IBM's market ​capitalizat​ion surpasses Microsoft

Didn't think it was possible either..

http://www.businessinsider.com/once-it-seemed-impossible-ibm-is-now-worth-more-than-microsoft-2011-5

I knew it was possible. I think GOOG will pass Microsoft as well in the next 2 years.

The founders of MSFT are selling off heavily, and that doesn't inspire confidence.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=MSFT+Insider+Transactions

Bill Gates and Craig Mundie's sales alone are diluting the stock price beyond belief and they will not run out of shares in their lifetimes. MSFT is a dead tech stock.

Again, I invested in slot machines in Asia, and that's going nowhere but up.

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/13/inside-the-deal-that-made-bill-gates-350000000/

He got only $1.6 million for the shares he sold, but going public put a market value of $350 million on the 45% stake he retains. A software prodigy who helped start Microsoft while still in his teens, Gates, at 30, is probably one of the 100 richest Americans.

He had 45% at the IPO. You fools buying MSFT are not buying the intrinsic value of public traders. You're buying Bill's stock directly from his sock drawer. Stock he values so much he can't wait to get rid of it all. He's down to 8% right now after several splits.

There are so many small cap companies that crashed at the 2008 crash that are just now starting to turn profitable again, you'd be a fool to invest in a NASDAQ stock. These stocks have low PE ratios and have 1000% growth room easy.

What does IBM even do?

@beerinbelgium:What exactly should one invest in?

I personally have a highly diversified investment portfolio.

@vesuvius:

http://www.google.com/finance/historical?cid=696965&startdate=Mar+6%2C+2009&enddate=March+6%2C+2009&num=30

Las Vegas Sands Corp. historical prices
            1.77
 Mar 6, 2009         Mar 6, 2009
Date     Open     High     Low     Close     Volume
Mar 6, 2009     2.07     2.10     1.56     1.77     26,904,781

http://www.google.com/finance?q=LVS

Friday they closed at $41.74

So, not all the casinos recovered so quickly as the Las Vegas Sands, especially not those in Asia. China manipulates their currency to keep exports cheap, and to deregulate the trade balance, so that's a factor as well.

Like I said, I have targeted Asian casino hardware and software providers. It doesn't take a genius to write slot machine software or to bolt together a slot machine and paste some fruit decals on the side.

Americans are too brand oriented and it leaves little room for small players even if the big guys have inferior products, they can marketing budget people's buying habits away.

I say look for small cap overseas with American ADR's or American companies listed on smaller exchanges with operations and sales focused overseas. (NOT in Western Europe)

Markets that have very little brand loyalty and consumer confidence are the best for small cap investments.

@CreamFilling512:

What does IBM even do?

IBM is the world's largest tech consulting mafia.

If IBM is your consultant, and it says you should use the technology solution of an ex employee at 200 times the going rate for the same solution, you do it. You don't ask questions. You never ask any questions of IBM account managers or you get some horrible repercussion. Your falling out of favor with an IBM account manager is not worth a $2,000,000 mistake being pushed through. You say nothing and let it happen. You blame somebody else.

IBM makes billions from no bid government contracts worldwide by greasing officials.

http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2011/lr21889.htm

IBM can literally do anything, and for that, they are the scariest consulting firm on earth.

Lets not even go into what they sold the Nazis. There have been several efforts to systematically erase any mention of that online.

Well, MS's decline is somewhat concerning. And the recent rumor of rebranding Zune to Xbox Live is one reason some people at MS need some spankings. MS continues to give poor brand name to their products and they don't even try to build the name up, instead they want lucky boom, which is extremely ill mannared.

