with what we predicted on the last call, which is end of September.
I figured it's been a while since I looked through OSTK's SEC filings to see how well Bitcoin is taking off for them! It turns out, not so much. 2014 10-K filing:
> At present we do not accept bitcoin payments directly, but use a third party vendor to accept bitcoin payments on our behalf. That third party vendor then immediately converts the bitcoin payments into U.S. dollars so that we receive payment for the product sold at the sales price in U.S. dollars.
So, 100% dirty dirty fiat is all they take for their sales. But ... they do state later that they buy and hold some cryptocurrency assets. How much? Apparently, not much at all:
> Cryptocurrency-denominated assets were $340,000 and zero at December 31, 2014 and 2013, respectively
Keep in mind that this is a company that holds over $180m in cash. Apparently it's only worth holding a few hundred grand - less than 1,500 BTC 0.18% of your liquid assets - in cryptocurrency. I have more equity in my house, than Overstock has in crypto.
And from the 4Q earnings call, it sounds like Patrick is a bit surprised and disappointed in the lackluster performance of Bitcoin sales both domestically and globally:
> it was a bit of disappointment, incidentally Bitcoin I thought we will do at least $6 million or $7 million this year. And after the first month of sales, that seem possible I thought at least [$4 million] would come domestically [$4 or $5 million] and then there will be a [few million dollars internationally] and the truth is nothing international showed up and almost no international sales and the domestic sales came in at $3 million.
A leveraged bet on an extremely undervalued (and currently out of favor) company that is likely to generate significant cash in the next 5 years. It's like a 5 year call option (expires Jul 2019) with a small premium.
GM also stands to benefit significantly from low fuel prices should they persist.
You can find my analysis from several months ago here: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2526945-general-motors-a-contrarians-opportunity
Hmm not quite.
>Back in June, we showed the expansion at Major League Gaming Spring Championship in Anaheim, which was the largest e-sport event ever in North America. More than 20,000 spectators came to the event and had a chance to try out Heart of the Swarm. Another 4.7 million unique viewers tuned into the event via MLG's online broadcast, where we showed off some exclusive trailers for Heart of the Swarm. We received tremendous feedback from that event, and we're looking to head into beta very soon.
Let's keep perspective on this. This happened in 1997. We're not talking about anything he said in the last decade. '97 was a much different time for both Apple and Microsoft. Apple was going down the tubes and clinging desperately to their 5% market share. iTunes, iPod and iPhone didn't exist. They were "that other little computer company" that struggled to make a profit. During that time, Jobs and a lot of other people took quite a few pot shots at Gates - as did many other tech companies. 14 years ago is ancient history in the tech world.
I wont buy a Galaxy kit that says "herbalife."
I would gladly pay extra for a kit that doesn't say Herbalife
I know all corporations have their foibles, but Herbalife is truly scum of the earth
Sorry to burst the hype, but micro tissues have been around for quite some time. In particular, 3D liver toxicity assays are one of the most commonly used in vitro assay for drug testing.
Organovo, the company behind this research, is just trying to generate hype. While it is true that their approach (printing versus culturing) is somewhat unique, it's already quite an established field. Once they are able to 3D print a capillary or arteriole, that will be HUGE.
something a lot of people dont know.. china has a larger money base than we do with a smaller economy and they arent even the worlds reserve currency.
Their m2 grew at 17% this year, ours a little less than 5%.
Our dollar will decline as other nations rise up to our level of technology.
Obviously when you go to a poor nation, it is like we are kings, a few dollars can buy you a huge house, nice meals are only like $5 instead of the $!00 in the states. Now lets see the same nation in 30 years, as they work hard, develop the place, pave roads, have their people start to make competitive salaries, and suddenly our dollar will decline in value versus theirs.
It says nothing about the decline of us as a nation, it is nothing we have done. it is simply other nations who dont have a standard of living as good as ours, building their standard of living up.
(and no I am not trying to say this explains all the dollars decline but you really have to look at the whole story in context and not just grab on some sensational headlining.)
and one more thing.. from this link on compound inflation
>What if the next 11 years look more or less like the last, with 4% nominal GDP growth? That would mean that in 2022 nominal GDP would be 50% larger than now, right at $22.5 trillion. But that is with only 2% inflation.
