He is currently managing a portfolio of 100m$ himself, so he’s done pretty well, but i remembered it today, and logged in and checked how it had done.

The portfolio was created in January in 2003, so it’s 5.5 Years old now.
Looking at it i start to wonder if i should do this for a living instead since it’s up almost 100%, even though i don’t understand the public market what so ever. Orbitz gained 22.5% yesterday without any news, now i know the most likely reason, but since it’s not public information i will keep it to myself, but the reason i’ve heard would certainly not mean a 22.5% in a “functioning” stock market in my humble opinion.

Anyway, i have uploaded the portfolio for you to see.
It’s not 100% correct, because Macromedia was bought by Adobe, at 41$ so that’s over a 350% return. Overture however lost 30-40% before it was bought by Yahoo.

Overall i still think most stocks in the portfolio is a good stock to hold today, i loved JetBlue’s new inventions at the time (having all customer service reps working from home at what was then a new VOIP setup) - I thought Microsoft would have been competing at a higher scale with Dell today, and i thought Dell would have competed more with Sony/Samsung etc.

Anyway, feel free to check it out below.

I’ve been watching the iconoclasts series from Sundance, and came across a episode of David Chappelle and Maya Angelou, where one bit blew me away.
As my friend Michiel says, Maya Angelou should be “read” by Maya Angelou, but i haven’t been able to find the clip, so buy the dvd/itunes episode.

I could not find the quote online, and simply for the greater good i wrote it down, so it will always be preserved (or as long the internet exists anyway)

David Chappelle:
“You’ve written books, you teach.
And your from a time when the society, would tell you that, these types of things probably wasn’t in the realm of possibilities
And fact that you’ve lived abroad, a global perspective, pre-globalisation.

What do you attribute it to?”

Maya Angelou:

“I attribute it to Love

Love is a condition, so powerful that it may be that, which holds the stars in a firmament. It may be that which pushes and urges the blood in the veins.

Courage, you have to have courage to love somebody.
Because you risk everything, everything“

Was reading the Nytimes story regarding the move people are doing to cut the cost of traveling/transportation and how Amtrak have seen a surge in bookings.

Overall growth for May compared to last year seem to be around 15% which is phenomenal growth. Obvious reason is the high cost of fuel, which makes using the train a cheaper alternative in many cases (and more environmental friendly).

This had me think of the news that Warren Buffett invested in rail operators beginning of last year, and lo and behold, the shares he picked up seem to have gained around 20% over the last 12 months.

Scary, i guess he did it again…

I don’t own a single apple product, i’m still waiting for someone to prove that they can do anything quicker on a apple product. I used to have a apple express but it broke.

However i almost converted after seeing the new iTunes commercial.

It’s just phenomenally done!

You can see the HD version here

Tommy has sold his company Zyb.com to Vodafone for 31.5m Euro’s, can’t say how happy i am for him!!!!

So well deserved!

“One of the sites i love to follow is FareCompare.com” - Ali Veshi

Mr. Charney’s penchant for outspokenness could also prove risky. In an interview March 20, Mr. Charney said his current chief financial officer, Ken Cieply, “has no credibility” in the retail apparel industry and is a “complete loser.”

Yeah that’s healthy when you are the CEO of a public company…

He’s not done yet…

By the middle of 2006, Mr. Charney began looking for ways to boost his finance staff. He offered an $800-a-week internship to Adrian Kowalewski, a recent University of Chicago business-school graduate who had briefly spoken with Mr. Charney about an academic paper the month before. Mr. Kowalewski’s task: to devise a plan to save the company’s deteriorating finances.

I’m all for offering young people chances to…

Mr. Charney found himself at the center of four lawsuits from former employees, all alleging sexual harassment. One was dismissed and two others were settled out of court.

Yeah that surely adds some excitement for stockholders, my god man your rich and live in LA, how hard can it be to pick someone up…

American Apparel’s March 17 filing contains 15 pages of risk factors

Yeah that’s definitely more than your average public company….

Can’t wait to see what’s next
(Inspiration of post from Marc Andressen)

So this week proved to be rather hard on US Airlines. Aloha Airlines had to shut down after being in operation for more than 60 years, ATA airlines, SkyBus and champion Air (charter only) followed suit. The major excuse was rising fuel costs, and low cost airlines competing in the same markets.

So before i go further, i’d like to take a look at the rising fuel cost first.

