Barron's (subscription required) has been hyping, promoting, advertising (your choice) and "discounting" it's October 22 conference "The Art of Successful Investing" for weeks and months and I think it is just one more very expensive seminar. For a 'modest' $1,295.00 ($200 discount now available) you can go hear presentations by twelve of Wall Streets finest. Some of them are actually among Wall Streets finest, although I would not include all. You also should figure that since the conference is being held in New York that attending this event will cost you the entry fee again in food, transportation, lodging, and expenses -- probably even more. So unless you can wrangle the money out of your company expense account or government agency job it is not worth it.

They state in the advertisement that it is the "only opportunity to see and hear from these investing luminaries at one place at one time." I do not know why you would want to see them, the ad had their pictures, but as far as hearing their views, Barron's itself includes most of them in their annual round table. Their views are well known and hearing them altogether is apt to be as confusing as it is enlightening. If one is interested in their views they are all published in journals frequently. No doubt they are bright people and might have an insight or two but paying this kind of money is a waste. I would estimate that there is more free information available on the web these days than any seminar can offer. Every business page and every Internet site, plus the writings of Warren Buffett in the annual reports of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) would be cheaper and a better use of time. The one exception is if you thought you could make some valuable business contact at this conference. Wandering the halls might be better than listening to the speeches. Finally if you must spend money, create your own financial library. The top 20 investment books of all time would cost you under $500.

Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find more potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm.

If you are a regular reader of my blogs (like Ethan, who I quote below), you know I try to be accountable for my positions and try to share real experiences that I am going through in my investment world as well as I comment on things affecting the world of stocks and business in general. This week I posted: Frantic market: Retail up, retail down...who cares?, as the market darted up and down and back up. I think it is important to offer a sober perspective among all the noise. Most of what you hear is noise.

• Ethan wrote me: "Thank you for the rational non-exuberance blog on market forces. I do have to ask about the particular "crushed" housing market on home building companies as such for being the "Sell" and "Avoid" industry currently. While there is a rumor today about Buffett's bid for Hovanian Enterprise (HOV), do you personally see any value and fundamental still within the industry, to name a few stocks that do give dividends (DHI, PHM, LEN, CTX, KBH, MDC, BZH...)? My gut is Yes but it would contradict the market force and the continuing virus-spiraling down sub-prime mortgage situation that affects many other industries as well.

The short answer is yes. To paraphrase Warren Buffett and other value investors, you simply must buy stocks when the fear in the market (or a sector) reaches a crescendo.

Nothing could be further from the truth, but this is one of many silly comments that Peter Cohan received this week after posting Four reasons I'll never own an iPhone. I can assure our readers that quite the contrary, Peter and all of our bloggers are quite bright ... even when I disagree ... and even when there is an occasional error of fact. Over the past year the quality of writing has continually improved. Our editors work hard and we writers converse often during the day. Comments like these may suit some individuals relief of personal angst but educate no one; offer no reason except that the commenter sharply disagrees, and to me are basically worthless.

Last year I recall receiving conflicting comments about something I wrote. In three quick retorts, I was called a moron, then brilliant, then an idiot ... thankfully all of my antagonists had something more to say so that I could possibly learn something. This has been known to happen.

Interestingly, and at the risk of being called an idiot also, I happen to agree with Peter, that the iPhone is not a "must have", will be cheaper later, and as has been born out by those that chose to be "beta testers" this week end, many of their iPhones are currently very cool looking paper weights thanks to AT&T's poor preparation for the onslaught of activations required and not done.

Actually I have nothing against the iPhone specifically, I choose not to carry any type of PDA. I get no peace now and certainly do not want to become a slave to text messaging or the web, more than I am now. To me, a PDA is a long leash required by upper management to keep track of middle management.

Peace to all.

Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find more potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

Yes folks, that's what the man said, "You can make 10% profit a month using our system." He said it with a straight face in an infomercial, which was preceded by a station announcement that they are not responsible for the content or validity of the following program.

