293 Posted Topics
 | The holiday shopping season seems to have started out with more of a bang than a whimper - - especially online. That wasn’t the scenario painted by the ever-negative mainstream media, who published wave after wave of articles bemoaning the lousy economic climate and predicting a disastrous holiday shopping season … |
| | Scary reading from the pages of Fortune magazine this week. In the business weekly's November 19 edition, an article entitled "The End of the Tech Stock Party" goes down like a tofu turkey on Thanksgiving night. Before I get into what Fortune has to say, it's pretty clear that technology … |
| | A quiet holiday week so far in the technology side of the stock market. Most of the action will take place in the retail sector, with both Best Buy and Comp USA opening on Thanksgiving night - - well ahead of Black Friday. Early holiday shoppers can expect to find … |
| | We've all heard of search engine optimization, or "SEO". That's the online search engine mechanism that allows online businesses to seed their web landing pages with key code words to entice visitors and shoppers. One big SEO term this week is "Black Friday" -- the day-after-Thanksgiving shopfest that launches the … |
| | Kind of a quiet day in the technology stocks world, which might be considered good news considering the drubbing the sector has taken this week. Sun Microsystems was in the news, signing off on a Solaris 10 distribution agreement with Dell to make the Solaris Operating System and Solaris support … |
| | I'm starting to think that technology stocks are at a breaking point. A few more sessions of significant losses and you have to wonder when tech stocks will be back in the black. You can't really blame the bad news on anything tech companies are doing -- unfortunately, it's the …  |
| | Investors are in survival mode right now, just trying to hang on in a market that has given away much of this year's gains. Key culprits are the ongoing credit crisis, which has banks and lenders reeling under the weight of billion dollar losses (hello, Wachovia) and from a weak … |
| | Can you find a profit in a techno-slag heap? That’s the promise of an up-and-coming stock I found on Morningstar.com this week. I do some consulting work for a mutual fund firm and this technology company fits the bill – across the board. First some background. The company’s name is … |
| | For a long while, it was easy to pigeonhole cell phones in three categories: those that don’t work, those that break down, and those that get lost. Fortunately, technology has improved cell phone performance in the first two categories (although we’re still losing them -- and at $500 a pop … |
| | You guys know how big I am on video game makers as solid stock plays. But what about video game retailers? One of the big ones -- GameStop -- has seen its share price double to $58 during the past year. One of the big reasons why is the mushrooming … |
| | Yesterday I laid out the risks and rewards of investing and trading stocks online. As I said, it's easy to do and actually kind of fun, but like going to Vegas, you have to be able to walk away from the table if you're losing money. To help you avoid … |
| | My friend and I were texting each other about the Red Sox World Series rout the other night -- way to go Sockies, how to beat 'dem Rockies! -- and, both being Boston natives, were having a grand old time. My pal won some money on the Series and had … |
| | Six weeks ago I wrote that video game stocks were going to be a good play for the duration of 2007 - - and probably well into 2008. As I said at the time, anyone with a 12-year-old boy in the house recognizes the familiar hoots and hollers from the … |
| | I haven't spent a lot of time -- okay, "any time" -- talking about the fast-growing biometrics market. Part of it was ignorance. I didn't know know much about it. But I'm all amped up on biometrics after reading a new white paper from BCC Research entitled "The Global Biometrics … |
| | It’s back. The dot.com bubble, that is. And with it comes a new wave of venture capitalists that are pouring money not just into Internet companies, but in life sciences companies, as well. And in increasingly larger numbers. An October article in The New York Times says it all. “Internet … |
| | I've been focusing on consumer electronics a great deal in the past few months; partly because that's where so much of the action is and partly because American consumers have ignored the economic naysayers and have continued to shop and buy cell phones, PDA's, HD televisions, and satellite radios, among … |
| | Okay, Halloween is only two weeks away, so what better time to introduce five "weird" internet & media content stocks that might be more treat than trick. The list is culled from the financial web site Barrellomoney.com. The site does warn that a few of the 'weird' selections might be … |
| | I've been the first one to say in recent months that I've fallen hard for my new Blackberry . . . or "Crackberry" as I've taken to calling it. What's not to love? You can do just about anything on a smart phone that you can on a laptop, save … |
| | Has there been a technology "leap" in the semiconductor market? Some people think so. But should investors go along for the ride? Earlier this year, George Scalise, the president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, was issuing talking points to the press over the relative health of the semiconductor sector. Much … |
| | Like the title suggests, it's a good news/bad news scenario for holiday retailers this year. The good news? More people than ever are buying their holiday gifts online, thus opening up an even wider revenue pipeline from web sales for retailers. The bad news? The holiday shopping season is shaping … |
| | Study after study shows that Americans just aren't saving enough for retirement. Part of the problem is that, as a nation, we have taken on so much debt that we're using our savings to pay it off. The other is that, through the miracles of modern medicine, we're going to … |
| | We've been talking about "upside" in the technology stock sector all week. Hand held devices and memory cards were the sectors at the top of that list, and should stay that way. Another side to the upside discussion is who, exactly, will be buying these products? After all, a lot … |
