Crazy Hawt

Microsoft has some serious problems. Their business model is being threatened on all fronts. Go here if you want a liveblog of their earnings call. They missed street estimates of revenue by $1B. I know that in reference to the US economy, the “trillion” word is said a lot so that may desensitize us to the word “billion,” but make no mistake… that’s… A LOT.

An analyst on the call asked Microsoft about margins, and the CFO said he’s not making any promises. He better not – their number one piece of business is selling operating systems. When your competitor, Apple, viewed as the maker of premium products, says it is going to sell OS X Snow Leopard for a flat $30, that sure makes Windows 7 pricing look downright stupid.

Their online services revenue was down by 14% too. I have said this once and I’ll say it again: MICROSOFT NEEDS TO SPLIT ITSELF UP. They have no synergy. Imagine how good Office could be if it were free from any sort of corporate mandates from HQ… The XBOX is great. They should focus on making it not sound like a jet engine, not on how to integrate with Zune. Speaking of Zune, can they just put that out of its misery? It just seems like there are so many wheels at Microsoft that aren’t turning together. Either fire Steve Ballmer and find someone who can align the wheels… or take apart the car and let each part run freely. Until they do one of the those two things, I’d be shocked if MSFT turns around any time soon.

Apple released their 3Q09 Quarterly results just now. I’m not going to post any of the boring press release details. You can read that here. However, I’m listening to their conference call right now, and I’ll post any interesting tidbits below. Click to continue reading!

Read more…

I haven’t posted here much about money, finance, or trading, but I’m dabbling with the idea of doing so a bit more often. I’m feeling especially good about this recent trade. Oil was up over 80 for what seemed like no reason. Oil inventories were at record highs and consumption was down due to the weakened economy. Deciding to play oil on the short side as a quick trade, I bought DTO. DTO is an ETF designed to follow DOUBLE the opposite performance of Oil in a single day. So if Oil dropped 1%, this should go up 2%. The trade worked like a charm. I bought my shares at 68.85 and sold them all for 95 flat last week. I still think oil might trend lower, but I think the big run down is over. So here’s the real question… when is it time to turn back around and go long? I’m thinking that if oil hits 50, or especially 45, it might time to pile back in… Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.