Thursday, January 22, 2009

Google Keeps On Trucking As The Rest Of The World Burns

The recession proof Google proved that well... it's recession proof! Even with the major downturn in essentially all the economies around the world Google managed to beat analysis estimates and actually grow year over year and quarter over quarter. They manged to make GAAP operating income for the fourth quarter of 2008 of $1.86 billion! That is nothing to sneeze at when a lot of other companies are reporting losses. They also have 15.85 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term marketable securities as of December 31, 2008. Not too bad either... Here are the other highlights from the quarter...

• Revenue growth of 18% Y/Y and 3% Q/Q
– Google properties revenue growth of 22% Y/Y and 4% Q/Q
– Network revenues increased 4% Y/Y and 1% Q/Q
– International revenue was $2.9 billion
• Operational Highlights
– Traffic and revenue solid in Q4 despite difficult economic environment
– Key investments continue in our core search and ads businesses
– Increasing prioritization of our newer investments:

And my personal favorite the visual evidence of Google's growth...I don't have to tell you what to do... the numbers speak for themselves...

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Rocky Ride To The Poor House

It has been a rough couple of months for the stock market the Dow fell from its high of just over 14000 down to under 8000 at one point! What a vicious drop that was... by far the worst I have traded through in my career. So what should you do now?

Well things certainly aren't looking that good with the overall economy, but the real question is how long can this downturn last? 6 months? A year? 2 years? Either way you need to consider your time horizons for your investments. Being that I tend to hold on to a position for over a year I am not worried. In fact, now is one of the best entry points I have ever seen. The valuations of stocks have come down so much that even with companies making less money then in previous years there are plenty of companies out there worth investing in. Sure it could get worse, but I think we have already put in the bottom on this downturn.

Of course if you follow the blog I kinda start to sound like a broken record, but it is important to understand. First of all don't buy all at once, as you can tell from the recent volatility in the stock market putting all your money in at once just doesn't make any sense. If you scale into a position and have a long time horizon you will do fine.

My personal recommendations at this point are ESLR, GOOG, RY, SU, ORA and YUM...