DCG

I still want to know what he sees in Dell.

Google docs will soon be able to be used/update offline. Not being able to work on documents offline was the main drawback of Google docs. The only catch is offline mode will only be a plugin for the Chrome browser.

So HP is producing more Touchpads to sell at a $200 loss? Brilliant. ???

er..not really. The Dow dropped another 3,000 points after he wrote that article.

I try not to categorize myself as a specific type investor. I look to pay a fair price (or preferably a very cheap) price for great (or potentially great) businesses that have somewhat predictible growth for several years out. I try to always ask myself the question of would I buy the entire company if I had the $, and ask myself if I'd sell the entire company if I owned it when considering selling stocks. As Buffett says, value and growth go together. What is not intelligent investing to me is buying stocks for the sole reason of momentum, just buying stocks because other people/fund are buying them and hoping they'll continue to go up. IT seems way to difficult to do well over the long term doing that.

yep..and I posted something similar earlier in this thread as well. People were starting to get optimistic seeing the stock up 25% this morning. People who bought this morning are already down around 17%. BAC has been very volatile recently, with frequent daily moves of over 10%, both directions. Daily moves of a stock do not mean anyone is right or wrong. Lots of posts based on emotion (almost to the level of Yahoo finance message boards...or the lvlt thread :P).

Guys, don't get overly greedy or boastful over a 2-day move in the stock price (unless you bought at the bottom and sold out at the top). I own some BAC leaps and common as well, but as we've seen quite often recently, the stock can easily go back down 20% in a day or two as well. This stock has been moving over 10% a day on almost a daily basis recently, so people claiming victory (and putting down other board members) over a daily move, or daily news is most likely unwarranted. And don't forget that when Buffett bought GE and GS, the stocks got a short-term pop, and then proceeded to drop by 50% over the following few months before rebounding.

How do you change the forum's theme?

-we're discussing this in the Apple thread as well.

I use Scottrade (after some horrible experiences with eTrade). They're customer service has been very good, but their website is horrendous at times. It seems like all their technology was developed as a 7th grade computer class project. I don't know how this large of a company can have such poor technology (down to their mobile apps). I frequently have to enter my loggin credentials 4-5 times for it to even let me log onto their site. I'd kind of like to switch to a different broker, but it seems like it would be a mess for tax reporting.

And they could've spent a few more billion and made a bid for someone like Salesforce.com instead of Autonomy. Not sure Benioff would accept any bid, but it would've been worth a shot.

HPQ looks pretty cheap, but I have a hard time considering buying the stock without really knowing their future plans, and I'm not sure they even know them. Their director who oversees their PC business was on CNBC last night and clarified that while they are discontinuing WebOS, they will most likely produce tablets and mobile devices in the future. My only guess as far as what that means is that they'll build products using Android and/or Windows, but that business has equally low margins. Also, it's tough not knowing what they are going to do with their PC business. Will they completely sell it, will they part of it and keep a stake in it, will they spin it off through an IPO, will they keep it as a wholly owned subsidiary? They clearly have no idea what they're doing with it at this point. Their PC business is such a huge part of their revenue, so not knowing the future of it makes it extremely difficult to value the business. Have they ruled out selling WebOS (or even licensing it to other companies)? It seems like RIMM, MSFT or even oogle would probably take WebOS off their hands. I assume they at least own patents that have value. HPQ executives just seem to be playing everything by ear and have no real plan.

Well, eBay has made some good acquisitions. And to clarify my earlier point about Steve Jobs - I'm not saying he's on the same level as someone like Buffett in terms of capital allocation, but to say he's 'awful' is ridiculous. Go look at companies like HPQ and CSCO, and then go back and look at how Apple has allocated cash.

I dont agree with the 'terrible people' comment about eBay.I was skeptical about John Donahoe at first, but think he is doing a very good job so far. And I think people undervalue the potential of Paypal. I don't know if they'll execute with Paypal over the long term, but the potential is there. -I don't own any shares of eBay, but have in the past. Starting to look at it again as it gets cheaper.

No, I don't think that's why at all. I think it's mostly related to people being scared off by their market cap size and Jobs' health. And we've been over this before, but I'd rather see Apple conservatively invest their cash than blow it on stupid acquisitions, and trying to time the market with buybacks like so many other tech companies do. They do invest a lot of money back into their business; they are just able continue to make tons of cash while doing so. They put cash into product development, into building new data centers, into building a new corporate office that improve the workplace, into brilliant marketing campaigns, into deals with record labels to build iTunes, into deals with publishing companies to build iBooks, into expanding their retail stores (which are more successful/profitable than any other retailer in the world). That is capital allocation. Just because they are sitting on a mountain of cash does not make Jobs an awful capital allocator, especially when we see one company after another blowing billions of dollars in poorly-times buybacks, and awful acquisitions.

Jobs is an awful capital allocator. Are you serious? How many CEO's can you list that have produced a better return on capital than Steve Jobs over the last decade or so?

$99 seems like a great deal, even if you just use it for web browsing. It's a product that will never see any updates to the operating system (or existing apps), any bugs with it will never be fixed, there won't ever be any new apps developed for it, etc., but still a good deal at $99 though - even if you only get a year out of it before wanting something better it's worth it at that price.

I'm surprised how often Lampert still gets included in these types of discussions. How much worse of a job does he have to do with SHLD until value investors stop looking up to him?

Mark Benioff of Salesforce.com. Bezos, Jobs, Buffett also stand out.

In addition to their horrible acquisitions, HPQ repurchased $7.4 billion of stock at an average cost of $38 per share in 2010.

His point is 'it's different this time' is historically something people start routinely saying near the top of bubbles.

Sows the same struggle companies like Dell are having. PC's are a commodity. HPQ is also shutting down Web OS. What a complete waste of over $1.2 billion. They can't compete with Apple and Google. -and their printers are awful. I want to toss my HPQ printer out the window on a daily basis.

Yeah. I read pdf reports pretty frequently on my iPad.

There certainly are a lot of indications that we're heading into a recession and this is going to be more than just a correction. The Philly fed survey and the consumer sentiment survey yesterday were real bad, as were some earnings reports. I expected bad results from HPQ (which has been a pretty awfully run company over the last few years) but I didn't see that report from NTAP coming.

CRM has a good product, a promising future, and I like Benioff (his book is a good read, by the way), but they spend a lot on sales and marketing, and have a tough time making a profit. At some point the stock's valuation has to come back to reality though.