• The wireless scramble will become even more of a madhouse, as overlapping systems fight for the right to extend free coverage community-wide in return for ad revenue and upsell opportunities. The idea of a coffeehouse drawing customers to enjoy an island of wireless will seem quaint. Those companies selling wireless access in airports, etc. will see their business evaporate.
  
• Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone, tapping into its iPod customer base, will finally provide an integrated music/telephone device that the public will embrace. Cell phone providers will scramble to offer competing products/services, spending huge dollars to out-promote Apple. With phone downloading, CDs will join VCR tapes and casettes on the junk heap.

Continue reading Looking ahead one year: April 28th, 2008

Looking ahead one year: April 28th, 2008 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In correspondence with Amey Stone, (one of our beloved editors) almost two years ago, during a very shaky market, I did some rare speculating.

I preface this article by acknowledging that such exercises are usually pointless and not something I engage in very often. My deep value investing style is focused on companies and not markets, facts and verifiable high probability theories. Often I am the contrarian as in Me and my Merck: Should I keep it? Sometimes I am the curmudgeon (hopefully lovable curmudgeon) and I have scoffed at analysts (Analyzing the Analysts - It's all a joke right?) and prognosticators whose primary business is skimming fees from the top of your investment stash.

Among what I thought at the time were my verifiable high probability theories was that oil money, real estate money and Chinese money (from our sad trade deficit) was going to recirculate back into the stock market. Oil prices were just starting to move up, real estate was booming, and the Chinese were piling up billions of dollars of our treasury notes. Furthermore I thought the Chinese would not just be satisfied moving some of their debt instruments (bonds) into equities (stocks) but actually start shopping for U.S. companies. This came to pass in their acquisition of IBM's Think Pad (R) division by Levano, and their failed attempt to acquire Unocal, and they are still on the look-out for other opportunities.

So in early 2005 I made the case to Amey that we were going to see the Dow hit 11,000 by the end of the year and that we would hit 12,000 by the end of this year. Well of course the Dow Jones Industrial Average did hit 11,000 as anticpated climbing from about 10,000 mid year in '05 and I believe it will soon reach 12,000, maybe even by the end of the year, which was on my list of "speculations".

It's only a question of time. It's only another 3% +/- in a year of mixed results.

By the way, Warren Buffett comments about the trade deficit in a story about our loss of integrity in Warren Buffett, America's greatest storyteller.

So having just about hit all my targets from my notes to Amey of two years ago I started thinking about where we go from here. I think we are in for more of the same and for the same reasons. Plus a few new insights, if I may be so bold.

Continue reading DOW 14,000 here we come!

DOW 14,000 here we come! originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 29 Sep 2006 18:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.