Afghan Plunder

It was announced yesterday that there is up to $1T of minerals in Afghanistan.  Before you get too excited, consider this: we've known about the lithium for 40 years.

Strasburg Amazing in Debut

Stephen Strasburg threw 14 strikeouts in the 5-2 Nats win over the Bucs.

This video shows the complete domination he brings to the game: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=8802881

Holloway Suspect Murder Again?

The truth is often stranger than fiction.  In this case, Joran van der Sloot is accused of murder, for the second time in 5 years.  He was suspected, but never charged, with killing American teen Natalee Holloway in Aruba several years ago.  Earlier this year he had what many call a confession.  Suffice it to say, there was a lot of criticism as to how the local authorities handled the case.

BP still in business

BP is not yet in danger of bankruptcy, says one financial analyst.  I'm in agreement, BP does have a large amount of cash reserves.  I also agree that investors are the ones who are really killing BP.  Consumers have short minds, and BP could always rebrand as Amoco.  But as an investor right now I'd put my money into Total (TOT), which has a juicy yield without any of the baggage.

AAPL vs MSFT

When I bought my first Mac in February 2002, I was a blacksheep.  Nobody really bought Apple or paid much attention to it.  Microsoft was the big kid on the block, and Apple was a scrappy punk.  Times have changed.  Thanks to several big splashes over the years, Apple's market capitalization is now more than Microsoft's.

How did this happen?  Simple.  The OS wars were a red herring.  It's the hardware, stupid.  It was the iPod that saved Apple, not OS X.  But OS X was very successful in further destroying Microsoft's reputation.  Just think back to the "Get a mac" ads.  Sony has also fallen by the wayside.  Even its venerable Walkman brand is dead.

In 10 years, who will be #1?  Any thoughts?  My guess would be a firm like Samsung.

iPad magazine pricing out of touch

Wired is reporting that its iPad app sold 24,000 copies in 24 hours.  While I don't doubt this figure, I do think that the pricing for their online magazine is absurd.  They point out that at $5 each, it is the same price as the print version at a newsstand.  That is true, however a subscriber gets the same thing for $1 delivered to their house.  Given that the edition at your house can easily be lent to your friends, read in the bathroom, or used to start a fire, there's a lot more usefulness than a digital copy.  Wired needs to price this app at $1 to match their subscription price.

RIG's liability

A new development today in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  Transocean, LTD (RIG) is claiming that 159 year old law will greatly reduce its liability.

I don't have much confidence in their ability to evade lawsuits.  All it takes is one safety regulation not being followed for them to face full liability, which is like to be substantial.  Consider that the rig that blew up was owned and operated not by BP, but by Transocean.

Kagan for SCOTUS

I don't know what to think of the current Supreme Court pick, Elena Kagan.  On one hand, she's described as a good defender of the first amendment.  On the other hand, her support of the Executive Branch and police powers is troubling.  And on the interesting side, there are rumors she might be gay.

This could be an interesting confirmation, considering that the democrats cannot overcome a republican filibuster.

Dow drops 1k and regains most - WOW

Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by almost 1,000 points.  People are calling this a "computer glitch" but the truth is nobody knows what happened yet.  It is likely that the initial panic was from investors were very nervous about the situation in Greece.

Some background on Greece.  What is most likely the most fucked up member of the EU voted today on an "austerity plan."  Basically this is a plan to cut government spending by a large amount including wage cuts to government workers.  Suffice it to say, it didn't go down well among the common folk who decided to stage violent riots.  And on top of this, the house of cards that is the EU is still to drop (Spain, Portugal, and Italy are next).

So investors are worried about this, and its likely that some stock crossed a threshold that triggered automatic selling.  I heard in at least one source that some trader at Citi entered an order for a billion instead of a million. That stock would likely be Proctor and Gamble.  It appears that the system worked correctly, and that the fast paced electronic trading was halted on the NYSE, allowing sensible selling to resume.

Since PG is a component of the Dow, the entire market went into a freefall.  My entire portfolio, consisting of autos, banks, oil ETF's and retailers was down 10%.  With the comeback I ended down a reasonable 4% but that was a scary day.

From what I gather the market worked exactly as it should have.  The safety systems kicked in and ending down 4% is nothing bad.  There are those who will argue that situations like these mean we need more government regulation.  This is wrong.

Why is BP solely responsible?

The massive oil spill off the cost of Louisiana is likely going to cost tens of billions of dollars to cleanup.  For some reason, the US government has said that BP is solely responsible for the cost of cleanup.  Why?

A large company called Transocean (ticker: RIG) actually owns and operates Deepwater Horizon.  BP has laid the blame on them (while promising to take all responsibility).  I think at the end of the day, RIG has a higher likelihood of going down over this incident.  While the US government may be blaming BP for everything, RIG will likely be named in a number of lawsuits over this disaster.

Also, to all of you who supported the Palin/McCain ticket, how's the mantra of "Drill baby drill" feel now?

HP makes a smart move in buying Palm

Yesterday HP announced that it was buying Palm for $1.2B, a 28% premium over the current (volatile) Palm stock price, which has ranged from around $3 to $18 a share in the past year.

HP immediately makes itself hugely competitive in both the smartphone and tablet/slate markets with this acquisition.  Up until this point, HP has been mainly silent on smartphones.  They used to have a decent PDA product, but not in the past 8-9 years.  The Palm Pre and Pixi are not perfect but they represent a viable competitor to the other smartphones.  Additionally, as Apple has shown, smartphone OS's can work on tablets too.  And webOS is already able to multi-task.  It does need more apps and some other features, but it is probably only a year away from working as a slate OS.

Apple Strikes Back

Maybe not Apple directly but you know they likely pushed forward with this investigation, which has now led to a hardcore search on the Gizmodo editor's house.  The police even nabbed all of his digital media and files.  Hopefully he's backed them up on the cloud...

All of this for posting photos and a writeup of a new iPhone that they found in a bar.

Nu-Salt must be happy

Salt is quite the condiment.  There has even been a great book written on its history.  Now the FDA wants to limit it.

So what exactly are they trying to ban?  Sodium chloride, or NaCl which has been used as a food preservative and flavor enhancer for thousands of years.  Empires have been built on salt and it is even the basis for the word "salary".  Sodium, a necessary electrolyte, contributes to hypertension and other disorders in high quantities.  Most Americans eat too much of it.

If sodium levels are reduced, I would assume that most vendors would switch to potassium chloride, KCl, which tastes almost identical to the sodium varietal.  Nu-Salt has been around for a long time with this formulation.

The only downside I can see is from a marketing standpoint.  KCl is one of the ingredients used in the lethal injection cocktail... but that's only when it is injected.  Still, this may worry some people.

Should you walk away?

Sometimes you just have to give up:

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Apollo Astronauts Square Off

Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong have wildly differing takes on the President's plan to cut manned space exploration for the time being.  I agree with Buzz.  Focusing on making it cheaper to get to space, via public/private partnerships is likely the best way to get the ball rolling.  Let's face it: the Space Shuttle program was a white elephant, and Constellation didn't look any better.