The Position Makers

so what was the headline that greeted me this morning when i visited finance.google.com for the first time (i visit often)?
What The…?!? Garmin Enters Cell Phone Market With iPhone Look-Alike

i was of course intrigued.  i was then very scared.  garmin was taking a big step into uncharted territory.  but then i thought, “but yeah, they’ve been doing that for years now.” (corny joke about being a GPS maker) the market reaction at first wasn’t too hot either.  then gazillions of stories started to flood in, i won’t bother with the list.  i’m not sure if the price lift had to do with general market sentiment improving closer to the end of the day, a deepening short squeeze on garmin itself, or buyers simply coming to pick up some garmin on the good news.  (and it is good news.)  i honestly think it’s more like the last of those…

on the nuvifone vs. iphone:  i’m not sure that aapl need overly worry about the nuvifone but nokia, samsung, motorola on the other hand…should definitly worry.  creative destruction is certainly at work in the cell phone industry.  nokia is doing well as the market leader but it’s sales derive more profits for the lower-end phones in developing nations, so far as i’m aware.  it’s a question of what people are willing to pay for:  $1 for a starbucks coffee vs. $2.75 for a triple espresso from a good coffee shop.  $15 for a old navy t-shirt vs. $75 for abercrombie.  8k for a kia vs. 6-fig for a bentley…

as concerns the ecnomony in general, i think the fed may have actually done something good, without me really realizing.  at first i was a little upset for the fed cutting rates so drastically; i saw it as a bailout for silly investment decisions.  i now realize how wrong i was.

rather than pandering to wall street, the fed actually was able to keep our country from plummeting into a recession, or so i believe.  it may be that we’re at the end of a boom-bust cycle, or even “super boom-bust” as George Soros put it last week, but i believe we witnessed similar credit issues as we had back in the mid-80s and the collapse of the S&L. Alan Greenspan’s verison of the situation was quite hair-raising and the task was more than simply injecting money into the monetary system but also making numerous personal calls to banking executives around the nation to allievate FUD.   it was through rate cuts that the fed was able to stymmie a larger meltdown in the economic cycle of the US.  it was years later that the US was again facing a possible receission when the fed took the moves to slow the ecnomony down a bit in anticipation of  overheating and possible rampant inflationary developments (Clinton’s second term).  because of the fed’s action, which many people thought unnecessary, ecnomists witnessed their first “soft-landing.”

it took a few quarters for the economy to start humming again but it was clear that the fed had truly saved the day.

so i’m sticking it out and thinking that we may be turning this ship back for the good–at least in a couple of quarters of choppy sailing.  there’s still TONS left in the world to do in order to raise the standard of living.  the people investing in that are going to make big-bucks…and it was all because “greed is good.”

oh, and how could i forget?  the wii!! (thanks nintendo wii fan-boy).

as i said before, it’s all about expanding out from the platform.  cash cow, anyone?

i recently picked up another lot of ntdoy when it hit $55.  buy for me is in the 50’s but i’m not sure how much more often will get down there.  if you account for splits, aapl hasn’t been anywhere near the ‘02 prices in a long time.  unless ntdoy’s management really f’s up their position in the market, they should have the momentum to just keep on cranking.   (think, fly wheel)

a very exciting day.  :p