>What if inflation were 4%, with the same growth? Then nominal GDP would be $30 trillion!
the GDP of a nation can go way up without the nation really being wealthier
His article title history on Seeking Alpha is a greatest hits list of ad hoc bear claims on TSLA.
"Tesla Faces Coronavirus Cash Crunch"
"SpaceX Satellite Internet Plan Is More Fantasy Than Strategy"
"Tesla Model 3 Drives Off The Demand Cliff"
"The Tesla Killers Are Finally Here" (Jan 2019)
"Is Tesla Allowed To Sell The Model 3 In Europe?"
"Are Institutions Abandoning Tesla?" (2018)
"Elon Musk Has Buried Tesla With A Single Tweet"
Atleast have the decency to give some credit to the original author you copied this word for word from:
From http://seekingalpha.com/article/3590806-is-exxon-mobil-about-to-feel-the-bern
>>Is Exxon Mobil About To Feel The Bern?
>>Exxon Mobil was recently placed in the crosshairs of Senator Bernie Sanders.
>>The senator from Vermont is calling for a DOJ investigation into alleged fraud by Exxon's executives dating back to the 70s.
>>Investors should be concerned that an investigation could distract management for years to come and potentially result in expensive fines.
>> The cost of defending against a federal investigation will weigh down earnings, distract management and cause public outcry. In the light of a presidential campaign, the intense media attention should be taken seriously. Despite the remaining wide use of tobacco products, American tobacco companies have never recovered from the years of litigation and class action lawsuits. That industry is in a slow decline. If Bernie Sanders has his way, the same fate is imminent for Exxon Mobil.
I love that people are starting to think about who is behind these companies that put on festivals, and I think you have to go back in time a little further.
SFX went on a buying spree of companies in late 2013. That is also when they had their IPO to raise cash to fund this buying spree.
SFX acquired ID&T in October 2013 - just after the first TW. If you ask any pioneer they will tell you that the first TW was magical (I was there and it was). The first post-SFX TW was 2014 and it really started to go downhill - it was terrible and made me not buy tickets this year.
Comparatively, SFX purchased Made Event - the company that created Electric Zoo - in November 2013. 2014 EZoo was a disaster and they shut down Day 3 because of a 20 minute rainstorm. 2015 EZoo was supposedly "transformed" but was still organized very poorly.
I've read articles from the founders of Made & ID&T and the majority of their companies were dismantled post-SFX. I think the bottom line is SFX doesn't care about our culture and is in it purely for the $$. I really hope people start seeing them for what they are and stop supporting their events across the board.
Here's a good article about how the company is doing.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3448436-sfx-entertainment-the-house-of-cards-is-collapsing
Man, what a world. All you have to do is print a shitload of money, under-report inflation, and magically turn a global recession into glorious positive headlines!
I call bullshit. The average wage of GM workers in 1955 was $2.41 per hour, according to their own annual report seen 2/3 of the way down in this article.
Mutiply that by the inflation rate since 1955 ($1 in 1955 is worth 8.45 today)
And you get $2.41 * 8.45 = 20.36 per hour
Friedman argued that the FED cut the money supply and that led to bank failures. Link
The truth is probably that a number of actions by the Federal government contributed. For example, neither cites the tax increases FDR instituted whenever there was some improvement in the economy, but those certainly had an effect. Link
Amazon's "revenue" figure can be a little misleading - since they are essentially a distribution company it does not mean the same thing as when you look at say, a manufacturer, who might bear a sizable inventory risk for several weeks up to the sale of a product.
In some cases AMZN may count the full sticker price of the product sold, in other cases it is just their retail markup, depending on whether they warehouse the item themselves. Even where they do, I'd argue that letting them report the full sticker price is mighty generous, but such are the rules. More on this: http://seekingalpha.com/article/942551-top-10-pick-amazon-financials-understate-growth
We should be looking at proper earnings and P/E here.
