patrick.net

A better example is Google stock. In my layperson opinion, waaaay overvalued.

Conoco Philips: >$22 Billion in earnings in the last 3 years, $104B market cap.

Google:

@Glen,

Good one.

Isn’t Campbell down near you somewhere?

Thanks SFWoman. I will check it out.

Oxtail soup may still be difficult though. British beef.

I think mad-cow disease is over-hyped though.

skibum,

I've gotta agree. I can't imagine what Tom Stevens or anyone else at NAR could be thinking? In almost any other business when you have excess inventory putting it off until another quarter or another fiscal year seldom resolves anything. True, in RE the "owner" is paying for the cost "warehousing" the stock but either way it's a burden.

Maybe that's the way we should view NAR's relationship w/the country. We pay the carrying cost for the "merchandise" and they get a commission if and when it sells? At whatever price? I don't know about you guys but anytime I've been charged with moving inventory the first thing you do is at least attempt to sell it existing mark up. Then you discount until you're left with basically close outs and/or consider writing it off as a loss?

Perhaps b/c you believe that "they aren't making any more of it" that it will somehow appreciate or at least retain it's value over the fall and winter and then be able to retail it again in the spring? My experience has been if you can't sell it the previous qtr/year at that price it becomes even more difficult as time goes on. I just don't know where these guys are trying to take the buying public?

"and when your daughter (whom you support almost entirely) asks you if she can claim herself so she can “get back” $346 in taxes…… that doesn’t help either!"

DinOR,

If it makes you feel better, this sort of thing happens in reverse too. My boyfriends' parents dropped his car insurance coverage with them (oh, and unlike your daughter, did not bother to tell him til after the fact) when he went on a 3 months internship in Germany. Result? Maybe $200 of savings to his parents and several years of ramped up car insurance because he had lapsed coverage.

@mojo,

I'm certainly one of the less qualified people on this board to comment on this, but I will anyway...

I'm no gold bug, but I do have a small portion of my portfolio in a gold-related mutual fund. Very volatile, but I think it's reasonable to keep some stake in this asset class.

I check out kitco.com once in a while to see what's going on:

http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

You can see that prices didn't really shoot up until about a year ago, more acutely from this winter into Spring, but they've been on the decline since then. So current prices are not too bubbly imo when you compare to longer term prices. Gold investment's all about your concern/fears for geopolitical destabilization, US monetary instability, and oil prices. I don't claim to have a firm grasp of how all these factors affect gold prices, but there you go.

Speaking of this, it seems about this time last year there were a slew of gold bugs on all the RE blogs. Where are they now?

SP,

We could make an entire thread on that topic! Obviously I have a vested interest in that and it would make MY business grow immensely. And why not? No one's happy, everyone feels "captive" and performance is lackluster at best. Just sign here that we are forwarding your contribution along w/vested portion to ABC Firm and you are absolving us of any and all liability! Where's the problem?

The way I see that being an uphill battle is that the fund company lobby is powerful and I believe the employers list these funds as an asset on their balance sheet? Since employers are doing everything possible to wash their hands of this where's the problem? Hey, I'll send you a duplicate confirm alright!

not compared to the valuation of Youtube though Isn’t Google worth ~Youtube X 100? See what happens when you have funny funds to play with?

@SF Guy,

Even better! Did anyone else have a flashback to 1999 when the YouTube story came out?

skibum,

I'm still here. My enthusiasm for gold waxes and wanes with my natural cycle of paranoia. I'd still rather be primarily in commodities and cash equivalents for the next couple years, and the rest in ETF or index funds.

astrid,

Good morning btw! Yeah I do hear ya'. As parents we're very careful of these penny wise, pound foolish traps and they are legion! They way we've kind of gotten around that is b/c I do most of my work from home I basically threatened the agent with pulling our business if they didn't make allowances for that. You just gotta call them on everything.

(Also you have to give too) so I do other things with them that makes the rep look good to his regional mgr. If you work it right, throw some referrals at him/her and be receptive to what they're peddling and you'd be surprised with what you can get away with.

@DinOR,

Nice analogy re: sales inventory. It just highlights the fact that Realtors are truly middlemen, profiting off the transaction process. The claimed services they offer are not worth the going commission rate (6%). But we've beat this dead horse back to the Stone Age before on previous threads.

Peter P -

British Beef is probably safer than US or Canadian now.

Also, have you tried cooking a chicken upside down and turning it right side up for the last 20 mins or so to brown the skin (with some seasoning and water in the bottom of the pan)? - I believe that makes the breast meat juicier.

