Lance Wiggs

Well done Stuffies - winning again at the Netguide awards. Best Home PAge, Best Media site and Supreme Winner - a fantastic haul. Meanwhile Trade Me captured Best Trading Site (shock, horror) and best Real Estate Site.

Interestingly Facebook went over the top of Bebo for best social netwokring site. Are Bebo’s days numbered, or do teenage girls not vote in the Net guide awards - the second I’d say.

Funny how I can’t find any other reference to the awards - NZHerald? Netguide??

It’s a certified Real Estate bust market, and you are a “successful property investor”. Do you:

A: do nothing - you got out long ago, when the signs were there.

B: frantically sell out of the remaining “investment” properties you own

C: What there’s a bust?

D: Start a property magazine and website.

Since this is a blog post, the answer is of course D: Start a Property magazine and website.

Dumb move or inspired genius? Stick around for 10 years and we’ll know.

In the short term the 3 page “cool and convenient” website, early PR, and promised advertising campaign smells a little of reek of big money being directed against the proverbial wall.

Meanwhile giants Fairfax, NZHerald and Property Press are not exactly sitting on their hands, while online Trade Me Property and RealEstate.co.nz have carved up the market nicely.

Good luck chaps

Dubai and Burger Fuel

No they have not conquered New Zealand yet

No they have not successfully demonstrated that they can enter Australia

No there is not conceivable explanation why they are choosing Dubai, which is not a sleepy market.

But enter Dubai they have. I guess someone had money to burn.

Crazy or Ballsy? Ben has more .

Bugger - Microsoft has withdrawn from the Yahoo takeover offer. Microsoft upped the price to $33 per share (from $29 odd), which was a $5 billion increase. Yahoo said “no thanks - we want $37 per share” and so Mirosfot walked away.

On Monday, US time, expect:

Yahoo’s shares to fall - and pretty far

Microsoft’s shares to rise, if not immediately, then over time..

In the next weeks we can expect some aggressive lawsuits from lawyers representing Yahoo shareholders, and some  relieved Yahoo employees and executives.

After that it would not be surprising to see round 2.0 - with Microsoft coming back with another offer.

It was always a bad combination in business terms, but in financial terms the Yahoo board has just committed a cardinal sin - walking away from an offer that valued the company at substantially more than it is worth. They really have opened them and their insurers up for a mammoth lawsuit from shareholders, and it is hard to see a plausible defense.

Why “bugger” when the deal made no sense to customers? Because I’m short Microsoft shares - betting that they will fall. I thought that Ballmer would stick it out. However we should remember that Ballmer is a pretty good game theory practitioner, and so much more could happen.

As Jim mentions, Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway is involved in a $23bn deal where Mars is buying Wrigley. Mars is $22bn and Wrigley $5bn in annual sales, so while big this isn’t a huge swallow for Mars, and both companies are well run and run on a brand basis, so merging should be ok.

There are two other things interesting about this deal.

Firstly, while it is no surprise that Wrigley is a classic Buffet company - a massive recession proof brand, we also know that privately held Mars is another. The proposal is for Wrigley to be a subsidiary of Mars while Buffet takes a minority shareholding - $2.1bn worth at a discounted price. Is this a way for Buffet to start playing with Mars? Where could this lead?

Secondly Berkshire Hathaway’s role is to bring  (2nd tier) subordinated debt to the table - which is a nice way to raise money in an environment where the traditional funders are running scared. The WSJ mentions that Goldman and JP Morgan are also involved in the financing, but are we going to see more Buffet cash floating around as debt?

A brilliant move for Blockbuster - Blockbuster’s business is dying, while Circuit city is in retail - which always has some sort of future. If Blockbuster can raise the money from markets that do not realise their business model is dead, then good on them for exiting a bad situation early.

Ignore the rhetoric.

The combination of Blockbuster and Circuit City will result in an $18 billion retail enterprise uniquely positioned for the convergence of media content and electronic devices

It reminds me of the AOL-TimeWarner deal. AOL cashed out by buying old media, which had lasting rather than AOL’s ethereal  value.

If you were following the comments on a previous post, you may have noticed an arcane commentary about “Vertical” documents versus “Horizontal” documents.

It’s consulting gobbledegook, but the differences between vertical and horizontal documents are important. Our friends at the NZ Institute are a bunch of consulting refugees, and their output will serve as good examples of the difference in formats.

