ParkTwain's Parlor

[IIC]

Parktwain always had some great ideas

Yeah he was OK...Except when you disagreed with him...He was in Las Vegas...What I remember most about him is that when we were talking about holding a Mr. Market Convention I suggested a 3 night cruise to the Bahamas and he was afraid to go there.

[mrmarket]

Parktwain always had some great ideas

VMWare - VMW - post IPO action

Who's interested? Should've picked this one for remainder of the week in POTW.

Interesting comment (dated 8/15/07) on VMW's products I found in Paul Kedrosky's blog:

//
Vmware will NOT settle far below the price from yesterday. Less than 5% of all x86 servers are running in a virtual environment. That leaves 95% of the servers as candidates for Vmware. Also, you all fail to realize that they have a product called Virtual Workstation. HPQ is spending MILLIONS creating their own virtual desktop initiative, spearheaded with this product. This company WILL double its revenues for next fiscal year and if workstation takes off.......it might even be bigger than their VI3 product. For someone that sells this stuff daily, I can tell you that corporate America is clamoring for this technology and people are spending BOATLOADS on it, including the Federal Gov. 100% of Fortune 500 companies use Vmware. In one year I can tell you that 100% of Fortune 1000 companies will be using it.

the value proposion that pops up most is that x86 servers have an average cpu utilization of 8%-12%, this is generally accepted by most consulting firms. The less than stellar utilization is a prime candidate for server virtualization. The cost savings to a corporation is tremendous. Less Hardware, less maintenance costs and less human resources to manage it.

Do not confuse this technology with storage virutalization, its completely different and storage virtualization has had a luke warm reception while server virtualization is white hot, specifically in UNIX environments (IBM and SUNW provide for logical partitions). VMW is a dominant player in the x86 market. DELL, HPQ and IBM have invested MILLIONS of dollars creating Vmware consulting practices. Sunw has jumped on the bandwagon. INTEL and CISCO both invested heavily....why? because they SEE THE PICTURE. Many of you do not. Go to vmware's website and read up on the company. Then go check on their competitors, none of which stand a chance, except maybe Microsoft who is at least two years away from having the funcationality of Vmware. My clients prefer to PAY FOR VMWARE than take MSFT's current product for free.
//

Followed by this comment:

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The way to play VMW is to buy EMC. It is unbelievable that EMC has not traded higher with the success of this IPO. At $52 per share, VMW represents 7.90 per EMC share. You are buying EMC for $10.50 per share without VMW. That is where EMC was before it bought VMW 4 years ago, and EMC had @$6.2b in sales. Today they have $12b, with no move up in four years??

It is only a matter of time before EMC is a takeover target if they don't trade more in line to reflect the VMW value. Remember, EMC still owns 87% of VMW and they now have over $6b in cash. Back up the truck on EMC.
//

Couple of interesting comments on subprime contagion

http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_G/threadview?m=tm&bn=8089&tid=59636&mid=59636&tof=97&frt=2

http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_G/threadview?m=tm&bn=8089&tid=59652&mid=59652&tof=19&frt=2

http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_G/threadview?m=tm&bn=8089&tid=59677&mid=59677&tof=20&frt=2

Definitions of "expert"

I use some of this material to "warm up" an audience for a presentation.



Dictionary Definitions of “expert”


M-W Online Dict., 10th ed.
Having, involving, or displaying special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience

Compact Oxford English Dict. of Current English
A person who is very knowledgeable about or skilful in a particular area.

American Heritage Dict. of the English Language, 4th ed.
A person with a high degree of skill in or knowledge of a certain subject

Webster’s 1828 Dict.
Properly, experienced; taught by use, practice or experience; hence, skillful; well instructed; having familiar knowledge of; as an expert philosopher

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Quotable Definitions of “expert”


Niels Bohr
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

Edward de Bono
An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

Shunryu Suzuki
In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few.

Konrad Lorenz
Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.

Nicholas Murray Butler
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.

Elbert Hubbard
One who limits himself to his chosen mode of ignorance.

