Finance Trends Letter

Here's a look at some charts shared recently on Chart.ly and StockTwits. Think of it as a quick follow up to our Steve Jobs and Bill Gates post from last Friday, looking back on 30 years of technology innovation. The long view of Apple: monthly chart of AAPL stock price dating back to 1984. That's shortly after the Mac was introduced ( click to enlarge chart ). The following chart shows a comparison of Apple and Microsoft's share performance from 1986 (the year MSFT went public) to 2011.  On this timeframe, MSFT trounces AAPL from the early 1990s on to the dot.com bubble peak.  Still, Apple shares gain momentum in the 2000s, finishing the 25 year period with a more than 15,000% gain. Microsoft achieved a 25,000% gain in its stock price for the same period (down from its 1999 peak near the 50,000% mark).  Finally, we see the same two stocks measured from 1997, the year of Steve Jobs' return to the company he co-founded. The second act of Jobs at App...

So this week's resignation announcement from Steve Jobs has many of us looking back through the archives, compiling old interviews and articles, and summarizing the accomplishments of Apple and its iconic co-founder.  It's prompted me to look back not only at what Steve and Apple have done in the past 30-plus years, but what the tech industry as a whole has created in that time. We're all familiar with the stories of famous rivalries and stolen (or "borrowed"/cheaply purchased) technologies in the PC and software industries. It hasn't always been pretty. It's quite interesting then, to find two of the tech industry's most famous sparring partners (and sometimes, business venture partners), Steve Jobs and Bill Gates , sharing a stage and chatting about their careers in this D5 (All Things Digital, 2007) conference panel interview.  The panel discussion begins when the two great entrepreneurs are asked to describe the other's impact on ...

New to the Scribd trading books collection, John James Butler's, Successful Stock Speculation (1922).  I was introduced to this short handbook on investing and speculation through Michael Bigger , who created an appended version of Butler's book with his own summary notes called, In Praise of Speculation .  I'm just starting Butler's book, but I find his introductory notes quite useful in clearly defining the meaning and purpose of that now mistreated term (and misunderstood activity), "speculation".  Butler defines the act of speculating as follows:  "To speculate is to theorize about something that is uncertain. We can speculate about anything that is uncertain, but we use the word "speculation" in this book with particular reference to the buying and selling of stocks and bonds for the purpose of making a profit.  When people buy stocks and bonds for the income they get from them and the amount of that income is fixed, they are ...

Entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban recently chatted with Alan Murray at the Wall St. Journal about investing, entrepreneurship, job creation and innovation, patent trolls, and the NBA.  Mark kicks things off on a frank and "controversial" note by stating up front his belief that, "buy and hold is a crock of shit" , and the idea that one should be almost fully invested in the markets at all times is similarly bunk. As Cuban puts it: "Unless you really have a commitment to something, just keep your money in cash - knowing that at some point in time there's going to be a week or two like we've had [recent volatility and stock market plunge]." Mark explicitly states that these are his times to look for opportunity in the market, and implicit in his statements are a belief in the value of market timing and his own ability to find relative bargains in the capital markets. He likes to find things that are cheap, but is not se...

In the week that's passed since our last post , the stock market decline deepened, Standard & Poor's downgraded the US' debt from AAA to AA+, several European countries enacted a short-selling ban, and many stocks were taken to the cleaners.  Of course, after declining 16 percent in 3 weeks (from 1,340 to 1,120 on the S&P 500), the US market has seen a bit of a relief rally the past few days.  Still, it's been very tough to find names that didn't get hit hard in this market. Which is why the relative strength in a stock like Caribou Coffee (CBOU), which not only held up but is making new highs, is impressive.  Here's a view of CBOU vs. the Nasdaq Composite index. You can see how the stock has held up during the index's recent decline.  While the action in CBOU looks good and it's earned a place on the watch list, I'm still proceeding with caution here. Anything can happen in a volatile news-driven market like this, and we've see...

"The worst thing you can do when you're having a hard time is flail. In trading, when there is nothing to do, the best thing to do is nothing." - Scott Bessent (Bessent Capital).  Well, the damage is already done for those who were heavily long heading into this week's market decline.  I look at the S&P 500 component data on freestockcharts.com and see that only 3 stocks in that index were up today. We saw a -4.78% decline in the S&P to go along with that. Here's an updated chart that shows the recent breakdown below the 1312 line we've fluctuated around in recent months. There's been a lot of whipsaw in this news driven market of late, and it doesn't seem like the recent deficit/debt ceiling deal reached by Congress has quieted things much. Even gold and silver got whacked today. But just look at all that money piling into Treasury bonds. At a time like this, perhaps it's best to step aside and watch the action from the sidelin...

Charlie Rose interviews hedge fund manager, Barton Biggs (Traxis Partners) for an episode which aired on March 9, 2009.  Yes, that was also the exact day the S&P 500 put in its bottom at the 666 mark, amidst more economic gloom than some of us had ever seen.  Thought it would be interesting to revisit this interview, and while I still don't agree with much of what Barton and Charlie said about the "need" for certain bailout measures and monetary stimulus, it is quite instructive to hear the discussion that took place at this particular moment in time (some might say this is real market and economic history you're watching).  Note that Biggs is rather bullish on stocks in the interview, which, in hindsight, was the right thing to be up to this point. Of course, the two year bull move in shares we've witnessed has been helped along by holding interest rates at historically low levels and employing "quantitative easing" programs designed to ke...