Here is a horizontal document: (the broadband report)

Horizontal documents are word, data and diagram packed powerpoint slides - aimed at being used in a small setting, for being written on and for pushing thinking along. They are the notes for a conversation, where the clients and consultants fill in the gaps.

And here is a vertical document. (the NZ emissions report)

Vertical documents are horizontal documents with the words filled in. Notice the charts and tables in the above - they are pulled directly from a horizontal predecessor to this written document. It’s a much higher quality piece of work as a result, worthy of serious contemplation.

It is much harder to write a good vertical document than a horizontal one, as the writing needs to be incredibly structured as well as readable.

The same high standard of logic applies to the horizontals, but for the verticals you also need to fill in the gaps of logic, and bring out examples and evidence that support (or counter) your case.

However - it’s much faster to read the horizontal deck, and they are much better to quickly engage people with. You do need to maintain a conversation though, to make up for the lack of detail.

The art of the vertical is a disappearing one in consulting-land, which is a real shame, but it does mean clients and consultants spend less on writing up and more on the thinking, which is what they are there to do.

However as someone that has worked both sides of the fence I’ve at times been absolutely appalled at what consultants have left behind. Sadly I cannot name names or clients, but I’ve seen some shockers.

So these days I try not to leave anything at all behind, especially in powerpoint form. Consultants are infamous for advising and then leaving, and while that’s enjoyable for the intellectual challenge, it is much more rewarding to stay the course and see the results come from the clients themselves.

If you must retain a consultant and if you must want a report - insist on a vertical, and be critical on the quality - hand it to people that were not involved in the project and ask them whether it makes sense before you sign off on it.

Wheat, sugar and rice, along with “certain paper products” those are the items that will remain subject to tarrifs when we export them to China. They represent about 4% of our exports to China, so not a bad outcome.

All three grains are subject to some pretty serious subsidization and quota-driven distortions in the world markets, and we are not serious contenders in the field. So forget about it - let the USA and Europe carry on paying their farmers billions to grow uneconomic wheat and protect from cane sugar imports. This does deprive the developing world of huge export markets for their otherwise competitive farm proucts, but that is a different war.

Overall I’m impressed with the deal - pretty straightforward lowering of barriers and some cultural exchange (working holidays and the like) built in. No horrilbe DCMA copyright provisions, no distorting pseudo free trade - this is pretty close to a good as it gets, though dairy products will take until 2017-2019 and wool is subject to a quota.

Well done to both China and NZ’s negotiators.

The rules of origin seem to be pretty fair - a lot of “change to heading xxx from any other chapter”, by product, which I interpret as meaning that  if a country makes a product from sub product parts that came from elsewhere then it is still duty free.

But what of the human rights, I hear squealing from the left?

Well, another way to look at that question is to ask a similar question: do we believe that the USA should remove their distorting sugar quotas (that keep Cuba’s producers down), trade embargo and travel barriers to Cuba?

Of course they should - engagement is the best way to help another country move forward, and by being open with China we are able to help them welcome them to the world.

And besides - do we really think we, the last decent sized habitable land discovered by humans, can tell a 6000 year old civilisation, land of 1.3 billion, how to behave?

I think not - we punch above our weight, but they are in another game entirely

I’m reading Stiglitz and Bilmes’ new book - The Three Trillion Dollar War. It sets out to show the cost to the USA of the Iraq war, and they go to lengths to be conservative in their calculations (the end number goes over $5bn, but I have not got there yet).

But that’s not the issue here. The authors mention en passant that:

Both scenarios predict that medical health care inflation will continue to increase at double the rate of general inflation, as it has for decades

I smell bad forecasting - Nobel prize (economics prize) winning Stiglitz is using standard projections for the cost increases, assuming that the future will be the same as the past.

as anyone offering securities for sale will tell you, past performance is no indicator of future returns. Or as I like to put it, when something is too good to be true, it isn’t.

With health care costs rising at a much greater rate then everything around, then the point of absurdity will be reached where health care costs subsume everything else. In reality things do not work that way, and the market is begging for a discontinuity to “fix” things.

So, in 2004 the USA spent 15.3% of its GDP on health care, rising from just 7% in the 1970. The CMS forecasts that the trend will continue, and we’ll see 20% GDP share, or $3.5 trillion dollars, or $12,300 per person, by 2015. That chart in the linked pdf just keeps rising, implying 30% in another 10 years beyond 2015.

