BLOG OF ADAM HARTUNG
How the World Series Lost Relevancy
I was born the 1950s. In my youth of the '60s there was no doubt that the #1 sport in America was baseball. Almost every boy owned a bat, ball and glove and played baseball. When we went out for recess there was always a softball game somewhere on the playground....
Do Not Follow the Herd – Sell McDonald’s and Microsoft
This week McDonald's and Microsoft both reported earnings that were higher than analysts expected. After these surprise announcements, the equities of both companies had big jumps. But, unfortunately, both companies are in a Growth Stall and unlikely to sustain...
How Telltales Told You Not to Own Wal-Mart, and Continue To Do So
Wal-Mart market value took a huge drop on Wednesday. In fact, the worst valuation decline in its history. That decline continued on Thursday. Since the beginning of 2015 Wal-Mart has lost 1/3 of its value. That is an enormous ouch. But, if you were surprised, you...
Will Jack Dorsey “Get It” At Twitter?
Twitter's Board decided in July to oust the CEO, Dick Costolo, due to frustration over company profits. As I wrote at the time, Twitter had continued to add members, at a rate comparable to its social media competition. And it had grown revenues, while remaining the...
Report: Boards Should Re-apply Focus on Long-term Value Creation
The stock market is incredibly fickle. In the short term, stock prices can swing significantly on such short-term news as: What are reviewers saying about the newest, yet-to-be released iPhone? Will Amazon use drones for shipping? How many people in Latin America...
Why Tesla Could Be the Next Apple – and Put a Hurt On Exxon
A recent analyst took a look at the impact of electric vehicles (EVs) on the demand for oil, and concluded that they did not matter. In a market of 95million barrels per day production, electric cars made a difference of 25,000 to 70,000 barrels of lost consumption;...
Smisek’s United Ouster – Were You Really Surprised?
Jeff Smisek, CEO of United Continental Holdings, was fired this week. It appears he was making deals with public officials (specifically the Chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) to keep personally favored flights of politicians in the air, even...
Why Tom Brady’s Deflategate Win is Bad for Leadership
Tom Brady's lawyers convinced a judge this week (9/3/15) to over-rule his four game suspension for using under-inflated footballs in playoff games. This could seem like making a mountain out of a molehill, if it wasn't so important a statement about bad leadership....
F.A.N.G Investing Makes Sense – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google
As market volatility reached new highs this week, CNBC began talking about something called "FANG Investing." Most commentators showed great displeasure in the fact that prior to the recent downturn high growth companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google...
Congratulations Rangers Griest and Haver, You Aren’t Diverse – You’re Good
How clearly I remember. I was in the finals of my third grade arithmetic competition. Two of us at the chalkboard, we both scribbled the numbers read to us as fast as we could, did the sum and whirled to look at the judges. Only my competitor was a hair quicker...
Regulations Work – Applaud SOX and Dodd- Frank
Last week the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) pre-released some results of its 2015–2016 Public Company Governance Survey. One major finding is that the makeup of Boards is changing, for the betterment of investors - and most likely everyone else...
ikeGPS – How To Invest in Trends To Escape Your Core and Grow Explosively
Would you like to triple your revenue next year? And have plans to keep tripling it - or more - every year into the future? Of course you would. But is your business positioned for such explosive growth? Are you in growth markets, creating new products with new...
Disrupting Markets – Why PayPal Is Worth More Than Ebay
eBay was once a game changer. When the internet was very young, and few businesses provided ecommerce, eBay was a pioneer. From humble beginnings selling Pez dispensers, eBay grew into a powerhouse. Things we used to sell via garage sale we could now list on eBay. ...
Bigger Is Not Always Better – Why Amazon Is Worth More than Walmart
This week an important event happened on Wall Street. The value of Amazon (~$248B) exceeded the value of Walmart (~$233B.) Given that Walmart is world's largest retailer, it is pretty amazing that a company launched as an on-line book seller by a former banker only...
Why EPS and Share Price Don’t Predict Future Performance
Most analysts, and especially "chartists," put a lot of emphasis on earnings per share (EPS) and stock price movements when determining whether to buy a stock. Unfortunately, these are not good predictors of company performance, and investors should beware. Most...
A $7.6B Write-off Plus Layoffs Is Never a Good Sign Microsoft
Microsoft announced today it was going to shut down the Nokia phone unit, take a $7.6B write-off (more than the $7.2B they paid for it,) and lay off another 7,800 employees. That makes the layoffs since CEO Nadella took the reigns almost 26,000. Finding any good...
Listen to Employees When Evaluating Leadership
24x7 Wall Street just released its fourth annual analysis of the worst companies to work for in America. By looking across all four reports it is possible to identify likely problems which will be valuable for investors, employees (current and prospective,) suppliers...
Why CEOs Make So Much Money
The Economic Policy Institute issued its most recent report on CEO pay yesterday, and the title makes the point clearly "Top CEOs Make 300 Times More than Typical Workers." CEOs of the 350 largest US public companies now average $16,300,000 in compensation, while...
Costolo Should NOT Have Been Fired – Twitter Investors Worry
Dick Costolo was let go from his role as CEO of Twitter, to be replaced by a former CEO that was also fired. Unfortunately, it looks very strongly as if the Board made this decision for the wrong reasons. Even though investors have been unhappy with Twitter's share...
How HR “best practices” Kill Innovation
Did you ever notice that Human Resource (HR) practices are designed to lock-in the past rather than grow? A quick tour of what HR does and you quickly see they like to lock-in processes and procedures, insuring consistency but offering no hope of doing something...
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