This here is an example of lowering of prices of cars in the past 10 years or so. Consumers are demanding cheaper products, therefore companies have naturally tried to find ways to lower their cost of production, with a lot of their components made in China for very economical prices. This has been driving the cost down, but also the quality.
Another way to compensate the lowering of prices has been to create cars and other products that you cannot fix just anywhere, but at the specialized repair shop for whatever brand you bought.
Apple is no exception to getting their components for cheaper prices/lower quality and impossible to fix, it's just that they have managed to sell them to us for outrageous prices. We vote with our wallet, so they are doing something right, at least marketing-wise.
Idiots.
TCF paid the TARP money back. They didn't even want it in the first place but due to pressure from regulators, they were pretty much forced to take it.
Disclaimer: I'm just ripping them for marching to TCF when they should've marched to other financial institutions.
I call total complete shout-it-from-the-mountain bullshit on the CEO. When their profit margins grew faster than industry average how could you not know. Most reputable companies have their own inspectors and employees in China just for this. They also test their products in their own countries to keep everyone honest.
Wait for the class actions to start against them and see what the cost to replace existing flooring and labor will do to that company.
For those that care. Have a look at the original research about this back from 2013 which was the basis for the 60 minutes piece. Xuhua Zhou from Seeking Alpha. Registration required.
This could be something like more advanced Autopilot functions, compared to the Model S. They've apparently put a ton more work into the doors, so perhaps there is something new and interesting there.
Elon wasn't specifically talking about the Model 3, unless you're talking about a different part of the conference call.
Here's the exact quote from an unofficial transcript.
>Elon Musk: I think we’re going to be okay on the demand side for this year, and I mean, maybe something changes next year but I think we’ll be okay and I don’t think we’re going to have to do a bunch of advertising or [indiscernible] with the dealers or anything like that this year and or discount the cars or anything like that. So if I can do an emphasize that whenever you feel like this celebrity or some prominent person driving a car they all paid full retail. There was no discount. We didn’t give them a car they are buying a car and they are driving because they really believe in the car not because someone paid them or they tend to do. So regular credit [indiscernible] car. So yes, I think we do have a secret weapon on the demand side that will probably start to deploy later this year for the demand generation. We’ll [indiscernible] it isn’t totally necessary, that I think and it could be pretty interesting, I could work against the dealers.
> He is ignorant of the financial system, doesn't understand central banking (in particular, the US Fed) nor fiat currency systems.
He understands it far better than neo-Keynesians like you.
Ron Paul accurately predicts the US economic meltdown 10 years ago
He accurately predicted the market better than any politician, and far better than the average investment advisor:
Ron Paul's Long-Term Holdings Outperform The Market And Most Pros
"Approximately $30m of annual revenue being processed by credit cards or PayPal would cost about $2.7m. Bitpay will process this amount for a flat fee of $300/month or $3,600 per year which is a cost savings of approximately 99.87%."
Enormous cost savings would be one of the many things that give them value
The problem is countries spend until they're completely dysfunctional then go on "austerity" because no one is willing to lend them more money. Yes, at that point things are going to get very bad.
But having a national debt larger than your entire GDP is also traditionally bad. The government borrowing all that money effectively makes that money unavailable to be borrowed by private firms, which slows economic growth.
Compare the US' debt levels with other developed countries:
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/01/28/the-10-countries-with-the-most-debt
http://www.mainstreet.com/article/moneyinvesting/news/us-debt-now-more-gdp-uk-china-india-combined
http://seekingalpha.com/article/851691-the-relationship-of-the-debt-gdp-ratio-and-economic-growth
> Is the games decline real, or just overblown hype? Are there official stats available to confirm or deny this perceived drop in subscribers?
Real. WoW is firmly in maintenance mode. The top talent is working on the new MMO, and a 7 year old game isn't going to draw in as many people as it loses anymore.
In Q1 they reported a drop from 12M to 11.4M, and in Q2 a further drop to 11.1M.
Q3 ends next week, and the investors call will be probably sometime in November, so we get to see how much lower they've gotten.