That’s crazy, and it  reeks of opportunity.

While we do not know how and when, any number that big is begging for someone in a garage to reinvent the system. Medical doctors have moved from amongst the most highly paid in society to solidly middle class, while their prestige has also taken a hit. The money appears to go to hospital care, physician and clinical services, big Pharma, and so forth,  but the US health insurance industry and others are responsible for a tremendous amount of waste on the way through - 26% of costs are admin, versus 3-5% in France. Those big players are fat, happy and dicing with people’s lives - perfect targets for a discontinuity.

So - what are we waiting for? Here are 10 ideas for governments to pursue:

1. Shift massively to preventative health care programs, which cost a lot less and are much more effective.
2. Deregulate the pharmacy industry, removing the need for prescriptions for the top 80% of drugs. This will reduce the need to go to the doctor for simple cases, reduce admin costs and allow for proper online pharmacies. The entire “third world” operates this way, which is why I now do not stock up on drugs when I travel, but just buy then for pennies when I am there.
3. Reduce the length of time that patents apply to newly invested drugs to one year. This will vastly reduce the cost of drugs as generic companies can get drugs to consumers orders of magnitude cheaper. Most new drugs, especially in dollar terms, are lifestyle rather than health drugs (think Viagra), anyway, so ignore the plaintive cries of big pharma who claim all development will stop.
4. Nationalise health care in the USA - the current private system is woefully wasteful and misses vast sections of the population.
5. Remove the industry barriers to certifying doctors and other medical professionals that qualify in other countries and jurisdictions.
6. Remove mandatory FDA or similar testing of drugs, but mandate labeling. The FDA approval process adds years and huge amounts of cost to drug development. Allow companies to sell non-approved experimental drugs under the proviso that patients accept all risk, and that they pass basic “no obvious harm” tests. FDA approval should still exist, but would be instead a gold-stamp for safe drugs. This would reduce the development and retail costs of drugs, and allow the market to decide for themselves which drugs are the best
7. Promote and pay for better food, better fitness, safer roads, (e.g. autonomous vehicles) and other basic life expectancy increasing efforts.
8. Legalise and tax all “illicit” drugs, with the tax revenues going to rehab and medical costs
9. Legalise and simply implement voluntary euthanasia, reducing care costs for the terminally ill.
10. Legalize of sale of body parts such as kidneys, provided certain conditions are met (i.e, ensuring there is no extortion etc.). This will reduce waiting time, and carrying costs, for transplant recipients to essentially zero.

and some science fiction for the private sector - some of which may be more likely in the USA than some of the the politically unpalatable choices above. Actually none of these are beyond reason in the medium term, there is plenty of work on elements of each

1. a DIY doctor kit that lets you perform most basic medical and surgical tasks
2. a “doctor in the house” unit that will diagnose and fix almost all medical problems, right down to intensive surgical techniques. Simply install the unit, keep it stocked up and make sure each family member pops into it once a week for a check-up.
3. Genetic modification - both before birth/conception and during life. Pop a pill and there goes that male pattern baldness, oh, and that nasty predisposition to cancer.

It’s pretty obvious that a better offer for Yahoo is not out there, as Microsoft has the wonderful combination of being cash-rich and desperate - and can outbid anyone else out there.

But Yahoo directors do not want to lay with the lumbering giant.

So this week Microsoft first whispered that the offer may be lowered, then had an eventless meeting with Yahoo, and finally then gave an ultimatum to Yahoo directors to play nice or they will start a proxy fight, and at a lower price:

The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.

A proxy fight is an expensive and bruising messy endeavour - which has its own set of strange rules. Basically Microsoft gets to send documents and market to every Yahoo shareholder, aiming to usurp the Yahoo board and put in their own candidates that will recommend the deal goes ahead. Each shareholder gets to choose between taking the money and rejecting the suitor, and Yahoo’s board also markets to the shareholders.

The fiduciary duty of a board of directors is to maximize value of a company to it’s shareholders. Microsoft’s approach is clever - if they win the proxy battle, which they will as it is a simple financial decison for investors, then the Directors can be blamed for the loss in value between the current offer and the reduced offer that Microsoft is threatening would occur in that hostile takeover. If Microsoft lose the proxy battle, then the directors are even more exposed.