Have you tried Piazza's for Bovril? They have Bisto and OXO, but never looked for Bovril - in their store in Palo Alto - don't know about other locations. Now all I need to do is find the Shepherd's Pie mix again.

RE: The 401K choice issue: I'd play devil's advocate and say SP, DinOR and others are asking questions 90%+ (random guess) of employees don't ask. It's well-established that the bigger problem is that most employees don't even fully vest in their retirement plans. That's the first problem. Then there's the well-established phenomenon of paralysis due to too much choice. My suggestion is to keep it simple. What employers should do is offer more low-thought but reasonable choice fund options. Indexed funds would work, as well as the "life-cycle" type funds that automatically change allocation as you get older. These types of options would probably work much better for the vast majority of employees.

Also, have you tried cooking a chicken upside down and turning it right side up for the last 20 mins or so to brown the skin (with some seasoning and water in the bottom of the pan)? - I believe that makes the breast meat juicier.

Thanks for the tip.

British Beef is probably safer than US or Canadian now.

I never worried about BSE. It is probably just another international vegetarian conspiracy. :)

Have you tried Piazza’s for Bovril? They have Bisto and OXO, but never looked for Bovril - in their store in Palo Alto - don’t know about other locations. Now all I need to do is find the Shepherd’s Pie mix again.

I will try. Bovril should not be a big challenge. I have seen them in Half Moon Bay ($8+ though). They have Marmite too!

I may have too cook my own oxtail soup from scratch though.

Yeah - but I have this feeling that the people offering the 401k's have vested interest in steering people to the more expensive funds - like Great Western Retirement Services - where are they getting their money from to operate? From inflated fund prices or kickbacks for favoring select fund offerings? I don't know because nothing is clear cut.

I think I am very paranoid about this, but this is because the information they give you is very vague, fund prices are hard to follow as they have their own way of working out how much your funds are worth, and often don't exactly correlate to what the market funds are named or priced at. Clear as mud comes to mind, and makes me very wary.

Correction on my post from waaay back:

Conoco Philips: >$22 Billion in earnings in the last 3 years, $104B market cap.

Google:

Dang it!

Why won't my comment register? GOOG has less than two billion dollars in earnings and a one-hundred forty-five billion dollar market cap... Now will it register?

Peter P - Piazza's has Marmite, can't remember the price though - they have a little British Section with quite a few goodies, and carry hellishly expensive Christmas Puds closer to Christmas - or they did last year.

A friend has also recommended CostPlus World Foods (Mountain View) as a source of some goodies, but I have never been in there to check. And speaking to some other friends - a lot of the Indian supermarkets carry "English" lines too.

Oh... I see the problem.... can't use the "less than" symbol.

Glen - the other issue is how many sharaes are issued in total by each company - I haven't checked either examples, but if has issued a lot more shares than the other, then they should be worth less per share.

speaking of inflation, it looks like another interest rate reset:

Reserve chief throws on inflation anchors

oh, wrong reserve, wrong country, heh

tipped to increase int rates on nov 8 -- inflation is at the top end of the comfortable range ~ 4%. last time it happened in the 90s, they tacked about 3% onto interest rates all at once...

apart from higher fuel costs flowing into everything, i suspect the housing boom and high mortgages as being the culprit also -- high repayments mean cost of goods and services also go up -- followed by upward pressure on wages. any concurrence from the econ experts here?

Person,

I'll agree. That's my whole point. The "employer dependent" stranglehold is what I try to break with each plan I set up! I tell these guys (many of whom have served on boards etc.) you're all big boys here and there's no crying if you lose! If it's publicly traded and legal for ret. accounts you got it! If I see someone doubling down after they just doubled down, I'll give them a call but everyone is free to follow their fancy. It's really revolutionary! More people should try it.

GOOG worths this much if and only if people believes that it will worth a lot more sometime in the future.

Forget fundamentals. They are invented by unicorns.

Stock market sounds more and more like legal gambling to me....

Stock market sounds more and more like legal gambling to me….

What is the difference? Gambling should be legalized anyway. More tax revenue!

Claire,

Price per share and # of shares is irrelevant. What *is* relevant is the earnings per share. My point is that over the last 3 years, GOOG has earned $2B. THe market cap is $145B. This means that if you assume no growth in earnings, if you bought the whole company you would be getting a yield of around .45%. Conoco, meanwhile, has earned $22B on a $104B market cap. This translates to a yield of around 7%.

Maybe GOOG earnings will go up by 1000%, giving investors a 4.5% yield. But this seems like a heroic assumption--and even if it happens the yield would be less than a ten year bond. And maybe Conoco earnings will drop by half, giving it a 3.5% yield, but this seems pretty pessimistic--an even if it happens, you are still getting a yield comparable to a savings account.

