Eighteen months ago, banks were throwing money around with very little discretion. Now we find that they made a lot of bad loans, took extreme risk and jeopardized the global economy and the well being of hundreds of millions of people.
All this was supported by a simple minded president, corrupt Congress and an over-confident, short sighted investment community maneuvering in and around a sleeping Securities and Exchange Commission.
Having invested in a broad range of real estate assets (as well as stocks), I am feeling the pain like most everyone else. Reduced values, tighter liquidity, and uncertainty rule the market place.
What has me steamed currently is that I think there is more capital in the marketplace than courage! The lack of courage along with a shortage of leadership and wisdom continues to exacerbate a bad situation. I am probably better off than many people having been able to close two loans in the past month. It was not easy. However, after dealing with many financial institutions that are now doing a better job in the review process, I see that they have swung too far to the conservative side.
Online bill paying is nothing new. Consolidated bill payment services online aren't very new either. However, as I was researching one of the many fledgling, service cost reduction offerings, namely BillShrink.com, that little light bulb went off again in the back of my head.
What I am thinking about is this; Now that we can conduct virtually any financial transaction online, why doesn't someone put together a complete and comprehensive online billing consolidation and cost reduction service? Microsoft has been providing something similar to my idea, but their service requires constant user interface, and I don't believe that it provides comparison shopping for alternative services. With my concept, the consolidation agency would take over all aspects of bill paying for the subscriber, up to and including continual comparison shopping for cheaper or better services for it's subscribers. I believe that, until now, bill consolidation services have merely been payment transactors. I'm saying that it's time for them to become far more proactive.
This post is part of a series in which TheStockAdvisors.com asked financial experts to name their top stock pick if McCain or if Obama wins the election.
"We expect that an Obama-Biden victory will provide a renewed sense of optimism on the part of consumers; to profit from this expected trend is Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)," says growth stock specialist Nate Pile, editor of Nate's Notes.
"Apple has been crushed this year on concerns about consumer spending. Any improvement in consumer spending that may come from an Obama win should only add fuel to the fire that is already burning brightly for Apple.
"The company's product line-up is one of the best in the consumer electronics space, and as we have been anticipating for a number of years now, success with products outside of the PC market is translating into growth rates for the Mac line that are significantly above the industry average.
"Apple's stock price certainly suggests that there is a huge buyer boycott going on when it comes to tech stocks these days.
"Part of the reason for the continued slide is being attributed to the lack of a 'major announcement' at a recent publicity event, though I believe the fall has more to do with where we are currently at in the 'psychology cycle' on Wall Street than anything else.
"Though we may have to wait until we get through tax-loss selling season this year to see a significant rebound in the stock price, we believe Apple's best days are still ahead of it, and a win by Obama will only help to accelerate the trends that are already underway for the company."
Steven Halpern's TheStockAdvisors.com offers a daily look at the latest market commentary and favorite stock picks and investment ideas from the nation's leading financial newsletter advisors.
A little while back, I sat down and asked a few questions of $30,000/month blogger John Chow in this post and it was a big hit. Few people realize there was so much money to be made from blogging.
A few months later, everything's changed: John Chow isn't reporting his monthly numbers anymore and even if he was, my personal blog, TimothySykes.com, would be blowing him away as just the other day, I detailed in this post how my little blog earned $70,000 in August.
Yes, you read that correctly, I might write for AOL and TradingMarkets.com, but I'm also an internet entrepreneur and judging from my blog's monetary growth -- $15,000 in May, $25,000 in June (both estimated since the figures weren't bragworthy), $45,000 in July (see detailed breakdown here) and of course August's blowout month which is made even more impressive considering I took a trip to Japan for the last 10 days of the month (see itinerary here), I'm succeeding rather nicely.
So, in honor of my religion -- Judaism (at Passover we ask ourselves four questions) -- I asked myself the four questions that matter most about what's worked and what hasn't. Obviously I'm biased, but I'll try to be as brutally honest as possible, as usual.
Q: Timothy, to what do you attribute your blog's astounding ability to make money even as traffic growth has flatlined somewhat? A: Good question (and I must say you're looking rather handsome as you write this). I'd say No. 1 it's not holding anything back. Brutal honesty. With a lot of joking around/sarcasm. In a word: real.
I have no long one page sales sheets nor overly technical posts. It's all about writing from the heart -- whether some/many take offense or not. Considering I've been a profitable stock trader for the vast majority of my decade-long career, my experience and knowledge is worth something...especially considering that 90% of traders lose money!
