patrick.net

Maybe this was already posted somewhere, but I thought this was interesting.

Milpitas beating out other Silicon Valley cities such as San Jose, Santa Clara & Sunnyvale.

Best places for the rich and single

We're not saying you're a gold digger. But you could follow the money to these 25 affluent cities, where singles are abundant.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/moneymag/1007/gallery.best_places_rich_single.moneymag/6.html

Nice call on RIG! Didn't have time to put in my due diligence... sigh... still may go in on a dip.

Seems to be a decent miss on earnings.

Although, not too bad, considering the circumstances.

It's pretty neutral. Lots of one time charge, both ways. Missed on top line, which was important but expected and signal weaker earnings next quarter, due to lower day rates and stacking rigs from GOM drilling ban.

The bottom line is it is severly undervalued based on BV and earnings. This is a gem in one year. Cash dividends of 3.19 will be confirmed soon. once Macondo is behind them, it will become an institution favorite again.

Yeah I reread a few things, it looks like they were almost dead on. The accidental payment + insurance payout brought things within about 1% of estimates.

I like the stock. I was almost hoping they would hold onto that cash to buy out some rigs like DO is planning on doing. I'm going to hold this position. It would be nice if it stays above what I bought it for too, that will keep my wife happy :) Fundamentals are irrelevant to her!

Dividend will come out after the tax laws change though, oh well. It'll be worth a couple of thousand anyways.

E-Man,

(me and partners) got burned selling BAC puts in 2008 when it went from 50 - 5 dollars in short time. A certain individual made 100x the bet. From that perspective, BAC is something I haven't look carefully into for anti sentimental reasons. I've learned something from that so we'll never be in that position again.

In any case, I always felt that GS is the moneymaker in the high net worth industry and has all the top talents and specialized high margin service and JPM has the best suite of banking service. I'll also stay away from C in the meantime as it seem like the US treasury is selling them around 4 something. This industry is pretty tough to understand even for me. Unlike RIG, you know book value is pretty close to market value and allow for some known difference, book value for BAC is a lot trickier.

@eman
Actually it doesn't matter the size of the position, my wife thinks the same way. If I let it sit for 30 years, and got out exactly what I paid today for them, that would be considered a win in her books. :) I'm comfortable with what I have, and over time I might add to it as well. I'm hoping that momentum will keep the stock from losing the $3 on those dividend days! I guess I shouldn't look at dividends at bonus's in that way, I just like the idea of money showing up in my accounts.

@sface
I'm starting to realize I shouldn't be fighting the currents looking for smaller companies to invest in, if JPM is the best, go with the best. If OIL is making money, buy oil. (Or people who do business with them..) I wish I had learned that 10 years ago instead of in the last 2-3 and only implementing this year.. sigh.

So we're sitting at about 10700 on NYSE now. I know SFace said he figured we would grind between 9800-11500 this year, and we're sitting in about the middle. We've had a decent run from 9800 up to 10700 now. Reports have come in, things look about the same, I thought a little worse than last quarter for what I watched. Any predictions on where we might see things going over the next several months? I'm guessing we're going to head up, due to the time of the year, more than anything else. The Sep-Dec run.

As always, I'm always curious so see what information you guys are using for your thoughts. :)

I still think we are rangebound for the rest of 2010. Sell as we top out around 11K and buy around 9800. Sep-Dec is dominated by retail talk, which I suspect would not be good this season.

Do either of you have a good book recommendation on "events" that take place throughout the year that effect stocks?

I seem to always be caught off guard with upcoming results, quarters ending, GDP announcements, fed announcements, etc. There are times when I can see the market ticking up, and I'm wondering what is likely to happen next. I was hoping to have something I could easily reference to say "Next week we'll have the following coming out... "

I found this one, it seems moderately interesting, but I'm wondering if there is a better source, or something online even.

http://www.amazon.com/Stock-Traders-Almanac-2010-Investor/dp/0470422181/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3QGEZ6RZ4A28Q&colid=2I3XEOTAR767P

No, that is micromanaging. If you read the WSJ daily, you won't miss much on what's going on in business.

Pkennedy and E-man

Here is another recommendation.

