Guess Yahoo’s Monday Closing Price, Win A Free Autographed Book!

Since this YHOO/MSFT thing is such an absolute joke, little different from the Ashley Dupre affair and thanks to some solid brainstorming with my friends at TheLion.com, I was inspired to make it into a somewhat useful waste of time by doing a similarly themed giveaway: one free autographed copy of my book, An American Hedge Fund, to whoever guessed YHOO’s opening price Monday morning.

But since great minds think alike, and the greater the mind, the quicker it thinks, Lindzon beat me to it, offering up some cool free yoga gear.

The blogosphere ain’t about copying so to be unique / make it infinitely more difficult / random / annoying, to win an autographed copy of my book, leave a comment on this post guessing YHOO’s CLOSING price on Monday!

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Breaking News: Microsoft (MSFT) Withdraws Offer To Acquire Yahoo (YHOO)…My Take

I tried very hard not to cover this breaking news of Microsoft withdrawing their offer to acquire Yahoo! as I believe it to be utterly useless for trading purposes, especially since we all know there’s gonna be 5,000 articles in the next 24 hours written about it, but the official press release contains some pretty funny stuff towards the end–at least for corporate speak–so it’d be rude of me not to share:

I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table.

Sincerely yours,
/s/ Steven A. Ballmer

Yah, that’s just the end of the PR, but the rest of it basically just says you YHOO pricks shoulda taken our money and not been so greedy cuz now we’re gonna clobber you, just like we’ve been doing for a while, not because we’re that good or smart but cuz you guys suck worse. Seriously, that’s what it says. Ballmer admits it. Read it yourself.

UPDATE: This is getitng funnier by the hour…Yahoo! responds in THIS PR saying bah blah blah…here’s the funny part of CEO Yang trying to get back at Ballmer’s putdown:

Jerry Yang, co-founder and chief executive officer, Yahoo! Inc. added, “I am incredibly proud of the way our team has come together over the last three months. This process has underscored our unique and valuable strategic position. With the distraction of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history so that we can maximize our potential to the benefit of our shareholders, employees, partners and users.”

It’s like two old former soap stars bickering cuz now they’re both too ugly for daytime TV. Yang, you better STFU cuz you about to get sued by all your shareholders you arrogant @$!hole

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My Take On Visa Inc (V) aka Baseball Card Collecting In The 1990s

No matter how many times I say stick to trades with ideal risk-reward ratios for the smaller investor—those being media-hype plays and pumps and dumps courtesy of your friendly local stock promoter, the questions about random real companies keep streaming in—none moreso than Visa (V). The emails came from far and wide and helped inspire the thesis of THIS AOL article I wrote about the company the morning before its IPO. Yup, I was dead right. So how did I know it’d follow a VMware (VMW)-type trajectory; because simple theories work best.

Think about it, everybody and their other mother is comfortable with the strategy of buy what you know, buy blue-chip companies—blehhhhhhh! The absurd popularity of that strategy makes me gag because while it’s worked well in the past, it’s sooooo old news now. I’ll use the example highlighted in my book An American Hedge Fund by comparing this strategy to baseball card collecting—everybody growing up in the 1980s and 1990s who collected those stupid little pieces of cardboard dreamed of their values soaring into the thousands of dollars, just like those cards from back in the 1950s and 1960s.

Unfortunately, the card companies took advantage of this great track record and us suckers, producing those cards en mass and us kids—ignorant to the laws of supply and demand—bought them en mass, only too happy to pack them away and wait to collect our inevitable rewards.

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Revolt Of The Untalented Financial Writers!

Many of you are familiar with Seeking Alpha articles–mostly because SA’s founder David Jackson did a great job getting his content onto Yahoo! Finance–it ain’t due to the quality of work! It’s more because the financial media circus is all about more content.

Breaking news, earnings, scandals…bleh blah blah, all the most active stocks must be covered and dissected by boring-ass stuck-up finance freaks, all of whom put together are less entertaining than a block of wood all while they consistently underperform the major indexes aka people who should have no audience whatsoever and instead focus on learning how to beat the market and not being scum-sucking fee-earning marketers who take advantage of the general public’s lack of market understanding.

So, it’s rather funny to me–and it should be to you too–that many of these wannabes are revolting against SA, angry they’re not getting paid for their efforts.

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Why Bess Levin Is The Only Financial Commentator You Should Ever Listen To

Big Picture Barry Ritholtz likes getting quoted in the press…trust me, I know the feeling, I also went through that phase…but what good does it do? Everything the senile-old-man-esque financial press covers has soooo many variables, sooooo many moving parts, sooooooo many time lags involved and most importantly, can be framed any number of ways. It’s all just one big guessing game where you HAVE NO EDGE WHATSOEVER, so luck and leverage aside, you can NEVER increase your wealth substantially.

You know my take, small investors and traders need to stop worrying about the news/macro/popular issues and learn to profit from more niche-oriented/inefficient hence predictable stuff like PennyStocking! That’s where the big % returns lie–no leverage needed–and if you really want financial gossip, don’t turn to CNBC, just visit Dealbreaker for some Bess Levin commentary…at least she’s funny.

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Damn All You People Who Contribute To Market Randomness!

Do you every wonder why EVERYONE in the finance world has an opinion on stocks like Bear Stearns (BSC)? Sure, sure, BSC is big time and their collapse could lead to others, the whole domino effect, but why do people believe they can accurately judge the outcome? I think it’s just the latest example of how this industry—Wall Street and those who cover Wall Street—operates. And why you smaller investors/traders, like TIM, should have nothing to do with it! I’ll explain…

Look around at the most popular finance websites/blogs and you’ll see what I mean, TheStreet.com, Fool, Yahoo! Finance, CNBC, Marketwatch, FOX Business, Reuters, Bloomberg, Big Picture, Kedorsky, I could name these CRIMINALS all day. I say criminals because they’re all guilty—guilty of focusing their attention on popular, yet highly unpredictable situations, perpetrating the lie that makes everyone think the stock market is so difficult to understand. And they should be locked up. Or maybe just their fingers cut off and tongues cut out. Either or.

TIM Lesson: The vast majority of stock market randomness exists only in the most broadly covered topics!

Oh wait that actually makes some sense, doesn’t it? You’re damn right it does!  

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