Oil has obviously been hitting unprecedented levels compared to previous levels (with inflation accounted for, which peaked at $104 Dec 1979), March represented the first month ever with a continuous closing price of over $100. What’s interesting regarding Oil prices is that lately more and more researchers have been crediting the continous high price of oil primarily due to speculation in Oil rather than demand. That makes more and more sense, US is the largest consumer of Oil, consuming around 25% of all Oil used on a daily basis (but only representing 4.8% of the world population). China have had a surge of increased Oil use, both on a commercial (manufacturing) and Personal (people buy cars), however China’s largest export partner is the US. However due to the strenghening Yuan compared to the Dollar, China has seen a slowdown in growth the last few months compared to previous quarters, since Chinese manufactures can’t raise their prices to offset the weakening dollar, and compete with other countries where their currencies might be tied to the dollar.
Since US is coming in to a possible (i.e) recession, there should be a slow down in the use of Oil. A US recession will hit china’s growth hard considering the huge export, Walmart for instance gets around 80% of their products from China (Another reason i don’t get why American’s say there should be taxes on products from China… they would only shoot themselves in the foot). Businessweek ran a story this issue regarding how many manufacturing plants had to be shut down due to the rising cost of labor, Oil and currency. China will be fine in the long run, since the alternatives can’t stack up, India and Vietnam are the 2 most used examples, Vietnam works in the short term, but due to the size of the country, relative wealth will spread quickly and drive up salaries, India is different ballgame, but the infrastructure isn’t as well established as in China.

So this means that the largest economy on earth will see a major slowdown, which should effect Oil, and the largest growing economy on earth will see a major slowdown in their growth due to the issues in the US, not to mention as previous post pointed out the increase in food prices will slowdown the “luxury” items in China, which a Car currently qualifies as.

The above is all well documented but if it will change the pricing of Oil, i don’t know.
Common sense says the use of Oil should drop or stay the same though.

So back to the Airline business, most Airlines hedge their fuel costs to a certain extent to be able to project costs. Southwest most famously pays $49 per barrel for 65% of their Fuel in 2008. Obviously a fantastic deal for them, hedging fuel has not always been a large part of running an airline, but have been used more and more the last few years due to the high volatility of fuel prices.

Ryanair’s hedge just ran out which increased their fuel cost with an estimated $400m, impacting the highest profit margin in the industry (around 20% net margin, Gol, AirAsia are, 2/3d).

2007 was a stellar year for the Aircraft manufactures though, Airbus delivered 453 planes, whilst Boeing came close second with 441. And a record 1413 aircraft where ordered from Boeing, and 1341 from Airbus. The airline industry was delivering their first profit statements since 9/11 and the market for aircraft both on the buy and lease side was dried up, and drove up the pricing of especially the leasing market.

With the 4 Airlines going out of business this week, a total of 78 Aircraft was given up. That’s a lot of aircraft, especially in a market like this. SkyBus on top of their 12 Airbus A319 Aircraft’s which is most likely the most lucrative planes of all the one’s that’s becoming available due to being almost brand new and a popular plane for low-cost airline operators (EasyJey and Virgin America as two examples), also had a staggering 63 aircraft orders to Airbus (Worth at list price $3.7 Billion).

So where am i getting at, i think someone should start an Airline.
Someone called me crazy for the thought, primarily for starting an Airline in the current fuel market, but just as Southwest was called crazy for hedging their fuel costs in the start of 2000, i think someone can hedge their lease cost of aircraft and hope that fuel costs goes down (Worth pointing out though that fuelcost is a larger operating cost for airlines, than the dry aircraft cost). But still, i hope someone is willing to take the risk, and jump to setup a new airline. Maybe a new low cost airline from Dubai to Europe or Asia (Relatively low cost of fuel, compared to western world).

David Neeleman the founder of JetBlue, announced he would setup a new low-cost airline serving Brazil, he seems to have settled on using Embraer 195. So that removes the possibility of him using the newly available aircraft’s since they primarily Boeing planes.

Anyway end of the rant, do i think someone will start a new airline, not really, do i think it would be fun if someone did. Yep, do i realize the huge risk involved, probably not, but hey that’s why there is crazy people with crazy money out there.

“Let me put it this way, I voted against the bill because I didn’t want to make it harder for people to buy milk” - Gov Barltet, discussing why he voted against a increase in price of milk - As a reference that In 2006, The poverty rate for minors in the United States was 21.9% - highest child poverty rate in the developed world

Which leads me some articles that have been published lately.
Maize (Corn), Rice and Wheat are the 3 largest food sources in the world, producing close to a combined 2 Billion metric ton a year.

Hence when pricing changes for any of these crops, it has a gigantic effect on the world population at large, and especially poor people, far more so than the changing of oil prices (which is a luxury product). Oil prices do affect the prices of Maize primarily due to Maize being used for Ethanol, and due to the increased price of Oil, a larger amount of Ethanol is used and subsidized, where you have a larger margin than on Maize used for Food. Hence the maize is more lucrative to sell for energy purposes than for food consumption. So the cycle of Nature comes to play.

The New York Times had a great article on the possible impact on the increasing price of rice. Depending on location, the price of rice has increased heavily during the last year or so, and the pricing inflation far surpass any GDP growth of any country in the world.

