Saturday 29 May 2010

Apple vs Microsoft: Short-Term Thinking ?

A common criticism of Wall Street is that it is fixated on short-term results. Well, most recently Microsoft has been, errr, twice as profitable as Apple in absolute terms. But somehow Apple has overtaken MS in terms of market cap.

The reason generally given is that Apple has the better long-term prospects !

Things are always a bit more complex than they are painted ... long gold**, me.

ND


** no financial advice here, of course


7 comments:

James Higham said...

Gold is manipulated. Unless you plan to hoard it, which your longing appears to suggest.

Elby the Beserk said...

And what, pray, James, is NOT manipulated?

Steven_L said...

I remember being sat with Nick and a few other bloggers in summer 2008 pre-Lehmans.

Nick was long gold then (and kind of shook his head at my thesis oil and gold would crash) and was right!

I was right on the oil and still cry myself to sleep for not buying well out the money puts on it (I console myself that I didn't know how to then!

I hum and har about buying gold, but I'd rate Nick as about the most astute bloke I've ever met.

A few weeks ago a bankster down Canary Wharf also advised me to buy some gold.

I might buy a few hundred quids worth just in case.

Anonymous said...

"A few weeks ago a bankster down Canary Wharf also advised me to buy some gold."

Oh oh! Isn't that rather a contrary indicator? That suggests to me the price is about to plunge.

Anyway, Denninger says, and it makes sense - if we are entering deflation, lead will be more useful than gold.

Pity you are not legally allowed to own the sort of lead you'll need in those circumstances.

Another anon said...

Anon 7.49: Maybe you are right. For the past several months my local goldsmith has had a large poster in his window yelling Sell Us Your Gold. During the time it was displayed gold rose from around UDD850 an oz to where it is today at over USD1100. So anyone daft enough to sell their gold items when the poster went up (unless they really needed the cash) has lost quite a lot of potential gain.

The poster was removed over the weekend. I wonder why that is...

CityUnslicker said...

I don't hold any Gold, do owna gold miner or two though.

Savonarola said...

The whole point to buying gold is to hoard it. The hoarders fix the price.