Rollover with a vengeance. Remember my columns in January recommending you get out of equities? Look what’s happened since:
Not a pretty picture. But my recommendations — DOG, PSQ and SH have done handsomely. Thank you very much.
Have Comfort. You’re not an idiot. Harvard Business School’s endowment lost 30% in the year to June 30, 2009. They’re idiots in two respects: First to have the Harvard Management Company run HBS’s money. With $37 billion and all the business smarts in the world, they should have run their own money.
Second, they should have pulled the plug after 15%, and gone to cash. Then they should have gotten back in when the markets had risen 15%. They be a lot better off today, despite this year’s stockmarket disaster.
Jim Chanos is a bear. He runs $6 billion. About 90% of his portfolio is short. He’s worried about China, the economy. For the Chanos video.
Remember the Cockroach Theory? It says when a company reports something awry, there’ll be more and worse awry. If you’ve lived in New York, you’ll know its derivation. We have cockroaches. Friendly, filthy fellows. When you see one in your apartment, you kill it. But three days later, there’ll be another one and another one.
Toyota is the latest Cockroach. First, it was the mats. Then the sticky pedal. Then the messed-up accelerator software. Meanwhile the stock is doing a swan dive.
You think Toyota’s president will kill himself? He’s already killed a bunch of his customers. Suicide is in the cards. That’ll probably be a positive for the stock. Please don’t buy on this prediction.
Remember the Cockroach Theory, Part 2. Recently one of my brokers breathlessly told me “The smart money was getting into Bank of America.”
Well, right now the smart money is looking pretty stupid.
But wait, it gets worse. Last night New York’s gutsy Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, who wants to be governor, announced he was suing Bank of America. Here’s part of Cuomo’s press release, lifted directly off his web site:
NEW YORK, NY (February 4, 2010) – Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, joined by Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program Neil Barofsky, today announced a lawsuit against Bank of America, its former CEO Kenneth D. Lewis, and its former CFO Joseph L. Price for duping shareholders and the federal government in order to complete a merger with Merrill Lynch. According to the lawsuit, Bank of America’s management intentionally failed to disclose massive losses at Merrill so that shareholders would vote to approve the merger. Once the deal was approved, Bank of America’s management manipulated the federal government into saving the deal with billions in taxpayer funds by falsely claiming that they would back out of the deal without bailout funds.
“This merger is a classic example of how the actions of our nation’s largest financial institutions led to the near-collapse of our financial system,” said Attorney General Cuomo. “Bank of America, through its top management, engaged in a concerted effort to deceive shareholders and American taxpayers at large. This was an arrogant scheme hatched by the bank’s top executives who believed they could play by their own set of rules. In the end, they committed an enormous fraud and American taxpayers ended up paying billions for Bank of America’s misdeeds.”
You can find the entire lawsuit.
You can bargain upwards and downwards. Several CDs matured. I begged for higher-than published rates, and in most cases was successful. I also got Time Warner to drop my ridiculous monthly cable bill by close to 20%. I’m now on a one-year “introductory” rate. If you can’t make big money with your investments, take small comfort in saving a few shekels.
There’s real thinking at Google. As you know, I’m not recommending Google at present. It’s been on a serious downwards tear this year.
But it does keep innovating. Search on Google for Northface Redpoint Jacket (my favorite). You’ll get the usual Google screen. But go to the top and hit Shopping. You’ll get this:
Each one of these images looks like this:
Click on the link and you’ll be at Nordstrom. What’s neat is you can order the results from lowest price to highest price. Bingo, instant bargain shopping.
Only one problem: the cheapest Northface Redpoint jacket was out of stock. And the next was nearly full price.
This almost took the fun out of shopping. I say almost, because I just saw this cartoon in the New Yorker. It’s the best:
My second favorite New Yorker cartoon. I dedicate this cartoon to my long-suffering son-in-law, Ted:
I bet my daughter won’t speak to me for a week after this.
Harry Newton, who knows his daughter will speak to him. She won’t read today’s column. She’s the only lawyer in the whole world still working. And boy, is she working. Try 24/7. Of course, there’s a reason. She’s bloody talented. Takes after her mother who was — dig this — dux of her high school. A fact she concealed until long after we had children. Michael found it out as he delved into our totally fascinating (??) family history.