The Directors could go to jail for that, but more realistically they are exposing themselves and Yahoo to a class action suit from angry shareholders - there are plenty of lawyers out there that will want to do this.

Last word to Steve Ballmer:

It is unfortunate that by choosing not to enter into substantive negotiations with us, you have failed to give due consideration to a transaction that has tremendous benefits for Yahoo!’s shareholders and employees. We think it is critically important not to let this window of opportunity pass.

So you lose a $35 billion deal to a competitor that you have been keeping away from your major customer for years. What do you do?

Well if you are Boeing, the customer is the US Government (Airforce), the competitor is Airbus and the product is refueling tankers, then you start a blog.

and launch an advertising campaign.

and protest the tender process.

While Boeing can depend on getting some support from local Americans that want the local provider versus the “French” Airbus, in reality the situation is a lot more nuanced. Both competitors are really global companies now - Boeing has outsourced much of its manufacturing to Asia, while Airbus will set up manufacturing in the USA for this deal.

Boeing are risking a lot by officially protesting this decision. If they lose then their reputation is damaged, and if they win then the buyers and users will forever remember that they are getting the second pick. There’s a smell of sour grapes to the whole affair, but perhaps Boeing is being smart by letting the US Government buyers know that they will make it tough for anyone that chooses a foreign competitor.

The comments on the blog are interesting - ranging from the barely articulate to the surprisingly informed.  Here’s one:

Bill Parson (Colorado Springs):

I write to express disappointment at Boeing’s decision to protest.

1. The Air Force asked for a tanker between 300,000 and 1 million pounds gross weight.

2. The Air Force in it’s RPF stated that they would award to the contractor who “met or exceeded the requirements.”

3. The Air Force in its RFP stated this was a capabilities-based, best value competition

4. Northrop Grumman offered more for the same price.

5. Why did Boeing tout:
- Made in America
- Jobs
- Fuel Savings
- Size

None of these were AF requirements?

….

and here’s another:

Paul Jernberg (Michigan):

I too am dismayed by the recent Air Force bid competition. Again the USAF appears to be buying something bigger than what they need or started out looking for (KC30) they also changed the rules of the competition in mid-stream. I also do not understand how/why Northrop was allowed to design the program that the USAF used to make their decision. I think maybe Mr. McCain should start an investigation into wrong doing by Northrop in this case.

I have spoken with the staff of our State Senator, MR. Levin (chairman of the arms committee), they have assured me that he is watching the GAO review very closely and will step in to do what is necessary if he feels the GAO does not respond in the appropriate manner.

Do not give up the fight, this is much too important.

Paul

Kudos to Boeing for putting up the blog and allowing comments to flourish.  Dangerous, but well done to open the conversation.

There is plenty of other commentary online - including pro-Boeing Tanker War Blog run by DC insiders and lobbyists,  Wired’s Danger Room has a great post and the WSJ has an article - which mentions the history that the Boeing blogs conveniently forget to mention:

The decision sparked outrage among Boeing’s supporters in Congress, as well as criticism for Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, who led the fight to scuttle a previous deal that would have given Boeing the contract without a competition. That deal was doomed in part because it was later learned that a Boeing official had engaged in illegal employment negotiations with an Air Force procurement official who played a role in setting up the contract. 

Most of the financial commentary seems to indicate that Boeing has no chance - but like everything in DC, this is political, and anything can happen.

The “new way” of presenting seems to be diffusing pretty rapidly through the high tech/web communities, with some industries having seen the back of death by powerpoint bullets.

There isn’t really a “new way” - it’s just that people are beginning to really care about how they present.  The “new way” is really just “anything but the old way”, and it ertainly is not lots of words, repeating logos and bullets.

But there is a long way to go. Older, larger and more corporate companies have an addiction to verbose Powerpoint to kick - they are pretty much the  same companies and industries that thank that Apple computers have no place in a corporate network. (If you have Macs then you probably have people that care about aesthetics and you have Steve Jobs fans, and he has been one of the leaders of the presentation revolution.)

Over here in Western Australia, death by Powerpoint is alive and well, and the ideas from Steve Jobs, Duarte Design, Larry Lessig, Al Gore, Presentation Zen and so on are foreign concepts. And yes - even Apple is barely making an impact.