Buy VISA around $70 and make it a buy and hold. I don't want to get into the detail behind it other than it is a fantastic buy at that price with fundamental and technical support.

I definitely don't want to get into micro managing, but there have been times I would have been interested in having some "upcoming" knowledge, rather than last minute / 1 day late knowledge. I would rather know we're going to be having a fed discussion next week than finding out the day of, what was said.

Visa? It's 25-30% off but is that enough to offset all the new banking regulations? I'll take it though! Thanks!

Well I tossed in a buy for a few visa shares, but this month has been expensive for me due to my brother in law visiting, so I didn't add as much to my savings account as I normally would have. sbux would make my sister in law super duper happy. I could sell some Rig and purchase more Visa if it hits 70.

Hmm starbucks has been on an upward trend for the last couple of years, any reason you're looking at that one?

Pkennedy, E-Man here is a small cap worth exploring, CCME. It was recommended/forwarded by a colleague in Goldman's HK.

- Explosive Growth
- Clean balance Sheet
- unheard of 45% profit margin and 80% ROE.
- 80% insider and exec salaries are stunningly low.
- looks like a hard to penetrate business

I'm not sure what is going on here other the stock looks extremely undervalued (reverse merger) Let's share some thoughts about this one.

Looks interesting. Advertising can be difficult to get into, but a huge outfit can just bully it's way in, and profits for them can be so massive that the bully aspect is a near $0 cost to them.

Chinese business is completely unknown to me. I haven't ever been over to china to really get a good grasp on their culture over there. In general, I see extremely low profit margins on manufacturing in the sub 2% range, which is just plain scary. Although it goes with their work ethic of working hard. Having known many first generation parents they seem to hold these thoughts of small gains over time will pay off. Then I hear of stories of friends going over there for family dinners and spending like $30,000 on a meal! So I'm not exactly sure how money is distributed over there, and how advertising works.

Since I'm in an advertising based company right now, I have gained some in depth knowledge of this area, and it appears that there are two types of companies out there. Those making very little for their ad space, like $1/1000 viewers and eeking out a decent living off thise! and those corporation who can charge $150/1000 viewers. Not too much in between, and the higher rates seem to go directly to those companies that are known, and to those companies who just "assume" they have to pay this much to get any decent advertising. (Eg Apple, Dove, IBM, etc). While companies like google adwords will pay out like $1/1000 views!

One thing I've noticed in advertising is that the US is so far ahead of the game compared with any other countries I've been to. My wife is from Brazil, and we've had some of her family/friends come up here and they are just hammered with ads, they don't know how to deal with them! I've seen this is other countries in the middle east as well. The companies over there seem to be working off our ad models from the 1970's because it works for them. The bigger companies who are multinational are hiring locally, so they get the 1970's advertising as well. It works, because the population hasn't learned to tune it out yet. Each year advertising has to ratchet it up a bit more because we get better at tuning out crap. As for my company, we get some our highest click through rates in these 3rd world countries because of this!

- For me, advertising is hard to break into. New players get just absolutely dismal rates, the "known" players are paid a kings ransom.
- Advertising in other countries seems very very dated in most cases, but it works.
- I'm not sure what the chinese media market looks like, and how effective these ads are.
- On a bright note, these guys have ads in several locations, so they could lose one deal without totally going under and/or starting over.

Those are my primary concerns with a company like this.

Here's some good analysis from someone from seeking alpha. Of course they are self serving but the points should be considered carefully.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/205019-china-mediaexpress-china-s-hidden-gem-part-1
http://seekingalpha.com/article/205022-china-mediaexpress-china-s-hidden-gem-part-2

"CCME's management has strong motivation to meet their 60% growth targets over the next 2 years to acquire another 14M shares reward. By then the total outstanding share of the company will be 54.5M, which at today's stock price, gives the company a market cap of $615M. Assuming that management will meet their growth target, with $140M of cash, and expected earning of $90M this year, the forward PE ex-cash is:

Forward PE(ex-cash) = $(615-140)M/$90M = 5.3

With 3 year earnings growth forecast above 35%, the PEG is a mere 5.3/35 = 0.15 with a free cash flow yield well above 27%. FCF yield above 17% is already fantastic for a Chinese stock.

