Sony really should have owned the digital music layer market – after all they had the orginal walkman, and the mini-disc player was dominant in many geographies. But they lost billions in sales by trying to restrain copying of music through horrendous digital right management which crippled their devices. You couldn’t copy data on to …
Category Archives: Investing
Fairfax, Trade Me, BHPB
Three clients this year have all come in with record profits. It’s a symptom of what they are – excellent companies. BHPB made record EBITDA of US$20.1 Billion, and profits of $13.7 billion. Thats on the back of some stellar commodity prices and solid volume increases. Records in Aluminium and Stainless Steel Materials helped things …
Mark Weldon’s package
$1.4m per year. Just do it. Sure NZX is tiny compared to other companies and markets, but if we want the NZX to keep improving, and we do, then we need someone of Mark’s quality there. and this is how much you pay for that.
Evergreen: Why Telecom is a poor company
That Telecom Strategy post below isn’t just some mindless rant. (well no more than normal) The Evergreen Project, which I led for a while at McKinsey (and which turned into a book) may give some context for those comments. The Evergreen work was an enormous quantitative and qualitative effort, which took millions of dollars and …
Telecom’s Strategy is too advanced for its ability
From NZHerald.com Telecom will seek a new chief financial officer with experience in mergers and acquisition so it can take advantage of consolidation in the telecommunications market, says chairman Wayne Boyd. People at Telecom: Please do us all a favour. FOCUS ON THE CORE BUSINESS! Once you get that right, then worry about other opportunities. …
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Ten things you can do in today’s Bear Market
So for the bulls turning into bears – what should you do? 1: Do not sit around. When markets turn sour then people tend to switch off, as it is not nearly as much fun watchng your net worth go down each day as it was to watch it go up. Act now and you …
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Ready for the plunge?
It’s amusing being a bear in a bear (down) market. Of course I’m usually a bear in a Bull (up) market, so it’s great to be backing the winning team for once. This chart in Saturday’s AFR hearkens back to 1987, a year I remember too well. NZ got hit particularly badly because of some …
NZ’s regressive tax system
It’s strange. I always thought that New Zealand has a pretty progressive tax system – that the richer people get taxed more than the poorer, and that we have a share the spoils system that helps make NZ a great egalitarian society.. Meanwhile the USA is meant to be a dog eat dog place run …
A big well done to the folk at RBNZ
The economists and traders at the Reserve Bank of NZ must be feeling pretty smug right now. They intervened in the currency market on June 11 – selling a huge amount of NZD at between 76.2 and 75 US cents. The RBNZ has access to at least $7bn to make market interventions, and can intervene …
negative equity
Front page of today’s Wall Street Journal: One Family’s Journey into a Subprime Trap FULLERTON, Calif. — Nearly two years ago, Mario and Leticia Montes found a home they loved, a gray stucco bungalow with a hot tub in the backyard in a middle-class neighborhood of Orange County. …With a December “reset” on their loan …
Kiwisaver: (lack of) investment results explained
From the Gareth Morgan kiwisaver.com site: What’s going on with your money? IRD is holding all contributions made between 1 July 2007 and 1 October 2007. On 1 October 2007, they will transfer the following to KiwiSaver provider schemes: Your contributions Interest on your contributions (at the Commissioner’s rate, currently 6.6% gross) $1,000 kick-start $20 …
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Kiwisaver progress and the market dip
Lot of recent press about Kiwisaver, but I’m missing the real juice – how were those first month results? Well – 92,000 people have signed up to Kiwisaver, which seems a tiny number (4.6%) compared to the working population of 2m or so. However Finance Minister Cullen is happy, figuring that the numbers will grow …
so when should you buy XRO and BFW?
Xero and Burger Fuel both closed at 80 cents on Friday. That a huge drop from the IPO prices of $1, and even further from XRO’s listing price of $1.10. XRO BFW So – after a 20-28% drop, is it time to buy? Let’s deal with Burger Fuel first. No. Not at all. (That’s a …
Xero – the product
I’ve been playing with Xero’s demo, which is well worth looking at. You land on the dashboard, which has a nice summary of what is going on. What is particularly pleasing though, in true Don’t Make Me Think style, is that you are not just looking at information, but you are being asked to do …
Direct Broking versus eTrade – Fees
Fees for trading in NZ stocks seem to be still based on ancient premises – percentage takes and high rates. Here are ASB’s fees – they charge you the same $30 for a $500 or $10,000 transaction. Ditto with Direct Broking, who have a slightly lower ticket clipping rate, but still set the baseline at …
Lance Wiggs 