It has taken about ten months longer then we had planned, but CircleBuilder.com has finally closed its seed round of funding. The convertible debt has become equity priced at a dollar a share and it's gone up in value, at least on paper. However, that value is not liquid, so is not worth discussing.
Before I go further, I should disclose that I am on the Advisory Board of the company and was one of the early investors. Many of my posts are written as an "adventure in investorland" relating my own experiences. For those who feel this is too promotional, you can turn away. My purpose is to share the journey of an insider as this company builds.
There was little certainty that CircleBuilder would be a success when we started. Along the way, I have had some reservations about the financial and time commitment; I do not need one more thing to do, or a way to lose money.
When we started, MySpace was all the rage and Facebook was gaining momentum rapidly. The founders, Howard Brown and Brent Cohen, came to me with an idea to develop a social networking site catering to religious communities that were not well served by the free-for-all, anything-goes nature of existing alternatives.
I read many business plans. And, unfortunately, there are many that are lackluster. After all, an entrepreneur doesn't want to get bogged down in process.
Then again, there are many examples of successful businesses that didn't have formal business plans. For example, Compaq Computer was based on the scribblings on a napkin.
And yes, I agree you don't need a business plan.
However, the fact remains that a successful business still needs effective planning (former President Dwight Eisenhower once said: "the plan is useless, but planning is essential").
Well, the good news is that Tim Berry -- who is the founder of Palo Alto Software (the biggest provider of business plan software) -- has recently published a book on the topic. The title is spot-on: The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan.
Of course, this can be a broad topic. Hey, don't many business books talk about planning?
This is true. But Tim focuses on the needs of small businesses; that is, those key things that move the needle.
When Cyrus Massoumi ruptured his eardrum (during a flight), he tried to find a qualified ENT. Unfortunately, the process took a grueling four days.
Interestingly enough, this experience was the spark for an interesting venture: ZocDoc. In fact, the company recently announced a $3 million round of funding from Khosla Ventures.
True, the online healthcare space is fairly crowded with major players like Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). However, while they are focused on medical records, ZocDoc's mission is on something that often gets neglected – searching and scheduling of physicians. With ZocDoc, patients can search the database on criteria such as specialty, location and insurance qualifications (which can be critical). All in all, it's an interesting idea with a large market potential.
As of now, ZocDoc is only limited to Manhattan and Brooklyn. Moreover, the site has only a few specialty categories, such as dental and dermatology. But all this should change soon since the company now has some capital to move things forward.
Currently, the site has about 30,000 registered users and the growth rate is a torrid 50% per month -- an indication there is a serious need for the service.
John W. Nichols, who is the co-founder of Devon Energy (NYSE: DVN), died recently. He was 93.
As should be no surprise, his life provides many lessons for budding entrepreneurs. Interestingly enough, his innovations were not necessarily about creating new products. Instead, he was an innovator of finance.
Nichols started his career as an accountant and audited the financials for oil companies. Leveraging this experience, he started an oil company in 1941. With sky-high income taxes, Nichols structured innovative financial vehicles to minimize the bite from Uncle Sam. For example, he was the first to register a public oil & gas drilling fund with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
And it was a hit -- he attracted large sums of capital from wealthy individuals (even Hollywood stars like Barbara Stanwick).
No doubt, Nichols biggest feat was the creation of Devon. He formed the venture in 1971 with the help of his son, a lawyer.
The financial innovation didn't stop as Nichols developed the so-called royalty fund, which became a standard in the oil industry.
It was also a big spur for growth. After all, Devon is today a $43 billion company.
This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.
Pilgrim's Pride's home roots in the small town of Pittsburg, Texas, perhaps explain why it is the largest chicken producer in the U.S., even ahead of competitor Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE: TSN) in Arkansas. In 1946, Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim dressed like a standard Pilgrim and tucked a small chicken under his arm when completing orders for customers. He gave away free chicks when he sold chicken feed as a way to expand his market for chicken feed. As of today, Pilgrim's Pride operates chicken processing plants in 13 states and Mexico and processes 44 million chickens per week, resulting in 9 billion pounds of chickens per year and over 528 million chicken eggs per year.