That made me worried enough, knowing the enormous power Rice has in Asia.
Rice stands as the premier food source for around 3 Billion people on earth, so the slightest price change has a massive effect. The president of the World Bank, estimated that 33 countries in the world, faced potential social unrest primarily due to the increase in food prices.

Then i read that the price of Corn had surged almost 30% this year.

Maize/Corn being a huge part of the nutrition for people in the Americas, Corn is used primarily as food for livestock in the US, and due to that the developed world will see an increase in the price of meet.

I have no idea where it’s heading, but it’s certainly not heading somewhere good.

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food” -Universal Declaration of Human Rights

New york times has an article on what looks to be a deal between Live Nation and Jay-Z which would lock him for a long period on several sides of the business.

The sum thrown around is $150 Million, which would make it one of the largest ever deals in the music industry for talent, this would be the third high profile deal Live Nation has signed in the last few months, after snatching Madonna over from Warnerbrothers, and signing on U2 for their future merchandise and concert offerings.

Live Nation’s stock have been taking a hit, and a lot of analysts is striking down their effort in trying to grow in to a serious publisher (well serious they are already, but move in to the big 4 i guess). All i can say is that i love it, Live Nation is taking the jump on acquiring talent at a huge cost (Sucks being a public company in their case i would say) - But taking the risk, saying by acquiring some of the best talent in their industry, hoping that secondary talents will follow. I agree with their views that the price for acquiring real unique talent, is almost never to high. Live Nation might come out at the top or bankruptcy, i doubt they will stay in the middle of anything, all i can say is i hope it goes well, because i love the risk they are taking (again sucks being public company, and have to make that jump with stockholders, but still)

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch”

Rudyard Kipling, If - 1895

Nope, not another “analysis” of the deal really, but some quick thoughts:

- M&A Would take a big dip for next 2-3 years.
Had dinner with Michael Montgomery yesterday, first thing he pointed out was that MS and Yahoo are 2 of the most common bidders for web companies, i know Yahoo is pretty much ALWAYS in the mix for web companies, so would be quite a blow. Time to get back on horse would be a while, considering integration would be 12 months or more, then another 12 months to find out where things have gone wrong and how they can patch it together by buying someone to fill the gap. IHT have a story on it today to.

- Search monetization wouldn’t increase hugely.

Why? Google receives a very large part of their search revenue from non US operations, both MSN and Yahoo are not market leaders in any region (well except Japan in Yahoo’s case) - And Yahoo’s Contextual program is still only available for US based companies/people.

- People are stuck with Google
Maybe i’m very much biased here because i know the back end technology a lot better, and understand how to structure a query to get the result i want. But i think people who use google currently will be stuck with it, and even though it’s a much simpler switch than say from Windows to Mac Os, i still think it will be hard to win over current users.

- News Corp and PE firms make an offer, would be very interesting.

Why, well according to a US piece by a analyst, Yahoo sits on a lot of, off balance sheet assets, if News Corp could get someone to pick these up, so strip company of all “non media/ad assets” they could probably get in the range of something doable combined with some PE money, another issue though would be whom to run that unit, my suggestion is Omid Kordestani, but i guess it would be hard to tear him away from Google and his 3$ billion or so, very nice guy and seems incredibly smart.

Yahoo’s Off-Balance Sheet Assets:

Jeff Lindsay’s Yahoo valuation, as relayed by Eric Savitz at Barrons:

He calculates the total value of the company’s non-operating assets at $13.24 a share: $6.48 a share for the Yahoo! Japan stake, $3.13 for its share of Alibaba.com, $1.07 for its Alibaba Group stake, 8 cents for its share of GMarket (GMKT), $1.99 a share in cash, and 49 cents a share in net operating loss carryforwards. That leaves the value of core Yahoo as of last night’s close at just $10.85.”

- Yahoo used to own quite a bit of google shares, 8.2 Million to be exact

Yahoo settled a patent dispute with Google back in 2004, regarding serving contextual ad’s depending on a search query. They got another 2.7 Million shares for that, today that looks quite little. But if Yahoo had held on to those shares, at closing time they would have been worth a bit more than $4.2 Billion, which would have been more than 10% of Yahoo’s Market Cap.

- Yahoo/MS would be world leading on IM and E-mail
Just to bad you don’t make any money off that…
But would be interesting if News Corp bought Yahoo, and then bought Skype…

Nytimes - Mosquito Nets and a New Drug Make Sharp Inroads Against Malaria

Dr. Arata Kochi, chief of malaria for the W.H.O. “If this is done everywhere, we can reduce the disease burden 80 to 85 percent in most African countries within five years.”

About 1-3 million people die yearly due to Malaria, most of whom are children, and even though this is not a huge step forward from a medical point of view, it’s still a huge win!