{"id":11806,"date":"2012-02-22T09:05:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T14:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=11806"},"modified":"2012-02-22T09:59:38","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T14:59:38","slug":"the-silly-season-has-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=11806","title":{"rendered":"The Silly Season Has Started"},"content":{"rendered":"

The market goes up. They come out of the woodwork. Startups with absurd valuations. Startups with geriatric CEOs, who are even older than I am. Startups requiring small amounts of money — maybe $250,000 — but the CEO can’t write a check on his personal bank account. He’s having a divorce, again.<\/p>\n

It excites me when the CEO is 27. It’s legitimate that he has no money. But a 67-year old with no money? Something is wrong. You can’t become an entrepreneur when you ‘re 67. You were one when you were 27. Or you were not.<\/p>\n

Sorry for this rant.Be wary.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0 startups come out of the woodwork, so the brokers. My favorite line: “Last year was a transformational year for XYZ Corporation.”<\/p>\n

Second favorite line, “We’re accumulating a major position in XYZ Corporation in anticipation of a major runup.”<\/p>\n

Yup and pigs will fly, once again.<\/p>\n

Meredith Whitney talked about continuing global delveraging. Hence stay away from banks. She’s right.<\/p>\n

But mortgage REITs — NLY, MITT, TWO and AGNC — continue to do well.<\/p>\n

RIMM is now advertising the BlackBerry Bold.<\/p>\n

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The advertisement’s punchline? “Be Bold.” You gotta be kidding me that that’s the limit of Research In Motion’s creativity. Be Bold. The world’s worst tag line. Compare RIMM to Apple’s stylist advertising.<\/p>\n

And down RIMM goes:<\/p>\n

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Car Rentals revisited:<\/strong><\/span> My friend Dan Critchett says the best way to get cheap car rental is to use Priceline<\/a><\/strong>. Bid $25 a day<\/p>\n

Donuts at Dunkin.<\/strong><\/span> A traditional cchocolate frosted donut with sprinkles 290 calorie. But a coffee cake muffin, which they also sell, has a magnificent 630<\/strong> calories. These numbers from the Dunkin Donuts store in the JetBlue terminal at Kennedy.<\/p>\n

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Don’t bother seeing Safe House. <\/strong>It’s a predictable, over-violent chase movie, with Denzel Washington playing what he does best — play Denzel Washington. Waste of money.<\/span>
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Favorite recent New Yorkers cartoons.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Harry Newton who’s short both RIMM and RadioShack and is thinking about shorting Dell as well.<\/p>\n

If you ever negotiate a commercial mortgage, watch out for stupendous prepayment penalty. It can esly be one-third the value of the loan. There are usually no pre-payment penalties on residential mortgages. But do check.<\/p>\n


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The market goes up. They come out of the woodwork. Startups with absurd valuations. Startups with geriatric CEOs, who are even older than I am. Startups requiring small amounts of money — maybe $250,000 — but the CEO can’t write a check on his personal bank account. He’s having a divorce, again. It excites me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}