How about a statement that is more straight forward like, "The following presentation regarding the stock system you are about to see is full of crap! If you believe any of it you are a fool and deserve to lose your money."

For those of you who are not adept at math, if the claims made on this infomercial were true, a $10,000 nest egg would pass $50 billion midway through the 14th year and $80 bilion by the end of it, (passing Buffett and Gates) if you did not get bored with making money long before. Of course if you kept going you could pile up all the equity on planet Earth in less than one lifetime so you would have tremendous incentive to find life in another solar system somewhere that has a stock market so you could suck up all the equity on that planet too.

What if two people decided to use this system for any length of time, I fear the world would not be big enough for the both of them. But I take this too far. The snake oil salesman in the infomercial is the best evidence of the failings of his own system because he has not earned jack by using it himself, only by selling it. No one worth two cents would give him the time of day ... unless of course they were to serve him a notice -- like cease and desist.

I can't believe there is not a federal or state prosecutor somewhere that is chasing this guy and his fraudulent claims. I am sure there are lot of people like me that get burned up when we see someone taking advantage of people like this infomercial tries to do. I think after I finish this post I will write a letter to our attorney general about this. Perhaps there are some prosecutors reading this post that might shed some light on this subject and how these blatantly dishonest broadcasts can continue.

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!

Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

On Friday June 1, 2007 Jon Ogg reported Cramer's sell block: Sell Charter and Apple - Yes sell Apple Inc (AAPL). Why? It's now a trading stock. He thinks you should sell right before the iPhone comes out, wait for a dip, and then buy it back. This is very stupid advice on many levels...or at least very funny for those with a sense of humor.

First, one must look at the tax implications of selling Apple and buying it back. It could end up that you will lose money if you have to pay taxes on short term gains. And those of us in California and other States with high taxes would still pay around 22.5% on long term gains. Therefore, if Cramer sees an opportunity to trade out and back in, it better leave room for making up the taxes and fees. How big a swing does Cramer envision? It would have to be 30% for the long term guys and maybe 40% for the short term investors to make this trade worth while. This is all highly speculative and no amount of homework will give you the answers you seek.

Second, what if Cramer is wrong and the stock does not dip or it only goes down 10% followed by a lateral period and then more upward movement? Then what do you do? Now you are playing a guessing game with a high probability of guessing wrong, and you will be unhappy you got left behind and paid the taxes too.

In fairness to Cramer, I happen to agree that it might be time to take something off the table and book some profits. However, it might be wiser to take those profits and put them into a better value, diversify and protect your earnings rather than try and get back into Apple again. There are plenty of wise investors that have been seeing some fluff in Apples current stock price and have been advising the same thing. Sell some, keep some, and limit the speculation.

Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find more potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

Every week there is plenty to write about that I find amusing or ironic in the business world or stock market, on and off our site. I missed the last couple of weeks not for lack of material but time. This week I must start with something old that just won't go away, Amazon.com (AMZN) which closed Friday at a share price of $73.24.

This week I posted the story Amazon - everyone gets it but me where I highlighted various Amazon stock metrics that made no sense whatsoever and pleaded with someone, anyone to explain them to me. Alas, not a soul chose to respond. And since I freely admitted "not getting it" I did not leave room for those that really have no explanation but like to tell me what an idiot I am. A decade old this company has a book value of less than 2 cents on the dollar and eeks out a profit margin of 1.77%. Yes, it's profits increased in the last quarter by 115% to everyone's surprise, however, a 1000% increase if somehow directly translated into Amazon's a book value would still leave it under 20 cents on the dollar - that's hysterical to me.

Since nobody volunteered any information to help me solve the riddle I did some homework myself and a friend at a major investment house gave me a hint that lead to Who owns Amazon.com - really? and a reminder that it is not the public pushing this stock to silly valuations. It may be insiders and major shareholders playing "a game of chicken" with investors shorting the stock, of which there are many. I think after the battle is over this stock is going back down.