Malcolm Forbes
What's an expert? I read somewhere, that the more a man knows, the more he knows he doesn't know. So I suppose one definition of an expert would be someone who doesn't admit out loud that he knows enough about a subject to know he doesn't really know how much.

Henry Kissinger
A person who knows how to articulate the consensus of his constituency.

Laurence J. Peter
Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.

Steven Weinberg
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

Frank Lloyd Wright
An expert is a man who has stopped thinking - he knows!

P.J. Plauger
My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared. (Computer Language, March 1983)

Donald R. Gannon
Where facts are few, experts are many.

Tom Hopkins
An expert is someone who knows a lot about the past.

William Cowper
How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, excels a dunce that has been kept at home.

Edwin Meese III
An expert is somebody who is more than 50 miles from home, has no responsibility for implementing the advice he gives, and shows slides.

Oscar Wilde
An ordinary man away from home giving advice.

"A Short Guide to Iraq" (U.S. War Dept., WW2)

http://digitallibrary.smu.edu/cul/gir/ww2/pdf/w0025.pdf

Jesse Livermore's "How To Trade In Stocks" (1940)

Photographs of book pages, in PDF (74 PDF pages):

http://stockvision.org/books/Jesse_Livermore-How_To_Trade_In_Stocks_(1940_original)-EN.pdf

[IIC]

http://www.nasd100.com/net/index.html

More random info to throw into the hopper.

Thx for that blog...But I went to their homepage and they don't seem to update very often

Naz 100 Net Margins list

http://www.nasd100.com/net/index.html

More random info to throw into the hopper.

[MEA_1956]

Been There, Seen That, Want to go back.

When you made this post of the GASSBUGGY in N.M. it brought back old memories. We use to drive by this sight daily for about two months back in 1989. The drilling co. I worked for had a contract with AMCO to do a few wells out that way.
If I remenber correctly they set off the explosition their to se if it would help gas production in the area. don't rember much else other than it was beautiful countrey around there. Marlin

Nevada's "drive-up" nuclear test site - CNTA

The Central Nevada Test Area north of Warm Springs, in northern Nye County, was where the "Faultless" underground nuclear explosion took place in 1968. You can drive right up to the spot where it took place. It is located outside of the always off-limits Nevada Test Site.

http://www.rachel-nevada.com/places_faultless.html

This site is one of eight, in addition to the Nevada Test Site itself, in the continental U.S. where underground nuclear tests took place.

http://www.cerm.dri.edu/Graphics/Offsites_Test_Area_Project_Map.pdf

Even Mississippi got into the act, in 1964 (Salmon event) and 1966 (Sterling event):

http://www.mensetmanus.net/salmon-sterling-site/

Multi-page survey of coastal damage from Katrina

ParkTwain,

I've been enjoying the pictures that you've posted here. I thought you might like this picture, courtesy of a former MM member, which seems especially pertinent following their recent earnings release:

Hi peanut, I am late responding to your post, but it looked like that photo might have been taken along the Mississippi Gulf Coast as an example of Katrina damage.

Here is an extensive and very informative survey (a set of web pages with aerial photos, onsite damage photos, and some video links) of mostly the surge-related damage from La. to Ala. due to Katrina. Maybe 30 ft of surge around Waveland, Miss. -- see one key photo on the Waveland page.

http://www.wunderground.com/education/Katrinas_surge_contents.asp

GS - best of breed - way below 200 DMA

The market turned up for GS around March April 2003. It had been trading below its own 200DMA for a good 24+ months prior to that. It next traded significantly below its 200DMA during the summer of 2004, for about 6 months. Since then, it hasn't traded much below its 200DMA for more than about 30 calendar days.

With the July debacle among the brokerages, GS has again entered historically weak territory by its own standards of the last 5 or 6 years. I would like to phase into that stock after it has shown a turnaround, then hold it for a nice long while.

[IIC]

Blood in the BSC streets, prepare to buy it.

Perhaps there is a reason they are not named Bull Stearns

[riverbabe]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=452808336&play=1

He starts rolling at about the 2:00 mark.

The meltdown was all over the news wires. Thanks for the link!