Tag Archives: Wall Street

Facebook

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The investing community is agog at the prospect of the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Facebook on Friday.

If you’re under 103, you probably have a Facebook page. You and about 901 million others. I have a Facebook page. I started it about four years ago when the younger people in the office teased me about being 103 years old.

I opened my Facebook page and immediately started the “friend” chase. I decided that having more friends than people I knew was a good thing so I started trolling for friends. I now have the maximum number of friends an individual can have. 5,000. I actually know about 27 of them. The rest, as I have mentioned before are a combination of “Friends” trollers, people who have seen me on TV but wouldn’t know me at the Safeway, and Ukrainian hookers.

Although, according to CNBC.com, a final decision won’t be made until Thursday evening, analysts expect Facebook shares to cost between $34 and $38 a share which would value its “upcoming offering at as much as $18.5 billion” and the entire company of something in the area of $100 billion. Continue reading →

Where’s Good News?

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Let’s start with Europe and work our way back.

The Greeks held elections last week and they have not been able to form a government since.

The leader of the “Leftist” party (read, Communist), Alexis Tsipras, has told the rest of the European Union that he believes Greece should ignore the promises it made to be bailed out and, in essence, go off on its own.

According to the New York Times, “European leaders have warned that if Greece does not keep its promises, Europe will stop financing it, which would quickly lead to Greece defaulting on its debts and leaving the euro zone, as the countries who share the common euro currency are known.”

I’m not exactly sure what the Greek version of “nanny-nanny-boo-boo” is, but Tsipras appears to be chanting it. If a coalition government cannot be formed, new elections will be called and polls indicate the anti-bailout candidates will gain strength. Continue reading →

Apple, Corporate Taxes, and Common Sense

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple (neé Apple Computer) “is the most valuable company” in the world. On the heels of its quarterly report last week, stock in Apple reached nearly $620 per share before settling back to end the week at $602.

The WSJ reported that Apple “posted a 94% profit jump to $11.6 billion and a 58.9% revenue increase to $39.2 billion.”

This is not a stock picking column, and that is about everything I know about the stock market, but I wanted to tell you that so that what follows made more sense.

The New York Times published a long piece looking at how Apple cleverly, but legally, has built a tax strategy that saves it billions of dollars. The Times reported that “the company paid cash taxes of $3.3 billion around the world on its reported profits of $34.2 billion last year, a tax rate of 9.8 percent.” Continue reading →

Protests: What’s It All About, Richie?

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

As I have told you before, I watch CNBC in the morning because I know about as much about politics as most of the guests on the morning cable news programs who talk about politics, but I know nearly nothing about finance so I watch the guests on CNBC who talk about finance.

Last Friday I was listening to CNBC on my Sirius radio as I drove to Ohio and heard Jim Cramer talking about the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Even though he made a very large pile of money as a trader and investor, he said that in his youth he was pretty far to the left of his colleagues. When he was asked whether, if he were in his early 20s today, he would be camping out with the demonstrators, he paused and said he probably would. But, that’s not what caught my ear. Continue reading →

O’Malley Playing Word Games with Immigration

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

Reprinted from Washingtonexaminer.com

Benonia Brown immigrated to the United States from Europe and settled in Southhampton, MA somewhere around 1800. He and his wife, Sibbel, moved to Ohio and Benonia enlisted in the First Regiment of the Ohio Militia to fight for this country in the War of 1812. He was my great, great, great-grandfather. I bring up Grandpa Brown for the benefit of Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who is terribly confused about who is and who isn’t a new American.

Continue reading →