| | I had to shake my head when I read about the latest GDP numbers today. The news is good, maybe even great for the economy – a 3.8% upward spike in gross domestic product for the second quarter (the numbers were revised from the original GDP estimates, and were light …  |
| | Yesterday I made my case for the handheld mobil device marketplace, and why strong growth there could well point to some profitable stock plays within that sector in 2008. Today, I'll focus on another potential success story -- removable memory cards. Full disclosure: About all I know about removable memory … |
| | In the customer service game, perception is everything. It can spell the difference between a company recording its annual revenues in black ink or red. I read a story once in USA Today about a guy named John Barrier, who didn’t like the way a bank manager in Spokane, Washington, … |
| | 90% of the game on Wall Street is picking stocks that will rise before they actually do. It's not easy. If everyone could do that, then everyone would be doing that. But stock-picking is not easy. It's akin to shooting an arrow at a moving target that you can't even … |
| | The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article out this morning touting a new defensiveness among investors -- and what they plan on doing to protect their portfolios against a possible recession. "With the housing downturn, credit crunch, gloomy employment data and a parade of maudlin financial forecasts have been … |
| | I wrote in an earlier blog about the time I met and interviewed Bill Gates, the brains behind Microsoft. I cornered Gates outside a back door at the Omni in Atlanta in 1991, where he had just delivered a speech at Comdex. Leaning on a bike stand, Gates riffed for … |
| | Last week I went and did something I swore I’d never do – save 15% or more on my car insurance with Geico.com. Yep, I know all about the annoying lizard and the perpetually ticked off cavemen. I went ahead and did it anyway. The trigger point was a letter … |
| | I have to admit, on my perch here overlooking Wall Street, of the industries traders typcially jawbone about, video games arean't at the top of the list. Exhibit "A". At a dinner Wednesday night with three options traders over some Kobi steaks and some good wine, all the talk was …  |
| | Cell phone agreements have long been the bane of many subscriber's lives. Cloudy language, hidden fees, legalese traps, and contract terms that lean heavily in the favor of cell phone companies. Anyone who's been roped into a lousy cell phone contract can relate. It turns out that Congress relates, too. … |
| | Corporate marketers are paid to think five years ahead of the curve. Like hockey great Wayne Gretzky, who once said that he didn't skate to to where the puck is, but "where it would be", today's marketers have to know where the consumer marketplace is going, not where it is … |
| | Apple to iPhone Customers: “Mea Culpa” With Apple in the headlines all week from its iPhone pricing debacle, I’ve kept a close eye on the company’s stock price. One rule of thumb on Wall Street is that if your company find itself in the news for negative reasons, take control …  |
| | Labor Day weekend is a busy one for travelers. Families out shopping for back to school supplies, sun-worshipers heading back from the beach, and scores of backyard barbecues and college football games to attend, all make for some serious gas-guzzling out on the nation's highways. With gasoline hovering at $3 … |
| | Last week I wrote that I am a big Apple fan, and I am. I think its products are better than other technology companies and that's especially true of Microsoft. Anyone who's ever spent hours trying to debug a Windows-based PC or closing out pop-ups ad that appear with all … |
| | Yesterday I wrote that Apple was having some legal woes attached to its i-Phone. It seems users who travel overseas may be hit with whopping long distance charges. If the day's bad press bothered Apple CEO Steve Jobs, he's certainly not showing it. In fact, he followed up on the …  |
| | I'm a big fan of Apple - - I own three G-5's and an old G-4 laptop, and my two of my three kids own iPods (Nano's). The sleek design, seamless workability, and rock-like defense against viruses and other threats that always seem to befall those unfortunate souls in the … |
| | Maybe the guy on those Biz Hubs commercials is right. Those nefarious multi-function business machines just might be out to get us. That's the position taken by a North Carolina compuer science professor who says those all-in-one multifunction business machines – the ones that print/ fax/ scan/ and copy -- … |
| | The Internet is dynamic, gradually shifting form from year to year. This year's model? Apparently it's all about more consumption -- and less chatting online. Exhibit "A" comes from the Center for Media Research, which reports this week that Internet users are communicating less and consuming more content than they … |
| | Allow me one last word on the credit crisis of last week. I hope by now I've demonstrated that credit and debt aren't the sole domain of green eye-shaded numbers crunchers on Wall Street. As the green-eye shaded numbers cruncher in your own company's finance department can tell you, bad … |
| | Okay, you have to admit, I called that one. In our last blog, I pointed out that a tight money supply could prevent companies, especially smaller ones, from getting money to grow their businesses, make new hires, do more research -- that sort of thing. I said that if companies … |
| | August 9, 2007 was a tough day on Wall Street, with stocks falling 400 points on increased credit concerns over the struggling mortgage lending market. On the same day insurance giant AIG released a report showing that borrowers in the category just above sub-prime were showing increased residential mortgage delinquencies. … |
| | Only a few weeks ago, things were rosy on Wall Street . . . well, as rosy as things can get in the money maelstrom of Manhattan. The Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJIA) -- the chief benchmark for the U.S. stock market -- had surpassed the magic 14,000 mark. Most … |
The End.