To get to a 17% FCF yield, the forward PE should be 14 or so. 14 x $90M should give CCME a valuation ex-cash of $1.26B. Adding back the cash of 140M, we have $1.4B. With 54.5M shrs outstanding, my real price target would be $25.7/share."

It's about risk vs. reward and I trust my source, this one is a fantastic buy under $10, but I may consider picking up some now. This one reminds me of Focus Media FCMN with different growth path.

I'm just looking at yahoo, they've been in business since late 2007? 2.5 years?

Does that effect anything, when you look at a company?

According to the 10K, the business commenced operation in Nov 2003. In Oct 2007, they entered into a big agreement to be a stategic alliance partner to establish the rights to advertise. That is around the same time, when the private investor took over a shell public company and take it public through a reverse merger. (where the public company got eaten and taken over by the private party)

The second quarter 2010 results was tremendous. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/China-MediaExpress-Holdings-bw-1991280177.html?x=0&.v=1

Ok, I just read the whole article, pretty interesting article and pretty in depth.

The whole TM business seems to have just added complexity to their business while that company offered little to them and seemed to cash out fairly quickly. They appear to be almost out of the picture now, with everyone pulling their money out and just holding warrants?

Based on my experience with advertising, *if* they have a good sales team, the growth prospective looks doable and most likely without being side tracked with a MA. Direct sales offer *HUGE* potential. Doing direct sales for people on shuttles to the airport, etc could definitely offer them some premium advertising.

Aside from the whole deal with TM, I would say it's a pretty good deal. Of course, as this guy states, TM is the cause of the low pricing to start with.

"That is around the same time, when the private investor took over a shell public company and take it public through a reverse merger.
(where the public company got eaten and taken over by the private party)"

Ok this is a little confusing. TM took over a shell public company (A company that has made it onto the stock exchange but does nothing else really(?)) , the public company became the dominant company at this point? Where does CCME fit into this? What did TM do to CCME at this point? What is TM now?

That aspect got a little confusing.

Here's another company I know of that went public the reverse merger route several years ago; the SF Business Times had a pretty good article on reverse mergers that featured them.

This reverse mortgage makes sense, and I was actually asked to help on setting up some shell companies about 10 years ago for this purpose.

How TM fits into this fold is still confusing to me. They get a shell company, a company that is doing business and Tm and blended them together then pulled out. I'm still not sure how much value they added, or what their true purpose was. It seemed they wanted to hold the stock at 11.50 so they could liquidate their position and hold onto warrants for essentially free.

It's a way of going IPO without going IPO. There's really no public financing as the shares are still closely held. This company is penny pinching frugal.

I love the insider action on this stock, directors buying at 12-13 and the big guy holding 33%.

Well the company looks interesting, and I think I might do a small spend on this. Unfortunately, at this point, spends are essentially coming from monthly savings! Too many good buys and too little money now! argh.

I have a couple of questions on Rig (I can find them myself, I'm just wondering if you know off hand), Rig took a dive during 2008 from roughly 120-150ish down to 50ish during the crash. It recovered to 80ish, while most other stocks seemed to have regained most of their position. Is this primary due to the price of oil never recovering? Are they paid a % of the oil they pump + daily fees? Or is it a flat rental?

From what I've seen, they've basically gotten off on this disaster yet their stock is still held back. Their losses were decently minimal and some of it was even replaced with the relief well operation. Are there other major hurdles on decent recovery on this stock? Or put another way, is there anything major I should be looking out for that might pull the rug out from under this stock?

With such low volume on that stock, I would think putting in any stop loss might be risky! A few people could yank it down quickly without you being aware! Insider trading would be my biggest fear.

Yeah I consider this more of a gamble than what I'm used to, but I also see that there is value here and that at least one accountant has looked at it and given their ok on the financials :)

I have to wait until late next year before I can sell my AMD holdings, this is the cycle I've been waiting for. The new revision will be coming out, and Nvidia has been booted from a couple of markets. They're going to be working on a CPU/GPU combo now, which they'll fail at. The lost income from chip sets (Intel isn't giving them a license), and AMD/ATI having a great product out is forcing nvidia on the defensive which they haven't had to do in a very long time. Nvidia I think will really tank over the next 18 months, both losing more revenue and fighting to keep up with ATI with less R&D. This should help give AMD a good chunk of the GPU market. Their new CPU/GPU combos are coming out and so far they look pretty good.