Pilgrim's Pride's operations are almost exclusively located in the U.S. close to its farms, and it has become the second-largest chicken supplier to Mexico as well. It does have processing plants in Mexico and Puerto Rico. Along with such huge chicken-producing numbers come a few problems, as a huge product recall in 2002 due to Lysteria contamination killed seven people and made over 40 customers sick. In 2004, more than 24,000 hens were destroyed after a strain of avian flu was found in Hopkins County, Texas.
Pilgrim's Pride is still based in the same location where it was founded over 60 years ago, but today stands as a completely vertically-integrated company: it owns every process and facility from egg to table, as it says. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), Publix Super Markets (OTC: PUSH) and KFC, a division of Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM) ,can be counted as some of Pilgrim's Pride's largest customers.
This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.
Johnnie Bryan Hunt, eponymous founder of J.B. Hunt (NASDAQ: JBHT), was, like so many Depression-era children, a jack-of-many-trades. He picked cotton, harvested grain, sold lumber, auctioned livestock, sold lawn sod, and drove a truck. He was a handy soul, inventing a rice hull press and designing a unique poultry truck.
It was the rice hulls that would be the start of J.B. Hunt. J.B. came up with the concept of using rice hulls for chicken bedding. He and a partner used the rice hull business as seed money to buy five trucks and seven trailers and in 1969 started J.B. Hunt Transport. Today the company operates 11,000 trucks and about 47,000 trailers and containers, though its founder died in 2006 -- in time to see his little transport business become the largest publicly-traded trucking company in the world.
It's fitting that J.B. Hunt, which made its start on the profit earned from chicken farmers, should be based in rural Arkansas -- the land of poultry. Lowell, Arkansas is a tiny town, made up of only about 5,000 residents, so J.B. Hunt is a big force. With 16,000 employees, the company could triple the town's size based on its payroll alone.
This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.
Publix Super Markets is the largest employee-owned supermarket chain in the U.S. with 936 stores in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama. You must be an employee of Publix to buy stock in the company. More than 30% of the stock is owned by employees, and more than 30 million shares are owned by members of the founding family -- Jenkins. Its chairman is a family member -- Charlie Jenkins, Jr.
Publix ranks number 11 on the Forbes list of largest private companies, and 107 on the Forbes 500 list. It employs more than 100,000 employees, with revenues over $23 billion.
Yes, if you haven't figured it out, the company was founded by a Jenkins -- George W. Jenkins, Jr., in Winter Haven, Florida, in 1930. In 1940, Jenkins built Florida's first supermarket by mortgaging an orange grove. Jenkins moved the headquarters for Publix to Lakeland, Florida, in 1951, and built its first distribution warehouse there. In 2005, Publix celebrated its 75th anniversary.
This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.
Is there any piece of furniture more classically American than the La-Z-Boy recliner? It goes hand in hand with the image of Dad -- any Dad, all Dads, from the 1950s to today -- enjoying the simple pleasure of sitting with his feet up and his head back, tempting sleep as he reads the paper. After a long day at work but before the wife puts a delicious roast on the table, there's always time to relax a bit in the world's most famous comfy chair.
La-Z-Boy (NYSE: LZB) invented the first version of that iconic chair in 1929. The company got its start a few years earlier when two cousins, Edward M. Knabusch and Edwin J. Shoemaker, founded the Kna-Shoe Manufacturing Co. in Monroe, Michigan. They made furniture and cabinets in the proverbial start-up garage, and they has some initial success, especially with new designs like the Gossiper, a bench with a phone stand built in. But competitors kept stealing their designs and their profits. So when someone suggested that they upholster their popular wooden recliner, they proceeded carefully, filing for patents and choosing a distinctive name. Sit-N-Snooze and Slack-Back were in the running, but La-Z-Boy was the name they finally selected for the world's first reclining upholstered chair.
The La-Z-Boy was a huge hit, although it hadn't yet achieved its truly classic form. That occurred in 1953, when the Otto-Matic model was introduced. The long-running problem of the ottoman, a separate piece of furniture needed to support the feet while relaxing in a comfy chair, had now been solved. From now on, the ottoman was rendered superfluous, since the La-Z-Boy could offer a built-in foot rest. Oh, sweet perfection!
This post is part of my series featuring established companies and the smaller, more aggressive or innovative rivals that may eventually succeed them.
I remember way, way back to November 2006 when Wall Street was stunned that Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) was paying the ungodly sum of $1.65 billion for privately held YouTube. How were they to monetize this goofy, home video web site? Since November 2006, it appears that Google got a bargain when compared to other social networking web sites.
