Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
One of my Hobby Interests
This CNN Piece covers the remarkable story of Porsche's thriving business in this economic turmoil. I know it's not at all Pittsburgh related, but I thought some of you that read my blog for some of the economic discussion might find it interesting.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Investing Pittsburgh: Ouch, was that the sky falling? Part II
The good news is, I did foresee the falling of the market as a whole and we had a VERY small portfolio so all this bad news hasn't hit us too hard. Tomorrow we may have to buy some of our positions back. I'll keep you posted.
By the way, I'm looking in to other stocks we might purchase since I'm kind of bored with the same 6 stocks.
Investing Pittsburgh is a regular part of this blog. It details the ins and outs of a mock portfolio of Pittsburgh Stocks invested and managed by me. For a list of all of the previous "Investing Pittsburgh" posts, click here.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Now That's a Newspaper
- Patrick Dowd may run for mayor. I bet there are a bunch of people wishing they had more firmly backed Barack Obama right now. A little endorsement or even the right to say "I was for change nationally, and I'm for change locally" would go a long way right now.
- Mayor Ravenstahl and Dan Onorato Embrace Limits on Campaign Financing. I was as shocked as you guys, they both have more then a little lead in HUGE campaign donations. I am anxious to see what Bram and others who follow these things closer have to say about this. It sounds like a good law to me, limiting campaign contributions to roughly federal levels and prohibiting encumbants from using funds leftover from before the law. The individual limits seem high at $4,600, but it's still a great step I think.
- Fiscal Responsibility in Mt. Lebanon. AWESOME. I thought for sure they were going to end up with a school they didn't need at a price the community could not afford. FYI, my mother is a Mt. Lebanon tax payer and home owner.
- Onorato to Host Cyber Town Hall. Got to give the guy props for trying to bring the oldest county outside of Florida in to the 21st century. Though things like this are kind of unfair, since it uses county resources and doesn't offer a rebuttal.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Pittsburgh in the NYT
What's more interesting has been the fallout. Several interesting little tidbits have fallen out of the NYT's recent interest in Pittsburgh.
- First, is the Freakenomics blog post by Stephen Dubner himself (who claims to be a Steeler fan!) about the unusual fact that the Steeler's aren't mentioned in the article. Dubner points out that writing an article about Pittsburgh without mentioning the Steelers is tricky, especially given that the 15 highest rated shows in the Pittsburgh area, have all been Steeler games.
- Second, is another NYT article about the most creative leader in all of Pittsburgh. No, not Luke Ravenstahl. No, not Dan Onorato. No, not even Mike Tomlin. Dick LeBeau. The article is really a charming piece about one of the more interesting Burghers. Its well researched, with a lot of insight from previous teamates and colleagues. While there is some "aren't Pittsburghers such a cute midwestern novelty" attitude, it's more forgivable then the aforementioned "economics" article.
- Third, is a Pop City article about the author of the LeBeau piece. While it is not a NYT piece, it is nice to know that Pittsburghers (who live in the city of Pittsburgh) are getting published in the New York Times. Even nicer to know that they're brining their NY salaries to Pittsburgh to spend. Check out the building that she is working on, absolutely amazing.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Kraut so Sour it Stings
- It appears Penn State might have a basketball team after all. Interesting, I'll keep you posted as news develops.
- Kevin McClatchy's ownership stake in the Pirates = 0%, it's about time! Now we'll need 10 years of "rebuilding" before I can stop wearing this shirt.
- Fast Food pulls a Fast One - McDonald's is replacing the Double Cheeseburger with the McDouble on the dollar menu. The difference? One slice of cheese instead of two. The double cheeseburger is still available, for $1.19.
Note: you can't get sour kraut at McDonald's.
Pittsburgh Entrepreneurs
Steeler Nation: Future Burghers?
