Turmoil in the Japanese Markets
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 18th, 2006 at 5:27 am

Volatility has finally returned, but not here—in Japan. The Japanese Nikkei 225 Index (^N225) got slammed for the second straight day. On Tuesday, the index fell 2.8%. Then it fell another 2.9% on Wednesday. Today’s session was cut short due to a surge of transactions.

Happy 300th Birthday Benjamin Franklin
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 17th, 2006 at 1:04 pm

The ulitmate buy-and-hold investor:

At his death, Franklin bequeathed £1000 (about $4400 at the time) each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, in trust for 200 years. The origin of the trust began in 1785 when a French mathematician named Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour wrote a parody of Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack called Fortunate Richard. In it he mocked the unbearable spirit of American optimism represented by Franklin. The Frenchman wrote a piece about Fortunate Richard leaving a small sum of money in his will to be used only after it had collected interest for 500 years. Franklin, who was 79 years old at the time, wrote back to the Frenchman, thanking him for a great idea and telling him that he had decided to leave a bequest of 1,000 pounds each to his native Boston and his adopted Philadelphia, on the condition that it be placed in a fund that would gather interest over a period of 200 years. As of 1990, over $2,000,000 had accumulated in Franklin’s Philadelphia trust since his death. During the lifetime of the trust, Philadelphia used it for a variety of loan programs to local residents. From 1940 to 1990, the money was used mostly for mortgage loans. When the trust came due, Philadelphia decided to spend it on scholarships for local high school students. Franklin’s Boston trust fund accumulated almost $5,000,000 during that same time, and eventually was used to establish a trade school that, over time, became the Franklin Institute of Boston.

Pretty cool.

Boston Scientific Strikes Back
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 17th, 2006 at 10:10 am

$80 a share for Guidant (GDT).
BSX has pushed all its chips to the center of the table. They’re also getting help from Abbott Labs (ABT).
Here’s the press release, and here’s a timeline of the Guidant War from the beginning.

The Gold Rush of 2006
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 17th, 2006 at 7:35 am

Another reason why I’m not a gold bull: Higher prices mean more exploration.
It’s always been this way. The panic of 1893 and the Free Silver candidacy of William Jennings Bryan were eventually defeated. Not by President McKinley (or his political advisor Mark Hanna, whom Karl Rove greatly admires), but by the discovery of gold in the Klondike.

A Short Squeeze at Hansen Natural
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 17th, 2006 at 7:13 am

Last week, I discussed Hansen Natural (HANS). The stock is up over 50-fold in three years. Nearly one out of every four shares is currently being shorted. That’s astounding. A whole bunch of those shorts got “squeezed” last week.
Reuters profiles the company:

The stock of the No. 2 energy drink maker behind Austria-based Red Bull GmbH emerged as the clear winner on the Standard & Poor’s 1500 index, rising 333 percent in 2005 with an average daily share volume of more than 1 million shares.
“There’s no exact science or answer as to why we have been successful,” the South-African born Sacks told Reuters. “What we did to make ourselves different was we created an aggressive personality and in-your-face image for the brand.”

Privacy Advocates Are Concerned with Search Engine Maps
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 17th, 2006 at 6:04 am

Here’s another article about the map technology from search engines. Privacy advocates aren’t happy with the level of detail that users can see.
Google Earth is simply jaw-dropping. If you haven’t done so, I encourage you to download it. I was able to zoom in on the infields of several major league baseball stadiums.

The Scooba Robot
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 17th, 2006 at 5:39 am

iRobot’s (IRBT) vacuuming robot was a hit. Now they’re pinning their hopes on Scooba—a floor-cleaning robot:

Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot is hoping to have the kind of success with Scooba that it had with the Roomba. It has sold more than 1.5 million Roombas since the product debuted in 2002.
“It’s going to be a fun year for us,” said iRobot Chief Executive Colin Angle, “as we start to get another product under our belt launched and continue on our quest to make robots a mainstream new industry.”
To get the word out about its household robots, iRobot is funding a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign called “I Love Robots.” The campaign includes TV ads featuring real customers talking about why they love their Roombas and showing the robots at work in their homes.

Pretty cool. I’ll hold off getting one, though. My luck, I’d get some insane HAL-wannabe robot that would turn against me. Just to be safe, I’ll wait till all the kinks are worked out. You never know.