> Assuming there is an actual drop in subscribers will this impact Blizzards plans for future expansions? If so how (cancelling planned expansions, rolling them out sooner, making them "easier" etc)
It's certainly impacting their timing of 4.3, as they're obviously aiming to get it out the same week as SW:ToR is released.
As for making them easier -- the FL nerfs would have happend during the middle of the Q2 ending paperwork. Coincidence, that? I think Blizzard has probably decided that they gave the "make it a hard game again" crowd 1.5 tiers of content, and it cost them nearly 10% (or more) of their subscriber base. I sincerely doubt we're seeing anything as hard as even T11 was ever again.
> Thinking longer term, when will Blizzard completely pull the plug on WoW?
Not for a very long time. Diablo 2 is still getting patched and supported. As long as it can support itself, it will survive in some form.
> Most people here who put minimal effort into their lives have everything they need plus some.
50 million Americans lack health insurance, and America ranks very low down the list of developed nations in terms of access to health care. Given how vital health care is for happy and productive citizens, I think providing it to as many people as possible transcends any sort of worry about 'deserving' it or not.
>As far as education, it is also there if you want it. I worked hard in high school, received an International Baccalaureate degree and got a full ride at a major university.
Maybe, but people from worse off backgrounds don't have the same effective access to it as those from the middle and upper classes. Also, as before, given how useful an educated populace is, America really should be trying as hard as it can to educate as many people as possible.
> Look at this map. Pay attention to the countries debt as a percentage of GDP. Pay closer attention to the countries that provide all of these social services Reddit gets off on and feels so superior about compared to the U.S.
Eh, I come from Australia and we're able to outstrip America in both those areas without sinking into debt. Also, as far as I can see all of the Scandanavian countries which provide great social services have significantly lower levels of public debt as a percentage of gdp.
Also, America actually spends significantly more per capita on health care than many nations with public health care systems.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/146992-comparing-u-s-healthcare-spending-with-other-oecd-countries
This is a gross oversimplification that ignores the effect of social program taxes. See this source for a good analysis of why Hauser's Law is less a law than a flawed theory.
"Polaris will ramp over a series of quarters, as we nail that performance and mainstream portion of the market, then you follow it on, and buy a new family in terms of the ultra-enthusiast portion of the market." Ruth Cotter said in an AMD conference. So, is Polaris going to replace performance segment too which was 390/x for 300 series? Idk. Its hard to believe AMD is just gonna hand over $300 price range for Nvidia to own :( Cuz people who had the budget to buy a 970/390 will be disappointed, either you save money and get 480 or spend extra and get 1070.
> game changer
haha, that's pure PR-speak.
>Bandwidth compression improvements are huge too
no, minor increments at best. AMD and Nvidia have had compression techniques for a long time, like Delta color compression.
This guy at Seeking Alpha (an investment website) did the legwork on Pascal and he found that based on previous die shrinks, virtually 100% of the increase in Pascal's performance is accounted by the die shrink.
http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/45056646-clarence-spurr/4884330-pascal-new-king#
I have been in and out of YHOO for a few years mostly trying to gain exposure to Alibaba.
Are you not concerned that Mayer has used up her last bargaining chip with the sale of BABA shares to buy back YHOO? It does not appear to me there is much core value without these BABA shares.
I agree with your statement about them not turning down another Balmer-like offer ($45 billion in 2008), but in the present they are not going to get anything close to that. PE is reportedly only willing to pay $6 billion while management wants $10 billion. (http://seekingalpha.com/article/3961332-microsoft-yahoo-deal-q2?auth_param=8sag:1bfiebe:1264fbca27ce3000050f1eeeda844a54&uprof=75)
Best source to learn from is Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Breakfast morning email.
Here is a link to sign up http://seekingalpha.com/author/wall-street-breakfast
and a link to this mornings http://seekingalpha.com/article/3516566-wall-street-breakfast-fed-decision-day-finally-arrives
You joke about it but Activision-Blizzard's marketing and sales budgets have gone up over the years while their development budgets have gone down.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3186766-activision-blizzard-setting-up-for-a-tumble
>As we travel our way down the income statement to operating income, we see (in my opinion) some more trouble. Activision Blizzard has appeared to switch strategies in regards to how they approach game development and promoting these games to the general public. Sales and marketing expenses have ballooned from 2011 to 2014. Yet overall product development costs have been on a steep downtrend, even as overall product launches and franchises have doubled according to management (from 5 to 10).