Jim had a post a couple days ago that could have served as an answer to my blog post that challenged Burghers to use the Internet to do more for Pittsburgh then just providing information. He left me a challenge to find people who have migrated home to Pittsburgh and "get some success stories on the web." If any of you are one of those people, please let me know and I will be happy to post your story here. If you know anyone who has returned home to the Burgh, tell them to drop me an email: BurgherJon@gmail.com. I know a couple and I will work to get their stories out here, but would love to have some more.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Investing Pittsburgh: My 5 Favorite Stocks
In general I follow three rules (in order of importance) for stock picking.Investing Pittsburgh is a regular part of this blog. It details the ins and outs of a mock portfolio of Pittsburgh Stocks invested and managed by me. For a list of all of the previous "Investing Pittsburgh" posts, click here.With that in mind here are 5 picks I like and any reasons I have for them outside of what’s mentioned above:
- Must be a good value
- Must pay a dividend with a decent yield. I have found that if you can find a value stock with a decent dividend that there’s no hurry for the stock price to recover because you can cash dividend checks while you wait for the market to correct.
- Preferably a contrarian play. With the rise of the online discount broker, there are more silly plays being made in the market than ever before. I’m happy to take advantage of them. I also think that many new age stocks are overhyped. Though I make my living in technology, I can sympathize with Buffet’s argument about the over-valuation of the tech sector as a whole.
- PNC – It’s my favorite right now, and the heftiest percentage of my portfolio. In addition to being a good value (with quite a bit of growth potential to boot), I bought in with a 6% yield! You can still get pretty close to that, around 5.5 at the moment. People are apprehensive about the merger with National City, but the government gave NCC to PNC for a wink and a smile and they didn’t do it so PNC would fail.
- X – US Steel is by far my second favorite. Since I bought it in early December I’m up close to 40% and I still think it’s a bargain, a steal if you’ll forgive the pun. In addition to being a solid match for my three factors, it has the potential to benefit fantastically from any major infrastructure project Obama embarks on.
- HNZ – There’s a big drop off for me between second place and third. In fact at the moment my portfolio is 70% cash with the rest in PNC and X. That being said, we had to pick 5 companies and I don’t think HNZ is a bad place to be. 4.5% yield from a solid value stock.
- PPG – See the note about Heinz, I’m not sure the money isn’t better off in cash for the next month or two, but I think it is a good buy at this price and would help any portfolio in the long run. Its yield is almost 5% and its business is pretty diverse. People have overestimated its dependency on the Big 3. Many of the vehicle related products that PPG produces will be used by foreign vehicle companies with plants in the US and Mexico even if the Big 3 were to be allowed to fail (which I doubt).
- AEO – Don’t buy this yet unless you don’t mind holding it for a while, but it is still a good deal at a 7.8 P/E. The yield is below 4, which isn’t particularly good for the current deflated share price, but I think it has more growth potential then most of the other stocks I’ve named.
Investing Pittsburgh: Being Smart is the Only Way to Make Money Investing
Chris Briem has posted a link to the Economics Club Forecast Luncheon. Unfortunately, I will be out of town and unable to attend. However, anyone who reads this blog, especially if its for the business angle should DEFINITELY try to attend. The chief economists from both PNC and Mellon will be speaking.
If anyone does attend and wants to write up a little summary of their thoughts, I'd be happy to post it here. I'll also be looking for write-ups in the MSM and other blogs.
Investing Pittsburgh is a regular part of this blog. It details the ins and outs of a mock portfolio of Pittsburgh Stocks invested and managed by me. For a list of all of the previous "Investing Pittsburgh" posts, click here.
Investing Pittsburgh: Ouch, was that the sky falling?
- US Steel down 4%
- Alcoa down 8%
- PPG down 2.5%
- PNC which is UP 1.4%
- Heinz which is down less then a percent.
Investing Pittsburgh is a regular part of this blog. It details the ins and outs of a mock portfolio of Pittsburgh Stocks invested and managed by me. For a list of all of the previous "Investing Pittsburgh" posts, click here.
Carbolic Smoke Ball Hits Another One Out of the Park
Obama to Name Fonzarelli Secretary of CoolWASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama will hold a news conference this morning to announce that he is naming Arthur Fonzarelli as his Secretary of Cool.
Mr. Fonzarelli, or “the Fonz,” as he is known to his colleagues in the greater Milwaukee motorcross/juvenile delinquent communities, is the final appointee to the Obama cabinet.
Attempts to reach Mr. Fonzarelli for comment at his upper-garage apartment or at his office in the men’s room of a popular teenage soda shop were unsuccessful.
It is believed that he spent the weekend at Inspiration Point with the Hooper triplets preparing for his new job.
As head of the Department of Cool, Secretary Fonzarelli will be in charge of implementing President Obama’s oft-stated campaign pledge to restore America’s cool in the world.