Apple is Now Bigger than Dell
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 17th, 2006 at 5:22 am

Recently, I ordered a new laptop from Dell (DELL). A few days later, a small brown box arrived. I thought “man, these laptops are getting tiny.” Then I was terrified that there might be “some assembly required.” Let’s just say that outside of gin and tonic, I don’t assemble well.
Turns out, it was a free Dell iPod which I got as part of the order. The laptop came the next day.
Just to show you the power of the Apple (AAPL) brand, I don’t even know what the Dell electronic musical device machine is called. Me? I’m calling it my Dell iPod. I think “iPod” is now the generic name as well as a brand name. As the proud owner of many shares of Dell, I have to concede that this thing is the hydrox of the industry.
Well yesterday, the UPS (UPS) guy shows up and gives me another small brown box. Lucky day! I rip it open (like I’m 12) and Ameritrade (AMTD) sent me a video iPod!
How cool is that? In no time, I went from being an iPodless American to having two iPods. Both un-frickin-expected!! I’m now a multiPod! A wePod?
I have a non-iPod iPod and a real iPod iPod.
Make that, a real VIDEO iPod.
(Update: Um…anyone how to work a video iPod? As a long-standing principle, I refuse to read directions. Ah..I’ll figure it out.)
I’m not sure why Ameritrade sent it to me. Something about a deposit. I use the service, but truthfully, I think their interface can be a bit confusing. (Yeah, I know…directions.)
Coincidentally, last week Apple Computer passed Dell in market value. Steve Jobs enjoyed a nice little in-your-face moment:

In 1997, shortly after Mr. Jobs returned to Apple, the company he helped start in 1976, Dell’s founder and chairman, Michael S. Dell, was asked at a technology conference what might be done to fix Apple, then deeply troubled financially.
“What would I do?” Mr. Dell said to an audience of several thousand information technology managers. “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
On Friday, apparently savoring the moment, Mr. Jobs sent a brief e-mail message to Apple employees, which read: “Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn’t perfect at predicting the future. Based on today’s stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.”

Michael Dell shouldn’t feel too bad. According to Forbes, his personal fortune stands at $16 billion.

Earnings Calendar
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 16th, 2006 at 10:59 pm

Fourth-quarter earnings season is about to start. Here’s a calendar for our stocks on the Buy List. Not all of the companies have said when they’re going to report, but I’ll update this as more info becomes available.

MLK Day
Posted by Eddy Elfenbein on January 16th, 2006 at 12:22 pm

The stock market is closed today on honor of Dr. Martin Luther King. He would have turned 77 yesterday.
Here’s his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” To quote Keith Burgess-Jackson, “If this letter doesn’t move you to tears, you aren’t wired properly.”
I found a copy of the letter via Wikipedia. If you’re not familiar with Wikpedia, it’s an open source Web encyclopedia. Anyone can jump in and edit it. Recently, The New York Times reported that the entry for John Seigenthaler Sr., a former aide to Robert Kennedy, contained “defamatory content.” The entry was fixed, but on Wikipedia, you never know what you’re going to see.
Here’s part of the Wiki entry for Martin Luther King:

The March on Washington
King and SCLC, in partial collaboration with SNCC, then attempted to organize a march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, for March 25, 1963. The first attempt to march on March 7, was aborted due to mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day since has become known as Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the Civil Rights Movement, the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King’s nonviolence strategy. King, however, was not present. After meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson, he had attempted to delay the march until March 8, but the march was carried out against his wishes and without his presence by local civil rights workers. The footage of the police brutality against the protestors was broadcast extensively across the nation and aroused a national sense of public outrage.
The second attempt at the march on March 9 was ended when King stopped the procession at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma, an action which he seemed to have negotiated with city leaders beforehand. This unexpected action aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement. The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, with the agreement and support of President Johnson, and it was during this march that Willie Ricks coined the phrase “Black Power” (widely credited to Stokely Carmichael).
King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called “Big Six” civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were: Roy Wilkins, NAACP; Whitney Young, Jr., Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). For King, this role was another which courted controversy, as he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march. Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation, but the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.
The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the South and a very public opportunity to place organizers’ concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation’s capital. Organizers intended to excoriate and then challenge the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks, generally, in the South. However, the group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone.

That’s not correct. The march from Selma to Montgomery happened in 1965, not 1963. The text refers to Lyndon Johnson as being president, but that didn’t happen until that November.
I like Wikipedia, but it’s always good to remember that you can trust everything you see on the Web.