I'm not sure about their die shrink, but I think they're getting there, it's been slightly delayed. Intel has been doing a great job of their tick/tock strategy, which is die shrink, then CPU architecture upgrade, die shink, then CPU architecture. AMD is competing right now, and they were never about having the biggest/best only a good value proposition. In the last 8 years or so they've been touching the crown processors and surpassing them a few times. They know how to be scruffy, but I think next year they're going to have some good products and decent earnings with their new architecture + die shrink, while Intel only has a new architecture coming out.

SFace was correct on this stock, not making any money. Growing through new share sales. When they do make money it isn't much. They have swapped out a lot of debt though for more favorable terms recently, they're small and lean now. I'm hoping that those numbers will show up next year before they have time to ramp up spending to match income.

"I have a couple of questions on Rig (I can find them myself, I’m just wondering if you know off hand), Rig took a dive during 2008 from roughly 120-150ish down to 50ish during the crash. It recovered to 80ish, while most other stocks seemed to have regained most of their position. Is this primary due to the price of oil never recovering? Are they paid a % of the oil they pump + daily fees? Or is it a flat rental?"

It's all about day rates. Good day rates drives profit and their assets (rigs) are worth more mutliple. If you are in the limosine business and you have a contract worth 100K stream for two years but now an = limosine can only fetch a 50K contract. You'll make a lot less money and the limosines are worth a lot less.

What drives day rates, oil companies desire to explore and replenish their reserve. With good oil prices, Capex by oil companies are expanded. Capex always goes to where it is most efficient, so even though deep exploration is expensive, they are proven to provide the best reserve. The easiet way to figure out where day rates are heading is to look at CapEx budget for Chevron, Exxon, Royal, etc. These budgets flow to drillers. Macondo was producing 50K barrels a day, which gives it a daily revenue of 4M revenue to BP. BP lease the rig for around 500K a day. There are profits to be had for both the upstream oil and drillers if oil prices are high.

Day rates are under pressure as a result of the 6 month drilling ban in the gulf of Mexico. Once the ban is lifted, there will be another run up in price as day rates pressure will be alleviated.

More or less what I expected. Two things that I overlooked and miscalculated were the day rates changes during good/bad times. I figured most contracts were long enough that good/bad times would blend together, and that Capex would be fairly evenly distributed, meaning there would be sudden bursts of exploration. Secondly, I figured that most rigs would be in use, or close to 100% would be making money, leaving little room for growth there.

I figured the only way to increase revenue was a linear slow growth of buying new rigs and placing them online, vs a boom/bust cycle with varying contract terms.

Thanks for the insight here! Energy always seems to be a good investment, and I'm really trying to shore up my knowledge in this industry. News sites either show the technical reasons to buy a stock, or they explain that news is good/bad, but don't often explain indepth why it's good/bad, they just assume you're either in the know, or going to buy because they said it's good.

Energy always seems to be a good investment, and I’m really trying to shore up my knowledge in this industry.
I am still drinking the peak oil Kook-Aid, but you definitely need to go in with one eye opened. A couple of years back I thought natural gas had peaked in the US (ala oil in the 1970's which actually did peak), but got hammered by CHK (along with their CEO, Aubrey McClendon). Thankfully, no margin for me on that one...

Lots of Natural gas, Canada has just masses of it, they started using it all for the tar sands though. When oil dropped, they apparently cut back on usage and that went into the market pushing natural gas down. Or so I've heard anyways, I don't follow natural gas prices much though!

Ahem, I know Canada is just a subsidiary of the US, but first you've got to get it here.
Also, bear in mind, Just three years ago, the conventional wisdom was that U.S. natural-gas production was facing permanent decline. U.S. policy makers were resigned to the idea that the country would have to rely more on foreign imports to supply the fuel that heats half of American homes, generates one-fifth of the nation's electricity, and is a key component in plastics, chemicals and fertilizer....Believing the U.S. would soon need to import liquefied natural gas from overseas, companies such as ConocoPhillips, El Paso Corp. and Cheniere Energy Inc. spent billions on terminals, pipelines and storage facilities.
Also, a quick link to historic production in the US.