According to Obama spokesman Bill Burton, the new Secretary knows just how to get the job done.
“Secretary Fonzarelli has instructed me to release the following statement: ’All nerds in the department are to clean out their desks and be off department property by five o’clock eastern standard time. The purging of nerds will hasten the return of our cool. Aayyyyy.’”
Monday, January 5, 2009
Free Labor , Stipends and the Burghosphere
The Business Week article explores the start-up ThisNext. ThisNext relies on hundreds of "experts" to search the web, find new trends and post them. ThisNext then sells advertising and makes a small fortune. It'd be a tough sell as a business model because experts are expensive, that is, they are expensive when they don't donate their time. That works out well for ThisNext because they've never paid them a dime. A similar story that I have followed is that of Mahalo. Mahalo pays a whoping $10 per "Search Engine Response" that users generate. It has to take at least 3 or 4 hours to make such a page, and that's if you are skilled at researching and writing. Clearly a bargain for Mahalo.
I believe all of the sites that rely on this "free" help have a few things in common:
- An initial hook that gets the site started. For ThisNext, the founders interviewed experts and prepopulated hundreds of pages before day 1. For Mahalo it was a combination of the $10 hook and some prepopulation.
- A way to seperate the good from the bad. Some sites rely on a democratic system (Yahoo Answers or Digg for example). Some sites rely on paid reviewers, like Mahalo. Some rely on some combination of the two (wikipedia). However it is done, the review cycle must be quick and complete enough to leave an impression of reliability.
- Something New and Interesting. All of these sites enjoy a cult following. This is a bit of a chicken and an egg situation. They are reliable because of their cult following and they have a cult following beacuse they are reliable. Just how to attract this following remains a bit mysterious, but I think the key is a subject matter that is new and mysterious. A new wikipedia won't take off, it's got to be new. It also has to be something that's interesting to everyone in addition to a few core enthusiasts. For example, a site about exotic cars is going to have a larger following then a site about honda accords. Yes, more people own Accords then own exotic cars, but people who don't have a vested interest are more likely to read up on the exotics.
Chris Briem Spotted at Pittsblog
If It Looks Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck...
My Thoughts:
- Think about the relative surface area of a busway and a parking lot. You don't hear them complaining about resurfacing the parking lot.
- Is it even legal to make a shopping mall, allow general traffic, and disallow buses? If it is, it damn well shouldn't be.
- Would a boycott of Simon Malls (all of the mentioned malls are Simon) be able to get any ground over this? (probably not, but worth asking)
- What about saying, "the health inspector takes the bus to do food court inspections, no bus stop, no legal food court."
Blogroll Changes
- Add Pittsblog (if you deleted it) - That's right Big Mike Maddison is back on the scene, with some aggressive plans.
- Add Pittsburgh Hoagie - Matt Hogue has redoubled his efforts in the last couple months and seems to be making every effort to fill the gaping hole left by the Burgh Report (read on).
- Remove The Burgh Report - Widely acknowledged as the best political blog in Pittsburgh, the Burgh Report has joined the growing trash heap of great blogs.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Investing Pittsburgh: I'll Stay
Note: If you're following along at home and do have to worry about commissions and taxes, don't worry about staying in PPG and HNZ. They're both solid dividend stocks at a pretty cheap price, they'll be fine in the long run. In fact I'm maintaining both positions in my personal account.
Investing Pittsburgh: Week in Review (Double Wide) 12/22 - 1/2
Since we didn't make any sales or acquisitions, let's see how the ride we were along for went. Looking at the numbers, here are my observations:
- My critics will be quick to point out that Alcoa is over 12 and up about 25% in the last two weeks. I will remind them that we sold at 10.7 (far above where Alcoa started its recent run). I will also say, that I've shorted Alcoa at its present price in my personal account, the business is just bound to struggle for a little while and I'm still afraid they'll soon announce they are cutting the dividend.
- PNC is up almost 10%, I still think its a bargain. I'm looking to expand our position, but I think it will drop off a bit in the short term and give us a chance to get a bargain.
- We were behind the market overall (DJI was up 5.31%, we were up 3.35%), however the stocks we owned outperformed the market (money invested was up 6.17%). We only trailed the market because of our large cash position, which I still contend you'll thank me for later this month.