So we decided to help.

At Kwinana Nickel Refinery, employee and contractor teams now present improvement ideas to their peers and the GM every quarter. They get a few minutes only, but  with 3 to 5 teams presenting in each session, we have to keep the time down to 3-4 minutes each.

To help the presenters quickly tell a great story, we simply work on the slides together with the presenter. We introduce simple things like dewordificaton (down to one or no words), increasing the size of photos to the entire page and increasing the number of slides so there is one point per slide.* The preparation time for each presentation wis, at worst, a few minutes in front of a screen with the presenter and a walk around the site to take photos, and at best they get it and do it all themselves.

The results so far have been amazing - really amazing. In fact we were staggered.

Each quarter we have about 40 people present from all over the plant - from shift operators to engineers, and the worst presentations are merely excellent, while the best presentations are really inspiring.

The sldies make it easy for the person up front to tell their story.

The instinct when you are in front of a big group (30-60) is to turn, look at the screen and start describing what is there. It’s a giant black hole of bullet point death.

But now the screen typically shows a giant photo, and no bullets, so the presenters just turn back to the audience to tell their great story. In the first round we usually drove the slides while the presenter told the story, in the second round almost everybody chose to drive the slides themselves with a remote clicker. We also didn’t have to do as much preparation work for the second round - people just get it.

Sadly corporate Powerpoint templates are not the best for creating inspirational slides - so we took the BHP Billiton one and made a black background version.  That template has now been used on an increasing number of presentations that have gone well beyond the refinery - so here’s hoping for a quiet revolution.

But wait
1: Dense Powerpoint slides still have their place - in small groups, at senior level whee they want lots of information quickly, and where you are trying to develop and pitch a concept. But - these are not for the screen, but for paper print outs that you can scribble on.

2: While McKinsey and other consulting firms are dependent on the Powerpoint Decks, (like these guys), for real intellectual rigor and structure nothing beats a “vertical” written document. I’ve had the pleasure of working on a few and they really are a lot tougher to do than a deck, demonstrating the crisper thinking that is required. Think about the infamous Powerpoint slides used for Iraq post-war planing - a vertical document would have exposed the gaps very quickly.

*I’d love to show some of the slides from KNR - but I cannot.  

PresentationZen guy Garr Reynolds just linked to a video of himself presenting at Google. As Rowan mentioned he’ll be in Wellington and Auckland for the Webstock Autumn series.

Worth a look to see his style - which is very very casual.

Rod just pointed us to Sharesight - a downunder focused portfolio manager website. The website looks to be yummy goodness - simple to use and so forth.

I was initially pretty skeptical though - what use is another portfolio manager when you can do things pretty simply yourself, or with the likes of Yahoo?

Yahoo

So first let’s look at Yahoo. They let you construct a portfolio (or as many as you like) using share data from a whole bunch of exchanges - not just Australia and NZ. Here they are:

I set up a fake portfolio for Australia/NZ  in about 3 minutes. It lets you enter in the date that you acquired the shares, and will calculate the total return for you. You do need to remember how much you paid for it though.

You can create your own view of your portfolio, and, of course, plonk it on your myYahoo home page - handy if you use Yahoo mail. Pretty nice - and free, but old school.

Google’s offering is stunning.  Not only is coverage of NZ (and Au) shares now there, but it is a much more web 2.0 application - dead simple to use.

From an investor point of view - i.e. “how are the companies that I invest in doing?” the tools are excellent - with fantastic news sitting beneath flexible and comprehensive portfolios.

Google

you can switch the portfolio view very easily - here a fundamentals view:

(fake data)

You can add in transactions (with dates) and track overall performance on you iGoogle homepage - which, unlike Yahoo!, I actually use.

It doesn’t seem to bring in historical dividends, and doesn’t track options, but watch this space - Google moves fast. Overall I’m gushing - but really this is a lot better than ladt time I saw it, and perhaps even better than my own etrade account.

Best thing - Google tracks when earnings releases arrive, and you can add them to your google calendar. How simple!

eTrade

eTrade (US version) lets me track stocks across 5 different countries -  NZ (or even Australia) is not one of them. eTrade shows me my portfolio, including options, with market values and different views.  Additionally they have plenty of tools to track performance, though they could be better as I don’t get credit for timing my moves in and out of the market. It’s also a US-centric website, and as such everything is based on the US tax year - which is the calendar year. Running my NZ tax this year is going to be entertaining - though I can easily export my eTrade Transactions to excel and go from there.

