Finance Newsfeed Update

Filed under: Newspapers, Stocks to Buy

Which would you rather own: an up and coming company or a down and out former star on the decline, recently booted out of a major index.

According to a study authored by two finance professors, “The Long-Term Impact from Russell 2000 Rebalancing”, the answer is, believe it or not, the latter. The study looked at how companies that have recently been added to the Russell 2000 fare compared with recent deletions. The New York Times sums up the results: “The researchers found that over this period, deleted stocks proceeded to perform markedly better than their replacements, on average. Over the 12 months after reconstitution, for example, the deleted stocks outperformed their replacements by an average of 9.3 percentage points. In the five years after reconstitution, the difference was 40.1 percentage points.”

How can investors take advantage of that performance gap? It’s tough because you cannot, by definition, use index funds. You have to think that an ETF will come along soon specializing in un-rebalanced index funds, but that hasn’t happened yet. Wisdom Tree, get on it!

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Television, Media World

If you haven’t checked out HBO’s Flight of the Conchords, you’re missing a wonderfully droll, clever series. The show follows the exploits of a pair of New Zealand musicians trying to break into the American music scene. Their song Business Time might provide a welcome break during your, er, business time.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Products and services, Starbucks (SBUX), Marketing and advertising, Scandals

I almost can’t believe that I’m writing about this, but I guess some prudes will get up in arms about anything.

BBC News reports that a U.S. based Christian group known as The Resistance is calling for a nationwide boycott of the coffee selling giant, Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX). The group’s complaint against the company stems from the commemorative use of a toned-down version of the company’s original logo. Starbucks states that the logo, which features a dual-tailed mermaid sporting cleavage, is not inappropriate. The fringe Christian group refers to the logo as a naked woman with legs “spread like a prostitute.”

The news report from BBC states: “Howard Schultz, who bought Starbucks in 1982, described the emblem in his memoirs as “bare-breasted and Rubenesque; [it] was supposed to be as seductive as coffee itself.”

To look at the logo that is claimed to offend, one has a difficult time even seeing it as raunchy. To call the flared dual tails a pair of spread legs might be a feat best accomplished while on serious hallucinogens. Clearly, this group of well-meaning Christians is at a loss for real issues to attack. The fringe group’s lack of imagination in seeking some media exposure for itself is seen by me as a shallow act of spotlight grabbing.

Starbucks is reported by the BBC as stating that the bare breasted mermaid will appear on some of it’s cups for several weeks as part of a company promotion. It was not revealed which of Starbucks’ 16,000 coffee shops in 44 countries will be featuring the racy mermaid cups. However, I’m sure that anyone who is interested in getting one of these alleged soft-porn coffee cups may rest assured that, before too long, they’ll be available to anyone via eBay.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: General Electric (GE), Mattel, Inc (MAT), Hasbro Inc (HAS), Film

Remember that movie deal that Hasbro (NYSE: HAS) signed not long ago with General Electric’s (NYSE: GE) Universal Pictures for the express purpose of bringing some of its board game brands to the big screen? Well, I’m happy to report that the first one appears to be in development. And it’s the one I was rooting for!

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Ouija board is getting the big-screen treatment. Sure, Ouija boards have been featured in films before; heck, my friends and I used a Ouija board in a short film we made years ago. But, this time, Hasbro is hooking up with Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes production company to give the concept a proper cinematic adaptation, one specifically geared, I have no doubt, to increase the value of Hasbro’s brand equity and to, like this needs to be even stated, sell more Ouija boards!

Michael Bay is a pretty competent producer/director. He was responsible for Transformers, as I’m sure you’ll recall, and he’s been hard at work the last few years on remakes of famous horror films. He’s already been involved with remakes of The Amityville Horror and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and he is working on new takes of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the Thirteenth. He’d better get the latter right, since it’s one of my favorite films!

Continue reading Hasbro sends the Ouija board to the silver screen

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Apple Inc (AAPL), Research in Motion (RIMM)

Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) picked up share in the smartphone business in the U.S. during Q1. Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone lost some. That will come as a surprise to most people who see the iPhone as almost invincible. Research firm IDC says otherwise.

Reuters reports, “According to the report, RIM’s share of the U.S. market for advanced phones with computer like features such as e-mail rose to 44.5 percent in the first quarter from 35.1 percent in the fourth quarter.” Apple’s slice dropped from nearly 27% to just over 19%.

While the RIMM product, the BlackBerry, may be good and the company may be building devices for the consumer, Apple may be suffering from the lack of a device that runs on a 3G network. There is a rumor a day about when Apple will come out with the faster device, but, so far, nothing.