I am supposed to post the link to the original source, so I did, but when the piece was reposted to SeekingAlpha, it came with a useful chart on the downward slide in government bond rates. Here is that link.
Brad's bottom line: We in the US shouldn't be worrying how to stop the growth of the government debt, but instead, on how to take best advantage of historically low interest rates.
TLDR: AMD has lost more than 50% of its market value in the last half year and is continuing to fall. And as of last quarter, AMD had $1.58 billion in cash and $2 billion in debt.
But I don't think that they will go under... Maybe.
This is worth reading:
>The bubble Koo is talking about here is the Dot.com bubble, which hit Germany pretty hard. Its Neuer Market, a stock market for technology companies, crashed 96%, for instance. It closed down in 2002 and a mini-balance sheet recession struck Germany.
>This produced an interesting result:
>* ECB interest rates were too high for Germany, but too low for many other eurozone countries.
> * But in a bid to help the eurozone's largest economy, rates were lowered from 4.75% in 2001 to 2% (then a postwar low) in 2003, exacerbating the problems in the periphery.
> * Germany couldn't reflate via fiscal policy due to the constraints of the Stability Pact (which limits budget deficits to 3% of GDP).
> * Other countries had to "rescue" Germany by expansionary policies.
>Well, we all know what the result of that was. These other countries were partly forced upon an inflationary path (due to capital inflows and inappropriate interest rates as a result of ECB policy) and partly by design (too loose fiscal policies). As a result, inflation differentials were accumulating and these countries rapidly lost competitiveness, enabling Germany to reflate itself via exports.
Wow. That's pretty unenlightened. I won't downvote you because frankly, there's a lot of people who still think this....kind of equivelant to people in the bush a hundred years ago not hearing of the 'automobile'.
Your comment should stand so that others that hold your sentiment see this post.
Here is an article on three top performing solar energy companies. Ja Solar, Trina Solar and First Solar (the most expensive stock for solar companies).
All three have been providing 100's of MW of power and are increasing that each year. All three are increasing sales each year and all three are increasing profit each year.
I've been following the performance of each of these companies over the past year and as far as stock value is concerned I've hardly come across ANY American company or blue chip that can compare.
I'm upvoting your comment to preserve the integrity of the thought process happening here.
Free market already has decided though
http://seekingalpha.com/article/3785906-metallurgical-coal-future
http://www.mining.com/web/coal-is-officially-a-zombie-industry/
Behind the scenes they could be dropping coal because it's a bad investment, not for trying to make an environmental statement. Assuming the Norwegian fund managers have a fiduciary duty, they kind of have to drop coal.
>Anavex was created through a reverse merger of an online photofinishing company into a biopharmaceutical company orchestrated by a career penny stock scammer and long-time Anavex executive
13 fucking pages on how this shit stock is a scam and still everyone is jumping into it.
The actual quote (around 16m, from the S|A transcript):
>But I do want to emphasize, we discouraged – there's been some fairly crazy videos on YouTube, we are – this is not good. And we will be putting some additional constraints on when Autopilot can be activated to minimize the possibility of people doing crazy things with it.
John also criticized Dish for warehousing spectrum on the last conference call:
... that’s good for the overall country that all wireless carriers are investing heavily in their networks that is except by the way for their big wireless holder spectrum Dish who has been given a lot of waver by the FCC on utilization of some of the spectrum for satellite so there could be used to create a competitive environment in the U.S. and so far it has put to work exactly no amount of that spectrum and I think that’s an interesting variable to keep an eye on because I think with the four wireless carriers Washington certainly was expecting to create more competition with those wavers and so far I'm still waiting to see that as well.
Transcript (albeit with mistakes) courtesy of Seeking Alpha.
