In Search of the Perfect Investment

I haven’t heard or seen anything to suggest that stock prices are cheap — despite yesterday’s bounce. Or that you should be in this market.

Don’t let anyone tell you this market is “oversold. “It’s not. It remains under the same old clouds — tightening corporate earnings, high unemployment, lousy production numbers, the European mess, the slowing in China, etc.

Pandora (P) should open and rise today. It’s another “sliver” offering — only 9% of the company is being offered to the public.

Another credit card, another discount. I don’t get it. I bought a nice jacket at Brooks Brothers. They gave me a 15% discount if I applied for their credit card. I did. If I don’t pay the card off instantly (if not sooner), I’ll pay them 22.99% a year interest.

I’ll pay off the balance, scissors the card and never use it again. Nice $44.70 discount for doing absolutely nothing. I don’t understand retailing.

Looking at money raises. I’m a part-time, unpaid advisor to a boutique New York investment bank. We raise money for deserving companies — many of them. The investment bank hasn’t given me their checklist, because bringing my own is probably (?) useful. Here’s my simple Checklist For Assessing a Company:

1. It should have something proprietary. That doesn’t mean it should have a cure for cancer or an ironclad patent over electricity.  But it should have something that makes it different from its thousand or so competitors. “Better service” doesn’t cut it.

2. It should have something that excites. My ageing brain still gets  excited. I still buy things. I spent an hour on the couch with Rosie last night while we read my new Kindle’s instruction book.  (More about the Kindle in a moment.)

3. Its product should be scalable.  That’s a key word — scalable. You should be able to grow it worldwide. Hopefully galaxy wide.

4. Management should be talented, young, hungry, polite, lean and charismatic. They should also listen.  They should have a Vision for their company. They should excite me. As a business reporter, I’ve met thousands of execs. I can tell the good ones from the bad ones in about 30 seconds. You can too. Listen to Bill Gates. Listen to Steve Ballmer. Yuch.

5. The valuation of the company should be reasonable. Which means I like to get a “deal.” But I can be (and have been) sold on an expensive deal. The reason for taking my money should be plausible. There’s something weird about a guy worth $200 million trying to raise $30 million. Of course, he’s had three divorces. I do understand half of a half of a half. I’m not big on executives who make regular blunders in their personal life — unless I get invited to regular and extravagant weddings in exotic places.

6. I like to see management with sales skills. There aren’t many. If I were trying to raise money, I’d bring “Wow” into the conference room — everything but the dancing girls. If I see another PowerPoint which begins with when the company was formed I’ll puke.

Amazon has something up its sleeve. You can highlight passages in books you read on the Kindle. Amazon collects those highlighted passages and ships them inside the ebooks it sells and sends to customers. The passages are usually most interesting.  One day Amazon will announce a social networking business focusing on book topics. A world-wide book club. Amazon knows a lot about its customers and what their interests are. i wouldn’t buy books on bomb making from Amazon.

My new Kindle cost $114. For this cheap price I agree to see occasional, allegedly non-intrusive offers and deals. I haven’t seen any yet.

Harry Newton who is enjoying trying to photograph the family’s new addition. This is Puppy Rosie sleeping on her Wee-Wee pad this morning. She’s sleeping as I write. She’s my biggest fan.

Rosie is a Havanese. Her breed was popular in Havana. Castro used to kill them because he thought they ate scarce food.