Sharesight

And that’s where Sharesight has a market. It’s a great way to handle working out your NZ capital gains tax on your investments in Australia and NZ.

Overall the website looks entertainingly useful and fun. Plomk in your purhcase dates and amounts, and Sharesight calculates all the splits, dividends, tax credits and the like to give you an overall portfolio return.

Check out the Sharesight tour and video.

However - it is not all that useful yet for investors that invest in other lands - and we all should be doing so to have a diversified portfolio. There is space of course for sharesight to expand to accept transactions and calculate tax liability from other markets. So when Sharesight brings in foreign (US) stocks I’d be keen to give it a go.

But not at the current fees.

At the current fees I’d simply sign up for a month at the ned of each tax year, work out the tax and then get out straight after. There seems to be no benefit (and certainly a cost) from using Sharesight for day to day management versus either Google or your own online share broker.

Moreover the fees are tiered, and those top tiers are brutal, and kick in at very low usefulness Who owns less than 5 shares? who doesn’t want a tax report?

I’d chop them up and make a single tier, give an annual fee option along with the monthly one and forget about charging $39 for stuff that is “coming soon”. I also believe that the appetite for fees is much lower than portrayed. I’d be going along the lines of $10 or $20 per year, $50 at a stretch.

That’s the other pain - I wish that Google and eTrade could play together so that my transactions could be imorted from eTrade to Google. Similarly Sharesight is hopefully working on one click importing of whatever the local online share trading houses export. I have only a few stocks, but for someone with s portfolio of 20-30 stocks, purchased at differnt times, it would be a real pain to enter them all in. Of course it would be even more pain to work out the tax without Sharesight.

The business case

So  overall if I had an NZ portfolio of stocks I’d probably use Sharelight next month on the 30 day free trial to calculate my tax liability - and then not sign up. I believe that the pricing structure is all wrong - a yearly fee is better, and it should be around $20.

However the market is pretty small. The number of people in New Zealand that want to manage a portfolio would be a percentage of the  number of people that go to financial sites. There were about 31000 UB’s at directbroking, 22,500 at interest.co,nz and a paltry 15,000 odd at sharechat.co.nzduring February. I’m assuming naively that The directbroking customers have some sort of tracking tool, but that it isn’t great and so a percentage of people will come over. Let’s be wildly generous and say 10% come over. That’s 3,000 people.

The sharesight blog implies there are 730,000 shareholders in NZ. That’s a bunch, but most of those would be passive, suing someone else to manage their portfolio, or dead (literally). The Sharesight service is aimed at more active and engaged traders.  So let’s say they can get 5% of the overall shareholders in NZ - that’s about 35,000 people.

ok - so from 3,000 to 30,000 people at, for me, a fair price of $20 per year - that’s $60,000 to $600,000 per year.

If you believe in the $20 per month model, then multiply that by twelve to transform that $20 per year to $20 per month, and we get $720,000 to $7.2m in annual revenue. That upside would be much much lower at that sort of pricing - so my range would be more like $60,000 to $1m per year in the first years.

That has to support 4 owners/directors/principals and an outsourced interaction/ development firm. That’s means not a lot of custard to start. Launching into a massive bear market isn’t going to help - people trade a lot less when the market is falling.

What’s the upside?

Firstly, and obviously, it’s around getting more customers - either Kiwis with overseas portfolios, or overseas folk. The second one is tough, as Google is tough to compete against. More customers means more subscription income, and this is an easily scaled business.

Secondly, with their great usability I’d sign up very quickly if they extended into being an online broker - allowing me to trade shares. that’s a different busines model, but they’d take a chunk of the market pretty quickly.

Thirdly - there’s an obvious exit to a broker or to an internet business media player.

Finally - there is something about Sharesight being a custodial system. National bank are about to start changing a staggering 1% of portfolio value for “Custody fees”. That’s a significant amount, and if Sharesight can bring people over  then it is game over. They seem to think they can, but they need to really spell it out for people in single syllable words.

Well done guys - lovely execution, a business model with potential and some good PR to kick things along.  Fix the pricing though.

Stunning use of the ad-space on hte NYTimes home page. The ad ran for a day only.