Atleast give some attribution when you copy word for word from someone else's work .....
http://seekingalpha.com/news/2872276-conocophillips-posts-biggest-loss-since-2008-cuts-capex-target
>>ConocoPhillips posts biggest loss since 2008, cuts capex target
>>ConocoPhillips cuts its spending plans for the year as it reports an in-line Q3 loss, now seeing 2015 capex of $10.2B compared with initial 2015 guidance of $11.5B, and reduces its operating cost guidance to $8.2B from $8.9B.
>>The largest major U.S. oil company without refining operations says its unadjusted Q3 loss totaled $1.1B compared to a $2.7B profit in the year-ago quarter, COP's biggest loss since Q4 2008.
>>COP says Q3 production was 1.55M boe/day, and expects Q4 output of 1.585M-1.625M boe/day, which would result in 3%-4% Y/Y growth from continuing operations, excluding Libya.
>>Says its Q3 average realized price was $32.91/boe, down from $64.78/bbl a year earlier.
CM's apps time and time again have been booted out of the google play store for violating policies, here's the most notorious where pop ups encouraged uninstalling Google Chrome and instead installing their browser because chrome wasn't "optimized": http://seekingalpha.com/article/2363585-a-potential-impaling-blow-to-cheetah-mobile-as-flagship-product-removed-from-googles-app-store-rankings
Ads promoting Clean Master (owned by CM) manipulate Android users with deceptive tactics when browsing websites within the app's advertising framework, such as pop-up ads that lead to Clean Master, warning the device has been infected with a virus. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/04/04/google-takes-aim-at-deceptive-advertising-of-play-store-apps/
And since CM have themselves said that they are a data monetizing company, and have admitted to monetizing data by scanning every single app on your phone, what you do with them, and how often you use them, you can be damned sure they are going to be scanning every single photo in the QuickPic app, and monetizing them. Have private photos? Guess what, CM will see them. http://androidforums.com/threads/cache-cleaner.923369/#post-7001396
> Analysts are predicting this tiniest percentage taken off of every transaction facilitated by Apple Pay will become Apple's biggest source of revenue moving forward
Apple gets ~0.15% of every Apple Pay transaction (per http://seekingalpha.com/article/2684015-apple-pay-wont-drive-much-direct-revenue-but-it-could-boost-iphone-loyalty). Their quarterly revenue in Q4 2014 was $42.1 billion. I'll let you do the math to figure out how much money would have to go through Apple Pay for it to make any difference to Apple's overall revenue numbers.
But it's not revenue neutral - not by a long shot.
See:
http://money.howstuffworks.com/question385.htm
http://seekingalpha.com/article/182016-will-the-u-s-social-security-system-survive
and this article FROM THE SOCIAL SECURITY OFFICE:
http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/pr/trustee03-pr.htm
Here's the first line of that last one:
"The Social Security Board of Trustees today declared that the Social Security program is not sustainable over the long term."
China holds less than two trillion of US public debt.
And if you buy a ten-year govmt bond, you can't come two years later and demand your money back. Bonds are paid out at expiry.
Firstly, you're suggesting that hedge fund managers always defeat 401k investments. Reading into your words, a layperson has 2 options: invest in 401K and get slaughtered, or put their money under their mattress. I disagree. Hedge funds have an extremely high failure rate. Mutual funds (what people investing in 401Ks invest in) are more regulated, and therefore less volatile. Not all hedge funds outperform mutual funds. Moreover, the hedge fund moguls you hear about are famous because they're the most successful of the bunch.
Secondly, your definitions are all wrong.
401K is a savings account that allows people to deposit pre-tax money and invest until retirement. It is not an investment vehicle.
Mutual funds are what most people invest in with 401Ks. Mutual funds are professionally managed investment vehicles that are composed of various asset classes, usually based around a strategy. They are regulated, and therefore their strategies are more constrained than hedge funds.
Hedge funds are professionally managed investment vehicles, unregulated and limited to "sophisticated investors" (e.g. rich people). Their investment strategies are more free and, therefore, usually more volatile.
Equity is company stock.
Financial assets is a broader term, and really this is what you mean when you say "equity". Types of financial assets are equities, debt, derivatives, real estate, the rights to lottery winnings, song royalties, etc. It's a very broad category of things.