In Fortune magazine, May 28, 2007 issue I came across Amazon's 7-year Itch where they actually make some comments similar to mine. After all this time and all the efficiencies of the Internet in relation to Amazon's business model, it is making a smaller profit margin than the brick and mortar retailers like Wal-Mart (WMT) and over the last seven years an investor would have made 3.1% on their money.

So this is no joke I would like to learn and so would other intrigued investors if someone has any answers.

Enjoy the day.

Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find more potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

It occurred to me recently that we probably have entered a new age of ubiquitous piracy. A world that sneaked up on us quite unobtrusively, little by little permeating everything, and until recently, we did not realize we had been hijacked. There must be exponentially more pirates operating today, both in overall quantity and as a percentage of the world population, than there has ever been at any time in history.

Last week Alan Abelson wrote in his Up and Down Wall Street column (Barron's, subscription required) that 80% of the software sold in China was pirated. No kidding - and he quipped that software companies should be happy because that meant they were paying for the other 20%. Oh boy! - this is sure to please Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE), Intuit Inc (NASDAQ: INTU), and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT). The billions of dollars lost to piracy in one year is certainly more than all the doubloons ever high-jacked on the highs seas.

Software is not the only thing being pirated, everything is being pirated. One could make the argument that in China, and even worldwide pirated goods would easily make up the largest business ever known if it was a single enterprise.

Why in the world would it take so long for someone to create a natural version of the real thing. Healthier Coke? Only in Israel. While the motives of the Israeli Coca-Cola distributers involved making a version of the mixture for use on special occassions (it's already kosher) while still maintaining the same taste, there are many natural colas on the market and this was long overdue. If Coca-Cola Co.'s (NYSE: KO) marketing guys are smart, they will promote the natural formula next to competitors in health food stores everywhere.

It's only month four of my review of Chasing down 007 picks: Index beats Cramer -- value trumps growth. So now even Cramer is openly referring to his Mad Money TV show as more entertainment than investing advice -- good thing, because he is falling behind all of the major indices after four months. This could very well change, but Warren Buffett, he's not.

No one has yet to explain AMZN numbers to me after several posts last week pleading for an explanation. It turns out that there might not be a good rational because BWS Financial downgraded Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) to Hold from Buy citing valuation -- NO KIDDING! -- and corporate officers and directors are selling via the exercising of stock options en mass.

• Price/Earnings (TTM) : 106.10
• Price/Book (MRQ) 48.55
• Price/Cash Flow (TTM) 56.05

Those of you who are new to BloggingStocks.com can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find more potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

Yes, you read that correctly Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) on the day of it's surprising earning report had a trailing Price-to-Book ratio over 41 -- totally nuts! What is it today after the stock run-up and the the inclusion of the positive news, 34.86 -- still nuts! For comparison I would point out that is over five times that of Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), which is 8.46. I have spoken to many wise investors and business sleuths about this and not found a single explanation -- never mind a good explanation.

After I wrote about not understanding the Amazon flurry of buying, Amazon.com: Everything but the kitchen sink...and the fundamentals, one reader responded quite succinctly in Amazon reflections: the short answer, which supported my premise that perhaps the share price was kind of lofty. And after Amazon's great earnings report and all the hype it has a profit margin of 1.77%, about the same as your average supermarket.

My colleague Georges Yared has done a good job of explaining some reasons for the buying of AMZN shares following the earnings report in Amazon.com: The conundrum, but no one can explain the metrics. All I can say is, Jeff Bezos is a great salesman, and P.T. Barnum would be jealous.

If you are like me you and prefer a P/B closer to 1.0, read my Chasing Value or Serious Money posts.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

What do you do when you are so successful that you find you have become the 800 lb.gorilla in the room and try as you might everyone else is overly aware of your presence no matter your intentions. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) reported another fantastic quarterly earnings report beating expectations again and wowing the stock market. But as they take the world by storm, not just the Internet world, but the whole world, suspicion abounds and lawsuits grow. Consumer advocate groups, privacy advocate groups, government agencies, 'competitors' and individuals alike are scrutinizing Google's actions and effects.

Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two were applauded for taking on the entrenched web giants of the time. Now they are the web giants, and billionaires as well, and they are too big to ignore and they are too big to hide. Everything Google does will have an impact on the lives of Internet users and because they seek to gain market share in off-line advertising, and multi-media as well as a majority stake in online advertising they are looking like they have monopolistic tendencies, if not an actual monopoly for all intents and purposes - at least temporarily. And it is not their fault. They simply are offering better services to the public and more opportunities to their collaborators than their competitors and the market has spoken.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out my other posts for BloggingStocks here.

Chuck Prince at Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) has been under increasing pressure to 'do something' to increase shareholder value after years of no price appreciation in the value of the company despite many attempts including the buying and selling of many companies, reorganizations, expansions, contractions and numerous meetings with major shareholders to express his ideas and get theirs - and still nothing. Some have suggested breaking up the company which is currently the largest financial institution / bank in the United States, but that does not seem to be in the cards. Now to be fair other ultra-large cap stocks (Citi is $254 billion) have made little progress in growing share value over the last few years and some have gone down; General Electric (NYSE: GE), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) and 3M Co. (NYSE: MMM) to name a few.

• Melly Alazraki reported on Wednesday that Investors awaited Citigroup Inc.'s restructuring announcement today. The originally expected 15,000 jobs, was yesterday reported to have increased to 26,000. Well, the Citi released its plan and it contains 17,000 job cuts, or 5% of its workforce as the company seeks to lower annual expenses by $4.6 billion in the next three years. However, the 26,000 jobs reported yesterday said "fired or reassigned," and indeed Citi announced that "more than 9,500 jobs will be moved to lower-cost locations."

Every big company has some "dead weight." However, where did they discover these people they say they no longer need, hiding under desks? Sleeping in the closets? Not the executive washroom prey tell?! How did all these "dead beats" hide for so long? What will the costs to the company be in the short run? Most importantly, firing lots of people is not necessarily any more of a strategy than proposing a troop surge in Iraq. They both can have an impact but I'm not sure it equates with being a strategy. The strategy should be to sell or spinoff any enterprise that is under performing immediately and expand those that are performing well, even if it means you do not remain the largest bank. No magic there -- it's the Jack Welch formula, it works, try it!

Furthermore, here is the leadership question; has Citigroup been operating inefficiently for years with too many unnecessary people and just now come to that realization? - not good, or have they decided that they will struggle along with less people and offer less in services internally and to their customers? - also not good! So I think I have to pay homage to my dad again, who often reminds me that "the fish stinks from the head" -- It's time to go Chuck!

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out my other posts for BloggingStocks here.

This week Alan Abelson, in his Barron's, Up & Down Wall Street (subscription required) commentary on the upcoming IPO by the Blackstone Group there was much to be cynical about. In reviewing the lengthy 200+ page prospectus he chortled at the 30 pages listing all the risks of investing.

The most amazing of disclosures was this: "Our general partner and it's affiliates have limited fiduciary duties to us and our common unit-holders, which may permit them to favor their own interests to the detriment of us and our common unit-holders" Can they state it any clearer than that - this is all about our opportunity, not about yours!

Last Sunday I called readers attention to this in less blatant terms when I posted: Sunday Funnies: Blackstone looking for more green and raised many questions as to why they need to do a public offering now? While Mr. Abelson and I are cynical about this IPO, we are no more cynical than the managers of the Blackstone Group who are taking advantage of a what might be a frothy market place.

Mr. Abelson, who I find provides one of the richer reads each week has been very worried about the frothy market for over a year now and each week marvels at the overall strength of the market with very bearish undertones and outright bemusement awaiting it's collapse. On this perspective I cannot agree. Abelson is wrong - he will be right someday - but not today, and there are many reasons.