The iPhone, with all of its web features, would benefit immensely from the ability to operate on a network that transfers data and video almost as fast as a DSL line. Instead, it runs on a slower 2.5G network.

Apple losing ground. Who would have ever believed it?

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 Newsletter.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Stocks to Buy, Norfolk Southern Corp. (NSC)

Readers of this space know that one of the preferred sectors is the railroad sector. The once near-rust-belt level sector has experienced a revival at the start of the globalization age, and compelling economic trends document the commerce-based underpinnings of this revival.

Most transportation officials agree that the U.S. transportation infrastructure — highways, roads, bridges, mass transit systems — is in need of a major upgrade in order to meet the nation’s vehicle transportation needs of the 21st century.

The nation’s public officials will begin to address the above concern in the years ahead, as public funds become available, but until they do, and due to crude oil’s sustained high price, an opportunity has emerged for another transportation form: you guessed it, the railroads. And Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC) is a railroad worth an evaluation.

Norfolk Southern provides rail transportation in the eastern United States, operating a 21,000-mile rail network in the eastern United States and Canada. It’s an elaborate intermodal and coal service network that also has a large freight business.

Continue reading Norfolk Southern: In the era of record oil prices, the railroads are roaring

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Here’s a review of this week’s top stories on Payments News. If you missed it, last week’s Weekly Wrap is here. Back to the future!: for fun, click for this same week’s activity a year ago here on Payments News! Looking for more? Checkout our Other Payments and Banking Blogs page. Contactless Payments News Last week, a researcher presented Attacks on NFC Mobile Phones at a security conference in London. (See more Contactless and Near Field Communication news.) MasterCard Canada announced a trial of NFC-enabled phones for mobile payments. (See more Canada, Contactless, MasterCard and Near Field Communication news.) Credit…

Olga Kharif writes for Business Week about the weekend web - and how mobile Internet usage spikes on Saturdays. “Google Mobile reports that the majority of its traffic occurs on weekends.” The busiest weekend mobile web site? Craigslist, of course.

Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, Marketing and advertising

British rock trio Muse revealed to music newspaper NME Friday that the band’s new material may be released more “organically” in the future, versus reserving it for an album release. This idea of taking the “album” out of the equation is something that many bands have been quoted as saying in the last couple of years, most notably Radiohead. Drummer Dom Howard is quoted as saying that the new methods of digital releasing and downloading “presents a canvas to do whatever you want and just release music as and when it is ready to release,” that is, more organically.

The new “canvas to do whatever you want” should not indicate that Muse (or any other band) is “against the concept of releasing an album in the traditional format.” Howard maintains, “If we group a bunch of tracks together, it’s because they’re meant to be together as a unit.” The new formats are most exciting for new listeners and consumers, in Howard’s opinion, since they do not typically purchase an album on CD. Despite Radiohead’s success at releasing an album solely via the internet (and for free), Howard also denied that Muse would duplicate that method. He and his Muse bandmates just remain open to new ideas for the music industry.

Organically released music would make more sense in the market as it grows closer and closer toward single-track downloads. The most obvious case in favor of releasing music as soon as it is ready is Coldplay’s recent free download of single “Violet Hill” in support of the band’s new album. While it was not released as soon as it was ready and was intended to directly promote the album, it did enjoy high downloads and put word about the band, the band’s return, and the new album out there rapidly and well in advance of the album’s release next month. Singles did not originally correspond directly to albums, so why shouldn’t the music industry return to that idea?

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Launches, Consumer experience, Google (GOOG)

When Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) bought RSS company Feedburner, experts seemed to think it made a good match with the search companies big blog business, Blogger. Most people who keep blogs use RSS as a way to get their content out. Google could offer a platform for blogging with Blogger, selling ads with AdSense, and distributing content with FeedBurner.

The system has one flaw. Google did not set up a system for selling ads in Feedburner so that consumers looking at a site’s RSS feed would also see targeted ads next to the headlines. It was a break in the system which made it incomplete in terms of helping blogs drive profits.

Google has fixed that. According to Alley Insider, “for content publishers who have long feared RSS as a monetization-killer, AdSense for feeds somewhat levels the playing field.” The trouble with running blogs or other small websites is the lack of ways to bring in revenue. Google is offering a partial solution to that.

Of course, since Google keeps a large portion of the AdSense for Feedburner revenue, the huge tech company is looking after its own interests.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 Newsletter.

Permalink | Email this | Comments