Anyway, stock for the next 6 months is not looking bright IMO. I don't care all the fancy boring fake numbers. Economy is still horrible and this fake market will crash eventually. If you invest, you better prepare for the upcoming crash. I too have investment in stock, but, I am indeed put my claim into heavy consideration.

http://launch.is/blog/l018-how-microsoft-spent-7b-on-skype-and-15b-on-a-facebook-k.html

SIDE NOTE: I’m going to bet the donkeys who held $MSFT for the past ten years and made, ummm, 0.0% return (yes, $MSFT traded mid-$20s in 2001 and is still trading in the mid-$20s) are going to now sell, and miss $MSFT doubling over the next four years as Ballmer has finally figured out how to buy an internet company (Skype had a no-shop according to reports).

If Jason McCabe Calacanis thinks you're going to win, you're most likely going to lose. He's wrong 99.9% of the time. I hear he's a bad drunk too.

Forget Google and eHow, Mahalo your favorite topic!

I didn't think so either....

10 hours ago, Cream​Filling512 wrote

What does IBM even do?

The same thing MS will be doing ten years from now: enterprise services and consultancy based around legacy software.

You're looking at a smaller company that will still be turning good profits, but I think their days of relevance are pretty much over. The problem was one of simple arrogance. The higher-ups really believed that the company was invincible, even though the market told them otherwise.

And in other news, Windows Mobile 6.5 continues to outsell Windows Phone 7.

In the words of Lord Sugar, What a shambles.

I always had respect for IBM since they invented so many basic things that we take for granted, like barcodes, relational databases, RAM, electron microscopes, fractals and hard drives.  And today they still do cool research like nanotech stuff, quantum teleportation, Watson.  Also every video game console this generation uses IBM processors so they probably make a lot from that.

19 hours ago, vesuvius wrote

@beerinbelgium:What exactly should one invest in?

I'm hoping you are trolling the troll.  Any suggestion he might have will be bad. <checks response> ...yep.  Gambling on casino stocks...brilliant.

19 hours ago, Bass wrote

I personally have a highly diversified investment portfolio.

Exactly.  If you're smart, you'll buy indexes.  If you're brave or have fun money, you can buy individual stocks and maybe you'll get lucky.  But lack of diversity is the single best way to end up eating dog-food from a can in your retirement years.

20 hours ago, Cream​Filling512 wrote

What does IBM even do?

as a refugee from the IBM AS400 Microsoft is looking more and more like IBM. The more established the user community becomes, the more its respected members are reluctant to speak critically of the company. The current leadership of Microsoft is really bad. People should be talking about it more.  Also, everyone in the community follows the latest changes on their platform, but are oblivious to what is happening elsewhere.  I have no idea what Apple or Google are doing software wise, if they have the equivalent of C# and .NET.

@SteveRichter:

"I have no idea what Apple or Google are doing software wise, if they have the equivalent of C# and .NET."

Apple has objective C which you use with XCode, and Google uses the original .NET. It's called Java. It was created far before Anders Hejlsberg, the MSJVM WFC lead(remember J++), decided to "borrow" it when Sun told him he couldn't create non JNI Win32 extensions.

http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/javadoc/overview-summary.html

http://developer.android.com/reference/packages.html

23 minutes ago, beerinbelgi​um wrote

@SteveRichter:

"I have no idea what Apple or Google are doing software wise, if they have the equivalent of C# and .NET."

Apple has objective C which you use with XCode, and Google uses the original .NET. It's called Java. It was created far before Anders Hejlsberg, the MSJVM WFC lead(remember J++), decided to "borrow" it when Sun told him he couldn't create non JNI Win32 extensions.

 

that I know. It is news from many years ago. I have no idea if Apple is using its abundant smarts to improve or replace objective C. Maybe a runtime framework that enables secure code to be written, yet provides all the great programmer productive features of .NET and C#.

1 hour ago, beerinbelgi​um wrote

 It was created far before Anders Hejlsberg, the MSJVM WFC lead(remember J++), decided to "borrow" it when Sun told him he couldn't create non JNI Win32 extensions.

Bit of revisionist history there. At the time JNI not only didn't exist, but Sun claimed they would never allow Java to interface with native code directly as it would pollute the pure platform-independent nature of Java.