Fisrt – a picture on why shorting sticks can be a good thing for your portfolio – here is the return on my US portfolio this calendar YTD (the green line) versus the S&P500 (in blue). When the market turned sour in the last weeks my portfolio has stayed up because of the somewhat balanced …
Category Archives: Investing
Direct Broking versus eTrade – Home pages
Credit to Direct Broking’s homepage. Very cool form. I do prefer eTrade’s through – for function over form. The pertinent market information is there, and the cursor is waiting for me in the login box, so I can login without resorting to the mouse.
Why I am long and short in stocks
In the last two days the US markets plummeted – yesterday by 1.5% on average. But my US portfolio value actually rose marginally on the day, as the value of the 2 stocks I am short (EQR, MSFT) fell by more than the fall in value of the 2 stocks I am long (AAPL, EBAY). …
Burger Fuel numbers
2380 investors, $5.25m raised. That’s $2,205 per investor – paltry. A poorer showing given that they even spent money on TVC’s advertising the float. Goodness knows what the total expenses were for the float, but this can’t have been an efficient way of raising the cash – especially as the founders appear to have deep …
pay phones, funny money, income and Telecom
Chicago’s OHare airport is ripping out pay phones and replacing them with power sockets, chairs and counters. Bless them – I’m sick of wandering around (usually american) airports looking for power sockets. Disposable income for “Managers” is largest in Saudi Arabia, small in the USA and generally better in third world countries than first world. …
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42 investor return
15.5% per annum – that’s the investor return Mark Clare is reporting for 42 Below IPO takers. It is a great article. Folks – that’s not success for those shareholders (but it was for the founders and financiers). An IPO is risky business, and expected returns are much higher. The exit was pretty smooth though, …
On IPOs Xero and BF
To me a successful IPO: is fully subscribed raises the money at a fair price results in a healthy listing Xero was fuly subscribed, BF was not. We shall wait and see whether BF is able to make the second deadline with a meaningful shareholder base. To determine whether the price was fair, we look …
Xero – 92 cents – what does this mean for burger fuel?
not a great record for Xero shares so far, on very thin trading though. Remember they launched at $1.10, but cost IPO investors $1. If you didn’t get any shares at the IPO, and still believe, then now would be a good time. well for a start BFW has not yet managed to raise their …
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Chalkie replies to Gareth Morgan…
Chalkie clearly reads blogs, and has replied to Gareth Morgan’s rebuttal to her article on his website. The original Chalkie article is now on Stuff, and you can read Chalkie’s remarks below (& in the comments of the previous post) Jenny Ruth “My primary source of income is not from writing for savings industry-funded trade …
Another Xero competitor: Larry Ellison
Netsuite, in which Oracle’s Larry Ellison owns 61.1% and controls 74.1%, is about to IPO. The company” “offers Web-based services that let small and medium-size companies handle tasks such as accounting and keeping track of customers.” It’s basically SAP/Peoplesoft/Seibel/Oracle for small and medium sized businesses with less than 1000 employees. and it is, like Xero, …
The battle continues: Gareth Morgan, life insurers and Kiwisaver
Gareth Morgan comes out guns blazing again – I’m enjoying watching the exchange. First up – GMK have published the ‘fan mail‘ from the life insurance companies. Along with the insurance company’s ripostes, Gareth has written short rebuttals. AP’s Greg Camm: “If there were a sign on a beach saying “Sharks in the water” you …
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More Fuel for the Burger Fuel fire
Garry Sheeran in the Sunday Star Times covers the high risk nature of the Burger Fuel IPO. It’s a balanced article, with commentry about analysts looking atthe numbers, and quotes from founder Chris Mason. But it is the last line of the article that is interestng. It’s not realy posible to tell where it came …
Apple iPhone
I’ve tried not to blog abut it, but it is puzzling to see the stock price of AAPL drop slightly when the prices were announced. There were essentially no surprises there, and the and the fan boy population will make sure these things fly out the door. The next question is just how good they …
BurgerFuel: value or not?
Mark Clare just says No! to the BurgerFuel prospectus. A valuation that implies BF will grow from opening 20 stores from 1997 to now, to 700 in five years is something that he just can’t accept as realistic. I agree – even Subway, the world’s biggest franchise, only has 1200 stores in Australia and NZ, …
GMI’s Kiwisaver site is improved
I noticed while looking for calculators for the previous post that Gareth Morgan’s Kiwisaver.com now has a giant “How Do I join” link on the front page. That’s a great call to action, and a big improvement on earlier. But sadly we still need to print off a completed application form and post it in. …
Lance Wiggs 