{"id":13117,"date":"2012-05-17T09:05:52","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T13:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=13117"},"modified":"2012-05-17T09:09:51","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T13:09:51","slug":"when-they-become-cockroach-stocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=13117","title":{"rendered":"When they become Cockroach stocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cockroach stocks:<\/p>\n

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From today’s New York Times:<\/p>\n

“JP Morgan’s loss has surged past its initial estimate of $2 billion, and is now at $3 billion. Hedge funds believe the bank is stuck in a position that it can’t unwind from and they’re betting against it.”<\/p>\n

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Companies with no reason, any longer, to exist:<\/p>\n

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When things go awry for a company, ask yourself:<\/p>\n

1. Is this cockroach material — i.e. unusual stuff. Not related to normal business?<\/p>\n

2. Does this company have any long-term reason to stay in business? What’s its “special schtick” it’s contributing to the world? Walk into a Radio Shack or Best Buy store and ask yourself is there anything to buy here I can’t buy cheaper elsewhere, like from Amazon?<\/p>\n

3. Is this company’s press turning sour? For a while there, Apple could do no wrong in the nation’s press and blogs. Then suddenly, the stories turned sour and so did Apple’s stock:<\/p>\n

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Apple is the classic case history of where a stop loss and subscribing to the free Google Alerts protects your tushy. Don’t even think about buying Apple here. Don’t catch a falling knife is another one of my key investment rules.<\/p>\n

P.S. I have solved my AT&T Apple 4’s total lack of speed by pairing it with a Verizon MiFi which does 4G\/LTE in most big cities.<\/p>\n

Facebook prices this evening.<\/strong><\/span> If you applied for stock, make sure you get on tonight and confirm your purchase, miserable though it may be. There’s frenzy and there’s skepticism. From today’s New York Times:<\/p>\n

Despite the overwhelming level of interest, Facebook is facing fresh concerns over its ability to attract enough advertising revenue to justify that stratospheric valuation. On Tuesday, General Motors, the third-largest advertiser in the country, shut down its Facebook budget, about $10 million, saying that those ads were simply not doing enough to sell automobiles.<\/p>\n

For Facebook, the loss of $10 million is not a big deal. The company generated $3.7 billion of revenue last year, 85 percent from advertising.<\/p>\n

But the loss underlines the company’s need to convince a skeptical Madison Avenue that Facebook pages are the perfect vehicle for marketers and to convince eager investors that it can increase its advertising revenue, and quickly.<\/p>\n

“It’s one of the most powerful branding mechanisms in the world, but it’s not an advertising mechanism,” said Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, the giant advertising agency.<\/p>\n

Do not buy Facebook in the aftermarket.<\/p>\n

The dollar is skyrocketing, because the Europe is falling. <\/strong>Europe is a fixable mess — if it had politicians with guts, not promises. Latest option I’m hearing: Germany will leave <\/span><\/span>the Euro and leave the rest of them to flounder. I don’t recommend shorting the Euro, though it has clearly become a cockroach currency. Take a vacation in Europe this summer. It will be cheap, especially if you bargain with every hotel.<\/p>\n

Customers of the major Spanish bank Bankia have withdrawn over \u20ac1 billion from the bank in the past week. The stock was off 20 percent this morning.\u00a0 There will be an increasing run on weak European banks, which have now become cockroach stocks. Bring your Euros to the U.S. change them into dollars and buy my son’s New York apartment, which he’s no longer using, having moved to Portland.<\/p>\n

Gold is plumeting.<\/strong><\/span> I don’t know why gold has fallen so dramatically. Gold is meant to be a fallback, when other things go bad. But this time it hasn’t. I’m guessing demand for it has fallen off in Asia where much of the demand for gold comes from.<\/p>\n

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My stop loss rule got me out of gold. I’m not getting back in until I see a turnaround and a real reason for the turnaround.<\/p>\n

The movie Avengers sucks. <\/strong><\/span>I walked out after 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/strong><\/div>\n

Harry Newton who eyes New York’s blue skies and lack of pollen this morning with great love. Hayfever has moved on. My friend in Portland has allergies really bad. Sorry, Matt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cockroach stocks: From today’s New York Times: “JP Morgan’s loss has surged past its initial estimate of $2 billion, and is now at $3 billion. Hedge funds believe the bank is stuck in a position that it can’t unwind from and they’re betting against it.” Companies with no reason, any longer, to exist: When things […]<\/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-13117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13117","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=13117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}