In the long run, stocks are valued on the basis of their earnings.

Peter P: Were you being sarcastic? Or do you really believe that fundamentals are irrelevant?

What if you sold $1 shares in option contracts at gas stations like they do lottery tickets?

You can sell stock and futures options for the premium. However, when things go wrong, they can go really wrong.

Not investment advice.

Glen,

(And this does sound ridiculous) another way to look at it is that it would take Google about 219 years at their current rate of earnings to equal their market cap? Yeah, I had to do a double take too.

SP,

Can't argue with that! Recent changes in securities law allow Series 65 reg. reps to charge a fee for "advising" people on their 401K options but this is a "paper tiger" b/c your options are limited to what the Benefits Admin. allows! I do this for free b/c in most cases it takes about 15 minutes. There are those that would argue (and I want to tred lightly here) that if you can't wait for these changes to come about either work for a smaller firm OR start your own.

I just don't see how this would benefit larger employers as the brain drain continues when more qualified workers file toward the exit?

another way to look at it is that it would take Google about 219 years at their current rate of earnings to equal their market cap.

hey, those tulip bulbs aren't for planting, they're for selling...

RE: GOOG. Yeah, I'll say it a different way. The whole google phenomenon is like a vestige from the pre-dotcom bust era. YouTube's greatest asset/invention is not web-based video feeds, it's having invented a TIME MACHINE to 1999.

I'm getting flashbacks. Soon we'll be seeing stories about kids at startups rolling around in scooters again. Please, not that.

"invented a TIME MACHINE to 1999" LOL!

Damn!

invented a TIME MACHINE to 1999

Homebuyers will love that more.

Allah,

Well, realt-whores are going to find out just like those of us in the securities arena that you needn't have participated in shady "IPO" offerings and late trading to take your turn in the barrel!

The sad part is that most of them weren't really doing anything w/their lives when this came along so I've no idea what they'll "go back to"?

For the small town realtors (while not having a firm grasp in economics) DID have to exhibit a certain loyalty to their limited client base, these folks I DO feel for.

For "big city" realt-whores, they'll move down to Vegas or wherever they feel is nearest to "1999" and ply their trade there! The only thing they know how to do anymore is to sell RE as an investment! That's how they create their whole sense of urgency w/the prospect. They'll boast to their new employer or partners how the were doing X a year in commissions (fabricated or otherwise) and then demand X % in "pay out" and how they're seasoned professionals etc. etc.

When it becomes obvious that their new "target market" isn't paying off either, they'll become migratory in their pursuit of easy money.

Since this thread is starting to deteriorate, I don't feel bad posting a couple of data points from the the "luxury coastal vacation home market".
Here are the prices for a FSBO 1/10 fractional interest in a Sea Ranch home:
2004: $ 85,000
2005/6: $119,000
2006 now: $ 99,000
The owner does not seem desperate as he has less than $85k on his first mortgage, but he has no probelm seeing what the "market will bear". An interesting window as the "comp" is previous shares sold in the home. Wonder if he sold any shares at the $119k price?

I’m getting flashbacks. Soon we’ll be seeing stories about kids at startups rolling around in scooters again. Please, not that.

As I mentioned yesterday, a friend of a friend is at youtube. He's shopping for a helicopter.

As I mentioned yesterday, a friend of a friend is at youtube. He’s shopping for a helicopter.

Maybe he can supplant HeliBen and drop some of his youtube winnings in cash to help the economy along.

As I mentioned yesterday, a friend of a friend is at youtube. He’s shopping for a helicopter.

How much is a new helicopter anyway? Last time I checked it costs less than half of a crappy townhouse in the Bay Area.

I have co-workers who own planes.

Water cooler conversation -

Three clerks in my office were talking about the housing market. One is buying now, one bought last year, one the year before. They all have under $100k combined income. One of them apparently has an adjustable that has gone up $1200 over the course of the loan. I keep hearing about all the "rich" people buying - but of the people I know, it's these lower income people who are jumping into the market. I do know one stock option couple who paid cash for two houses - one Santa Clara and one in Santa Cruz.

Other people I know who have bought:

2003 - San Jose, $70k income, $475k house
2004 - San Francisco $1,000,000 condo, $90k income. Bought another condo to flip at the end of 2005 - last I heard it had not sold and he was going to rent it out.
2004 - Santa Clara, $60k income, $400k house/condo?
2004- San Jose, $150k income, $600k house
2005- Santa Clara, $90k income, $550k condo

I just don't see this ending well at all.