Look, I don't think you're a bad person. I just don't think you have any idea what you're talking about at this moment in time.
Tesla has no tech advantage, and Solar City lost money on such a consistent basis that it had to be bailed out by Tesla. The energy storage segment is extremely competitive and low margin, as anyone can buy Panasonic's (Or LG's, or Sanyo's, or SK's... etc.) batteries to make a powerpack.
That leaves literally no other value in Tesla other than the automotive portion. Which has run, and will continue to run, in the red.
In Activision's Q3 2016 earnings summary they said "In our games, our proprietary video player and GameBattles will soon be integrated with Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and will allow fans easy access to Call of Duty World League in professional play, as well as amateur competitions." Link to full summary - http://seekingalpha.com/article/4019333-activision-blizzard-atvi-q3-2016-results-earnings-call-transcript?page=3
Hey guys, just a heads up this guy has figured out our masterplan to collapse the dollar in June. We have to make Yellen hike rates now or we risk exposure.
I follow companies I'm interested in on SeekingAlpha and opt-in to email alerts. I get probably 20 emails a day from them. Anytime something newsworthy happens, somebody will do a write-up on it.
Here is the last one I got:
>GOOGL: EU charges Google with Android dominance
Obviously a large supermajor producer of oil & gas like this is very dependent on the price of the two main commodities that they sell - oil and gas, but the fact that Shell is so well integrated along the production process offers a lot of downside protection.
As of right now, Oil prices are around $40 a barrel and natural gas spot prices were around $1.8 per mbtu. Both of these commodities are around 20% up from their 10 year + lows, so both showing signs of revival. Both still have significant supply overhand but with drilling platforms decreasing and OPEC finally talking about production freezes, the price looks pretty stable here. Even the catious international energy association have said that the price may have bottomed.
To return back to Shell – the company is currently over 7.5%, and hasn’t cut it’s dividend for 70 years. 7.5% for a company in the FTSE 100, at a time when 10 year government bonds are yielding just 1.5% I think is incredibly good value.
At present, the free-cash flow of $4bn is not sufficient to cover the dividend of $12bn. This should be seen as a risk-factor but given that oil & gas prices are still extremely low, this should not be too much of a surprise. Shell have also committed to selling $30bn of assets over the next 3 years, which means they will be able to finance their dividend.
Obviously this isn’t a sustainable long-term solution, but equally making long-term solutions now when the price is so volatile doesn’t make any sense either, so they’ve done the sensible thing and sold assets to maintain their dividend, until such a time as the price is more stable/predictable and they are able to make a long term decision on their dividend. In the meantime, collect your 8% dividend yield.
That's way too much work for here. I used ctrl+f in your comment history and tried some keywords.
I guess our understanding of what constitutes a joke just differs. Wait, are you fsyolo too? That would be funny.
Anyway doesn't matter already got rich with a different type of orb, knew it because the moon.
Edit: And I'm banned for 999 days. Tight ship here.
Here's the dude:
http://seekingalpha.com/author/lance-brofman
Professor of Economics.
You'd think he'd give a cite for the study in question. He's really commenting about the marketability of Belviq.
> There hasn't been a blip of positive press from EA about them in almost 2 years. Even in the investors meetings they don't get a shout out.
>Star Wars: The Old Republic, also contributed to the segment with the expansion, Shadow of Revan, attracting many more people into the game with its epic new storyline. Star Wars fans remain deeply engaged in The Old Republic universe, and we're more excited to see how that will build, as we get closer to the launch of the Star Wars movie this December.
EA has pretty consistently stated that TOR has been doing well for them since going F2P (mainly due to people spending ridiculous amounts of money on cartel packs), your claim here is a straight up lie.
This is ignoring the obvious point that if TOR wasn't doing well there's no way in hell EA would fund feature expansions like Galactic Starfighter or Stongholds.
Another Article stating Apple will be using Gorilla Glass... So apple won't admit it and cornering won't show them as a partner but since the iPhone 4, it's always been Gorilla Glass.