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April 29, 2013
 Last week Amazon reported an $0.18/share earnings on a lower than expected revenues for its past quarter. The shares seesawed after hours and finally ended down some $20 on Friday. The earnings were almost twice what the street had expected, but think about this, The street was expecting this company to earn a measly $40 million. This is a 17 year-old established company with a market capitalization of $130 billion, it should be expected to do much better.
The thing with Amazon is that investors seem to be so emotionally entangled with company that they have no logic when it comes to its share price. Since its inception, Amazon has played the "long-term" card and it continues today, as in the earnings don't matter because the company is investing in the future.
When this glorified future will materialize for Amazon is anyone's guess. Perhaps in another 17 years or more? Whatever the case, for those who may believe that the latest pullback may signal a return to sanity for this stock, don't believe it. Going by history, it won't be long before Amazon's shares will wipe out all losses and march on to set new 52-week records. It's just that kind of a company.
April 17, 2013
 Apple shares hit a 52-week nearing $400/share today, even below some of the price points from when Steve Jobs was alive. The news surrounding Apple isn't very rosy. iPhone continues to lose market share to Google's Android, iTunes is losing market share to Amazon, and the PC/laptop markets are shrinking in general dragging Apple down along the way. Analysts aren't predicting a good quarterly report next week.
Now I admit to not being an Apple fan but the one force that was keeping the company firing on all cylinders was Steve Jobs and that is undeniable. When he was there the first time, the company was doing exceptionally well, when he was forced out Apple became a dud, then he returned and Apple came roaring back.
Now Jobs is gone once again and Apple continues on the momentum that he brought with him but that momentum is naturally wearing off. Jobs was a genius and a visionary and it is because of him that Apple has continued to do well much longer than I had anticipated. But eventually the vacuum of vision and innovation must show its effects.
I do wish the company well, but companies don't thrive on well wishes. Jobs was the secret sauce behind the resurgence of Apple and without him the inevitable must now happen. Apple will no doubt survive, but thriving doesn't seem to be the cards.
April 14, 2013
It was barely 10 days ago when the news broke of Amazon's Bezos investing $5 million is Blodget's web site, Business Insider. Most saw it as Bezos' genius investing in the up and coming web site. I just saw it as one pal taking care of another, as Blodget has been a vociferous support for Amazon almost from its inception.
Now Blodget has returned the favor by publishing an article lauding Amazon effusively as an example for other companies to follow.
Is this what has happened to journalism? It has become so contaminated by conflict of interest that people no longer even hide their incestuous relationships. Can anyone honestly read this so-called article and believe it's even close to being impartial?
Bezos is indeed a genius by the way he has pumped up Amazon's shares and by fooling a flock of sheep to believe his company is special and deserves its outrageous valuation. As for the rest of us, there's no need to read the Business Insider article. Surely it is filled with much praise and positivity for a company whose greatest asset is its gullible investors.
January 25, 2013
Much has been said about how Amazon's high stock price is unjustified. This morning my boss sent me a link that reminded me again how ridiculous Amazon's share price has gotten as of late. The article summed it up well by noting that if Apple were to have the same PE ratio as Amazon, its share price would be $145,000.
I suppose another way to even better demonstrate this insanity is to use the same equation on Berkshire Hathaway class A shares, which would send them to an astronomical $31 million/share.
My boss tried to justify Amazon's stock price by mentioning their high profit margins. So I decided to take a look at what Amazon's gross margins are and how they compare with some other companies. Here's a short list:
- Amazon: 25%
- Apple: 39%
- Google: 57%
- eBay: 69%
- Microsoft: 74%
- Intel: 63%
- Priceline: 82%
- Wal-Mart: 25%
- Ford: 18%
- Oracle: 80%
- GE: 26%
As you can see Amazon's gross margin is way below its peers, but in line with that of Wal-Mart's. Proof that Amazon is nothing more than a glorified, high-tech super store.
As to why its stock continues to rise despite any rational justification, another person said it well. Traders play Amazon as a momentum stock and it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Logic indicates that it should come down crashing hard, but this stock escaped logic long ago and it'll be foolhardy to bet against it now.
January 17, 2013
Love this story. Software developers are certainly infamous for being lazy. Most of us are, and that drives us to write code to automate things or write utilities to give to others to perform certain tasks. It's all about finding clever ways to make things easier for us and our employers.
But one guy took it one step further and secretly outsourced his coding responsibilities to a Chinese firm paying them a fraction of his salary and spending his own days having fun. His employer was oblivious to this for years until they ran an audit and discovered the scheme.
The blog post below is really about this coder's exploits and a cautionary tale for others to keep tabs on their networks. Still a part of me wants to high-five him for his cleverness right up to the point he was caught.
Verizon Business Security Blog » Blog Archive » Case Study: Pro-active Log Review Might Be A Good Idea.
October 16, 2012
Can't say I'm shocked to get the news of Citibank's Vikram Pandit quitting (Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit resigns | Reuters.) Evidently Citibank's online banking has been an absolute disaster recently. There have been numerous outages, slow response, and unscheduled downtimes.
Telephone customer service and tech support have also been horrendous during these outages. Customers are told that the site would be online shortly only to have no access for entire days. Understandably the service reps are frustrated having to deal with irate customers and they have, in turn, become rude and abusive to the callers.