• The mountains of cash in corporate coffers is higher than it has ever been since I have been investing over the last few decades.
• Many largely capitalized companies have been building shareholder value for the last five years and their stock prices have been relatively stagnant. There is no froth in General Electric (NYSE: GE), Johnson and Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) or Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and furthermore even Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) which may be over priced, is a much greater bargain this year than last, while it's earnings have started to catch up to it's prolific stock price.
• There are numerous companies in the market at fire-sale prices and all you have to do is look at my Chasing Value or Serious Money columns to find them.
• Demand and opportunity in China, India, Russia, Brazil, and eastern Europe has never been higher and if it slowed to half the current level of GDP growth would be double that of the U.S.
• Interest rates have been raised significantly over the last few years and are still at historic lows worldwide providing liquidity for investment and expansion.
• The market did not shoot up over the last four years as it did leading up to the bursting of the bubble that preceded it and if the market weakens it will do so slowly not with a burst. We might get to a point where we see a droopy market but not a collapse of equities.

If you want to see a real frothy market take a look at campaign fund raising / financing / spending, and the like. Among the presidential hopefuls, Democrats Clinton, and Obama have exceeded the $25 million mark and Republicans Giuliani, McCain and Romney are all expected to reach about $20 million. Since there will be only one winner unlike the stock market, look for more collapsed dreams here than anywhere else. The real winner will be the advertisers and the media that will be relieving them of the funds. Perhaps that should have been another positive for the market - I should have singled out the media companies that are licking their collagen inflated lips.

Disclosure: I own shares of JNJ.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

It's April 1st, Fools Day, no spoofs here - The truth is funny enough!

When I read on Thursday morning that Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE: BRK.A) was upgraded to In-Line from Under-perform at Fox-Pitt, Kelton I could not help but be amused. It seems at least a little bit silly for someone to be putting out recommendations about a company that has never lost money nor shareholder value over any meaningful length of time. As a shareholder I can attest to the fact that I was holding dead money at times. But more often I wish I had bought more shares and earlier than I did. We own 'B' shares not 'A' shares. Berkshire, with the best management period, the highest level of integrity, super cash flow, mountains of cash reserves, little long term debt, diversification of assets, a low P/S of 1.69, a low P/B 1.54, a below average P/E of 15.26 is the ultimate safe haven.

Also Thursday morning Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales disputed his ex-boss's version of the facts regarding the political nature of the firing of federal attorneys. Earlier this week included in my post Cramer, Cramer, Cramer -- You screwed up buddy! I mention the AG in this context:

• There is an old expression I keep learning anew: It's the first law of holes -- if you're in one stop digging. I must have used this before in one of my posts somewhere but it is worth repeating. And if Attorney General Alberto Gonzales does not see this post I hope one of his friends points it out to him. He too seems to be digging deeper when it comes to his forthrightness relative to his role in the politically motivated firing of federal attorneys.

As the days go by we see nothing but stone-walling from the White House. Can you hear them digging deeper? Obviously none of my readers passed the message along.

Responding to one of the many posts on American Idol and Sanjaya's staying power, a guy named Phil made the following comment:

• "And I should also note that as previous posters have said, there is no vote count. The producers make sure to add this disclaimer: "VOTES ARE TALLIED AT THE PRODUCERS DISCRETION." This means that when producers get the votes, they can count them, decide they don't like the vote, then just decide for themselves who gets kicked off the show. Or, what happens the majority of the time is that the producers don't even count the votes. They just decide who gets booted. Sanjaya is keeping ratings up. Why get rid of him. Also remember this for all you idiots that send in text-message votes. YOU'RE PAYING FOR THOSE TEXTS. AMERICAN IDOL GETS A CUT OF ALL THOSE TEXT MESSAGE PAYMENTS. God, you people are just plain stupid. "

So Phil brings out another economic angle to the AI saga, it is a waste of time and money to vote on AI.......so obvious...but sometimes the obvious is not so...right Dubya? right Alberto? right Fox-Pitt, Kelton?

Many of you did not have the chance to read D.C.'s deadlock - fine by me, so take a gander, because nothing is more ironic than us citizens paying our Washingtonian officials to do something and discovering we might be better off when they do nothing!

Enjoy the day!

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.