Intel and McAfee, what is going on? A strange marriage.

Very strange and slightly alarming.

Last company I worked for had board members from McAfee, and from what I could gather, all those virus companies "shared" all details on all new virus, including the free virus providers. No one wanted to be left out in the cold without knowledge of a new virus, so they all had sharing agreements. No one wanted the liabilities and/or marketing risks associated with "missing" a big one.
At least that is what I gathered.

WHY Intel would want software like this makes little sense, other than they're looking 5-10 years out and realizing they're hitting limits and that they need to follow IBM's path. This could be a disaster for America, if we lose Intel as a hardware designer. It would leave AMD (good for me) as the only one pushing the envelope. It would open up the market to competition as well. Right now x86 is so far ahead of everything else (albeit it's a crappy technology) that no one can catch up. Even Itanium after a decade has made no headway. No other processor technology has even come close. There have been some sweet designs, but no one wants to bother with them.

I'm guessing this is the first of many acquisitions for Intel, which is going to really diversify it's business.

Intel and McAfee, what is going on?
I must say, that threw me for a loop, too.
Here's my take (which I've also seen in news reports & blogs). Smartphone / Tablet OSes will be the dominate, ubiquitous computing platforms of the future. Android and the iPhone OS hold a growing share in this market, but Intel (teamed up with Nokia) will be making a push with Meego (combining their previous Linux efforts -- Moblin and Maemo). The MeeGo OS skews more towards mobile (truly open) computing than the smartphone side of things (restrictive in the application space) . Making sure these mobile systems are secure would add to consumer confidence and help Intel increase its processor share in this market which is dominated by ARM and Mips based chips.

The problem with phones is that very few people develop for them. The applications aren't that difficult to port (to some degree). If your product is successful it can make HUGE profits. Which means successful products will be ported to anything that comes out.

Android is good, but could be run on anything. Apples OS is in the same boat. Same with Microsofts OS.

There are limited numbers of hardware combination's, which makes it easy to port and program for and to switch CPU's for. Think of any of the many consoles out there. The games are great because programs only need to deal with ONE set of drivers to make their games work. They don't have to worry about 500 types of CPU's, video cards, sound cards and all their derivatives. A phone is much like a console in that respect. It has a certain number of applications, it's going to run at a certain speed, it's got a limited number of options.

What does this mean? Phones and tablet PC's aren't tied to any one CPU, which makes investing in them HUGELY risky. Apple, Google, ARM developers, or another design company could come along with a killer product that could win masses of wins and essentially devastate everyone else.

X86 is different. There aren't *ANY* alternatives. There haven't been viable alternatives since day 1! Motorola with it's 68000 chips had a CPU that was *SO* far ahead of Intel, yet it couldn't get itself put into any hardware. It eventually even lost it's longest supporter Apple. Transmeta tried to come up with something. Intel itself tried to break away with the Itanium, but people just wouldn't budge. They aren't going to do it now either.

So Intel has the X86, which is a cash cow with essentially no viable options for anyone to break into the business.

Phones/Tablets are very specific and CAN switch CPU's every couple of years to whoever is best. Market share won here could be gone the next year!

pkennedy says

X86 is different. There aren’t *ANY* alternatives.

RISC processors....

pkennedy says

So Intel has the X86, which is a cash cow with essentially no viable options for anyone to break into the business.

Actually there were several others along with AMD... Cyrix, C&T, Via.

EBGuy says

Intel and McAfee, what is going on?
I must say, that threw me for a loop, too.

Happens all the time around here.

SF ace says

Intel and McAfee, what is going on? A strange marriage.

Think of it this way. The TV you know of today will be replaced with something open to hackers, bugs and viruses of tomorrow. Not sure it makes sense, you cant even get the TV mfg today to put a recording device (Hard Drivce) into they Flat screen TV today to record your programs so you dont need a VCR/DVD recorder.

RISC processors have been around longer than the Itanium and haven't gained any market share. Cyrix and Via are x86 based chipes, or were.

A hardware company purchasing a software subscription based company isn't that common.

CPU's already handle virus blocking, and hacking attempts in many forms. So it's not a very obvious joiningat all.