The CEO's abrupt resignation may not have been directly related to Citibank's online problems, but such prolonged issues are manifestations that the bank is in the state of chaos and disarray and no one is minding the store. That's just a shame as Citibank was a decent bank to do business with at one time.
October 8, 2012
I used to think that the Internet was the great equalizer in the business world. A small guy with programming skills and a big drive sets up a new site and offers a novel service. The service goes viral and the small guy becomes a small company and builds and expands his way to success. The small guy pulls off an IPO or gets acquired and retires to the tropics. It's a happy ending that some have indeed experienced.
But what I have learned is that without some early connections and some cash infusion the small guy can quickly and quietly wither away, no matter how much effort he puts into his novel idea and no matter how many users he attracts. He's destined for a quick failure unless he gets some serious support behind him and fast.
How do I know this? Having operated this very site for some 12 years has given me plenty of lessons to that end. I operate this site as a hobby from the corner of my condo and while the free utilities offered here have a decent number of users, which I assume find them useful, and while I never looked to this site as a means of financial success, this site is in fact too small to succeed. Take these cases:
- For a number of years this site was hosted on various web hosting services such as 1&1 and every few months there was a warning to kick me off the service because the site was exceeding usage quotas. So, like a gypsy, I kept moving the site from one hosting company to another. A financially secure company would have had no issues paying for more resources.
- A couple of years ago Amazon Associates (an Affiliate Network) I was using for this site accused me of cheating and shut down my account, depriving the site from a small stream of revenue. According to Amazon, I had published URL's with my associate account to other sites, violating their terms of service. URL's had in fact been copied to other sites but not by me. Page-scraping and content-stealing robots had done that. A large site most likely would have never been suspended. In my case my appeals of innocence fell on deaf ears in Amazon.
- A few years ago I operated a URL shortening service much like tinyurl and bitly. One day a spammer used the links in a widespread spamming operation and suddenly the domain registrar, GoDaddy, cut off the domain registration claiming that is was spamvertized. It took over two months to convince GoDaddy of my innocence and get the domain back. I shut off the service promptly. This would have never happen to bit.ly or goo.gl.
- Recently a service on this site fell victim to a Nigerian phishing operation to collect bank information from unsuspecting victims. For days my ISP hounded me about this, nearly cutting off my services. That would have never happened to a customer with deep pockets, but I ended up discontinuing the service to guard against possible service termination or potential legal consequences.
- The latest headache came in the form of a DDoS, paralyzing this site. An outside site using one of the widget services from this site came under attack and the attack spilled over to this site causing capacity issues. I had to resort to all sorts of traffic blocking filters to partially mitigate the effects. This would have been a non-event for a larger site, but for this site it meant lengthy periods of slow performance and outages.
The Internet, a great equalizer? Hardly, great ideas can only go so far and without serious financial backing, they are destined for failure and eventual oblivion. I can't imagine how many great innovations have died premature deaths without that all important cash infusion.
June 11, 2012
A couple of weeks ago a judge finally ruled that Google hadn't violated any patents when it used the Java programming language in its Android OS. Good, finally someone wasn't intimidated by Larry Ellison and ruled based on logic rather than emotion. Word has it that the judge actually took some time to learn Java to have a better grasp of the dispute, impressive.
Now comes the news that Android has hit 900k activations per day and is well on its way to reach 1m per days. That may be in part due to some confidence that Android is now a safe bet, free from oracle's licensing threats.
In retrospect, it’s easy to see why Oracle acquired Sun and its assets. Even if some of those assets, like Java or MySQL, were under GPL (essentially free to use), that's counter to how Oracle operates. Oracle had hoped, and still does, to start capitalizing on the large market shares of these products. To that end it hasn't been successful, yet.
The latest Java lawsuit outcome is a great boon to developers and users, but one shouldn't bank on Oracle's defeat in Android's case as being the end of such tactics. Undoubtedly Oracle will be back for more. Given its past business history, Oracle is nothing if not undaunted and persistent.
April 16, 2012
Kudos to this publisher for having the courage and vision to remove its titles from Amazon.com. This is what the CEO of the publishing company said of Amazon:
Amazon is squeezing everyone out of business. I don’t like that. They’re a predator. We’re better off without them.
Google's mantra of "don't be evil" should really be "don't be like Amazon". It cheats its affiliates, it dodges taxes, it's anti-competitive, it abuses publishers, and it does all that with the attitude of hubris and entitlement.
Amazon wants us to believe that it's all about "out with the old and in with the new." Nice try, it's more like "out with competition and in with monopoly."
Amazon’s E-Book Pricing a Constant Thorn for Publishers - NYTimes.com.
Disclaimer: I have disliked Amazon for some time.
January 22, 2012
Sometimes I don't know how companies get away with their sleazy tactics, but I guess it's because they are loaded and consumers have little power to stand up to them.
Q - If you are Comcast how do you make sure your business customers don't leave you?
A - Lock them into long-term, fixed-price service contracts.
Q- How do you raise your prices on them, despite the fixed-price contracts?
A- Force them to use your equipment and then silently raise your monthly equipment fee.
That's exactly what Comcast has done starting in the new year. Brilliant.
Business Class Equipment Fee
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