Facebook has over 80 million users including a new Facebook profile for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Facebook attained Wall Street relevancy last year when Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) agreed to pay the unheard of $246 million for a 1.6% ownership stake. That October 24, 2007, Microsoft investment valued Facebook at nearly $10 billion in the private equity world. As of yet, there is no filed Facebook IPO, but investors bet the company will file an IPO before the end of 2009.
The new player capturing headlines in the social networking world is LinkedIn. The company is designed for the business and professional world. The more than 23 million registered users represent over 150 different industries. It's a place to swap ideas, best practices and other opportunities.
This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.
Cabela's Inc. (NYSE: CAB) has come a long way since the husband and wife team of Dick and Mary Cabela sold outdoor gear from their kitchen in 1961. Today, Cabela's has become the largest mail-order, retail, and internet outdoor outfitter in the world, with record revenues of $2.3 billion in 2007. The company sponsors dozens of outdoor events, from the Cornhusker State Games to the Iditarod, and was named one of the Top 100 Companies to Work For in the Forbes January 2000 issue.
The company's world headquarters is located just off Route 80 in a small town called Sidney, Nebraska. Sidney has also come a long way since being called the "wickedest town in the west" back in 1868. The frontier town now holds more than 6,000 residents and was named one of the Top 100 Rural Communities in America in Boom Town, USA by Jack Schultz. Cabela's is by far the largest employer in Sidney, with more than 2,000 employees. The town's Memorial Health Center is a distant second, employing 300 people.
According to Cabela's, the Sidney store sees millions of visitors each year. In addition to all the fishing, hunting, climbing, and camping gear your heart can desire, the store is outfitted with museum-quality animal displays, huge aquariums, and the largest of trophy animals scattered around the store. They have a delicatessen-style restaurant with selections that would make your mouth water, including elk, wild boar, ostrich, and bison sandwiches. Cabela's even has a large campground and RV park outside its store where visitors can put their newly purchased equipment to good use.
This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.
This entry in the Big Company, Small Town series features one of the great recent American business success stories, as this powerhouse brand came from very humble beginnings only 30 years ago.
Ben & Jerry's was started in 1978, when Long Island, N.Y., natives Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield used a $12,000 investment to open up a homemade ice cream scoop shop in Burlington, Vermont. The Ben & Jerry's shop grew rapidly in popularity, and by 1980 they began packing pints to sell in grocery stores. By 1985, the company's sales were more than $9 million, and it began building its manufacturing plant in nearby Waterbury, Vermont. The plant in Waterbury was then opened to the public for tours of Ben & Jerry's ice cream making operations, creating a tourist attraction for the town, which has a population of around 1,700.
Although Ben & Jerry's was bought in 2000 by Unilever (NYSE: UN) for $326 million, the company still maintains its local roots, with its headquarters in South Burlington and its factory still open for tours in Waterbury. The founders of Ben & Jerry's, while no longer holding any positions within the company, have worked with Unilever to make sure it remains as socially conscious as when they ran it, keeping that small-town, grassroots feel that made it such a success worldwide.
To this day, Ben & Jerry's maintains its Free Cone Day, which Ben & Jerry started to honor the first anniversary of their ice cream shop.
Eighteen months ago, banks were throwing money around with very little discretion. Now we find that they made a lot of bad loans, took extreme risk and jeopardized the global economy and the well being of hundreds of millions of people.
Online bill paying is nothing new. Consolidated bill payment services online aren't very new either. However, as I was researching one of the many fledgling, service cost reduction offerings, namely 
A little while back, I sat down and asked a few questions of $30,000/month blogger John Chow in 
It has taken about ten months longer then we had planned, but CircleBuilder.com has finally closed its seed round of funding. The convertible debt has become equity priced at a dollar a share and it's gone up in value, at least on paper. However, that value is not liquid, so is not worth discussing.
I read many business plans. And, unfortunately, there are many that are lackluster. After all, an entrepreneur doesn't want to get bogged down in process. 
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When Cyrus Massoumi ruptured his eardrum (during a flight), he tried to find a qualified ENT. Unfortunately, the process took a grueling four days.
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John W. Nichols, who is the co-founder of 
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Average U.S. gasoline price falls to $1.99 and is likely to drop more
The RIM BlackBerry Storm launches on Verizon Wireless to mediocre fanfare
Cramer on BloggingStocks: The remaining black holes need fixing 