By the way, the “CTRL + Scroll Wheel” works with Office documents too.
This is pretty simple if you have a “Control” key and a “+” and “-” keys to resize the browser.
For any one who is not seeing all the text, try this trick, enlarge by holding down “Control” and press the “+” or reduce by holding down “Control” and press “-“. If you don't have a number pad hold down “Control” + “Shift” and press “+” to enlarge or to reduce hold down “Control” and press “-“. It works with Firefox and IE, don't know about Chrome or Safari. If they don't have it, they will copy the others soon..
With regard to screen sizing problems try reading this article first.
[Begin – Google Browser Test Site]
“Introducing Google Browser Size, Wednesday, December 16, 2009”
<http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/12/introduc…>
Then try their test site and see what you get:
“We are now making this tool available to the public on Google Labs. To try it, simply visit browsersize.googlelabs.com and enter the URL of a page you'd like to examine. The size overlay you see is using latest data from visitors to google.com, so this should give you a pretty good indication of what parts of your UI are generally visible and what aren't.
We (Google) look forward to receiving your comments at browser-size-external-feedback!”
[End – Google Browser Test Site]
I run the Linux operating system (many different ones) and one instance of Windows XP for test purposes. I use the Firefox browser and the Open Office (openoffice.org) programs on all of them. I have problems with different sites depending on whether I am in Firefox or Internet Explorer or Chrome.
I have no screen size problems with Harry Newton's new (or old) site in any of these configurations.
There is a lot of confusion among Web developers about User Experience (UX) and the Presentation Layer. Most of them use Windows products exclusively to develop with and if it works in their environment they assume it works everywhere. This is the Microsoft approach to code development and release. They have moved to accommodate some other popular platforms like Blackberry and iPhone but not all the browsers. That is left to the specific browser company. There has been a sharp drop-off in the quality of the browser product since Netscape introduced the concept but a huge increase in capability, feature and function, IMHO, YMMV. The drop-off is due to a cost reduction in development cost by shifting Quality Control and Quality Assurance through testing to the end user. If it is free who can complain? You can hire some sharp little kid to customize it for you.
In Firefox I have to use the “View/Zoom In|Zoom Out” to increase or decrease browser display size. This mostly affects text. In a page of mixed text and graphics (like Harry's) the results can be less than satisfactory. Other factors like physical screen size, screen resolution setting (800×600,1024×768, 1280×1024,etc.) and font size plus the “resizing (fluid)” Web page design approach can more than offset, or even negate, the gains made by the browser “View” controls. As I have gotten older and find a larger font and a bigger pixel (lower screen resolution) more pleasing the browser “View” controls become very limited.
HTH, YMMV
Thank you Craneguy
Readers: Listen to Craneguy >>>
hold “down the CTRL key and scrolling your mouse wheel.”
This works, even on my museum worthy desktop.
In full-screen it displays fine. If I shrink my window, I can get it to overlap.
Please stop complaining about the page, it displays just fine.
Perhaps it's not Harry's fault?
Try holding down the CTRL key and scrolling your mouse wheel. If you don't have a mouse wheel page formatting is the least of your worries…
Thanks Craneguy.
Harry – I will no longer view your blog and I am removing it from my “favorites”. Once again I can no longer view your charts and graphs and some text. They are cut off by the stupid advertisements. Ever since you changed your web site this has been occuring. I have seen many readers complaining yet you have done NOTHING to remedy. You say the advertisments bring you no revenue yet they are still there and still blocking content…farewell and good luck.
Don't forget FXP in the done hansomely category
don,
what — are you reading this on an iphone?
Please, … unless you are viewing from a 4096X2560 virtualized desktop, multi-monitor setup, just like Harry does, don't expect it to display properly.
🙂
I had to go to the dictionary for “dux”:
In schools in Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Iceland, Dux is a modern title given to the top student in academic and sporting achievement (Dux Litterarum and Dux Ludorum respectively) in each graduating year. In this usage, Dux is similar to the American concept of a valedictorian. The runner up may be given the title Proxime Accessit (meaning “he came next”) or Semidux, but is often not regarded as highly as his superior.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dux
I know you need the ads but the right margin ads block part of the content!! whats up