Author: NewMexiKen

When Apple’s Keynote Bounce Is a Thump

NewMexiKen treats much investing like I used to treat running — I like reading about it.

Anyway, I thought this from an article at Business Week was interesting.

Apple’s stock has been a huge wealth-generation machine over the last few years. If you had bought it five years ago when shares were worth about 7.50 on a split-adjusted basis, and held it until now, you’d be staring at a gain of more than 2,000% over five years. But that’s called investing. By contrast, betting on a short-term gain from a Steve Jobs keynote at Macworld has always been fraught with peril.

Yes, on the surface it might seem a good bet. Going back to 1999, Apple’s stock price has gained an average of 4.7% on the day of a Jobs keynote at the January edition of Macworld. But of those 10 occasions, only half have seen the stock rise, the biggest gain coming with last year’s unveiling of the iPhone. Developed in the strictest secrecy, the phone was widely expected to make its public debut that day. But with so little known about the device before it was revealed, iPhone mania pushed the stock up more than 8% that day.

But a one-day pop like that can create unreasonable expectations. In fact, if you exclude the iPhone spike from consideration, Apple’s stock price has dropped an average of 3.6% on keynote day since 1999.

For the record, Apple stock was down about 10% Tuesday and Wednesday to $159.64. It’s high late in December was around $200.

What I’m reading

I received The World Without Us by Alan Weisman today and am only about one-third through, but it is a well-paced, interesting natural history.

The premise is what would happen if humanity were removed from the planet, but everything else, including all other creatures, remained in place. How long would our presence even be recognizable? In some instances it would not be long. Indeed, this book should put an end to those doomsday scenario movies with people living in the New York City subways. Without their hundreds of massive electric pumps, the subway tunnels would flood with the first good rain.

A good read, one of five nominees for the National Book Award for nonfiction for 2007.

Affinity voters

“The thing that makes me hot under the collar is that this is a typical unconscious assumption among analysts that anything but white, male votes are somehow illegitimate. They’ve done it for years about the black vote.”

The quotation is from digby, in a very good little essay on gender and racial politics. Some analysts are now doing for female voters as they have done for African-Americans — Blacks vote for Blacks, women vote for women, only white men take issues to heart.

Hullabaloo is the essential political blog.

The NFL’s Coldest Games

Update Friday: Green Bay kickoff (5:30PM) temp expected to be about 0º F, with a wind of 6-8 mph. That’s a wind chill of around 12 below. Foxboro will be a relatively balmy 20º F at kickoff (3PM), slight chance of snow. The wind is expected to be in the upper teens though, so a wind chill of around zero.

Many fans are familiar with the famous “Ice Bowl” of 1967, when the Green Bay Packers hosted the Dallas Cowboys for the league championship. Game-time temperature was 13 below zero, with wind chills making it feel like 48 below. At least the Packers sent the frozen fans home happy, riding a late one-yard quarterback sneak by Bart Star to pull out the championship, 21-17.

That game still holds the record for coldest temperature, but not for wind chill. That mark was broken in January 1982 in Cincinnati, in a conference title game between the Bengals and San Diego Chargers. Swirling winds whipping off the Ohio River made it feel like 59 degrees below zero. San Diego coach Don Coryell, normally clad in short sleeves, bundled up on the sidelines with a ski mask that nearly covered his entire face. His southern California team literally got iced, 27-7.

Forbes.com

In Pictures: The NFL’s Coldest Games

This Sunday, Green Bay expected high temperature 6º F, low -4º F, wind around 10 mph. Foxboro high 18º F, low 5º F, with 30% chance of snow, wind around 20 mph. NewMexiKen attended a Lions-Vikings game in Detroit once with a game time temperature of 6º F. It was brutal.

New England is a 14 point favorite over San Diego. Green Bay is a 7 point favorite over New York.

Test the Nation

“The” nation in this case is Canada, and the trivia quizzes are fun. There are long (30 minute) tests and shorter ten question ones. NewMexiKen aced the first Mental Gym test, but only got half of the second one correct.

Test The Nation

There seems to be any number of tests but so far I’ve only found out my total score, not which questions I missed.

Apple Update

Steve Jobs unveiled five new best things yesterday in his MacWorld keynote.

1. An external HD for wireless network backups.
2. iPhone (free) and iPod touch ($20) software upgrades.
3. Movie rentals from the iTunes store.
4. A free software upgrade for Apple TV.
5. MacBook Air, a new ultra-light, ultra-thin notebook computer.

NewMexiKen bought the touch upgrade. It added mail, stocks (ugh!), maps, notes and weather directly to the touch home screen. All are welcome improvements. I can now move the icons around the home screen, too, and add webclips — icons for web pages (that is, fancy bookmarks). If you have a touch, this upgrade greatly increases it’s internet functionality and makes it much more like the iPhone, less the phone, camera and speaker. I’m still waiting for the second generation phone before I take that plunge (though, I’m happy to announce I am no longer indentured to Verizon).

The MacBook Air compromises some capabilities to obtain it’s slim case. No optical (CD/DVD) drive. Just an 80 GB hard drive (pretty small with any use of videos). A slower chip. The computer however, is small enough to fit in an envelope. That is amazing enough I guess.

Apple TV has become a lot more useful now because it will be able to connect directly to the internet (no need to work through a computer). It seems to me this is still an emerging technology — TV from the net and not from DVDs or TV stations or cable networks — but the Apple TV is tempting. It costs less than what I paid for the 400 disk CD player I still use, yet will hold much more music, all available with the touch of a few remote buttons. Having one’s photo albums available on the TV screen is also a real breakthrough for digital photos I’d say. $229 for 40GB; $329 for 160GB.

Standards

I don’t like living in a war-mongering, arrogant, debtor nation. But I really don’t like living in a nation where ignorant people like this run for president and receive votes.

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”

The Raw Story

Playing Telephone with MLK

CJR (Columbia Journalism Review) has a solid piece today on this whole Clinton-Obama-Martin Luther King thing that’s been going on since last Monday (January 7). It’s subtitled “How the press fanned the Dems’ ‘racial tension’.”

The whole affair, more than anything else, is incredibly sad. The two leading candidates of the party that, right now, seems to have the momentum going into the national election will, whoever wins the nomination, make history. We should be thrilled. We should be proud. But the past week’s “racial overtones” coverage reminds us that, however much our political universe has progressed, our media universe is still often one of ‘(sound) bite first, ask questions later.’

Today is Apple Day

Here’s what you will find right now (9:00 am MT) at the online Apple Store.

Apple Store

The online Apple Store is closed for the morning so they can keep all the new goodies secret. Apple CEO Steve Jobs will introduce the new products in his keynote address beginning today at 10:00 MT. Last year it was the iPhone. Two years ago it was the intel chips and iLife. Three years ago the iPod shuffle and Mac Mini. What will it be today?

It’s like Christmas morning for us Apple aficionados.

Martin Luther King Jr.

… was born on this date in 1929.

Many may question some of King’s choices and perhaps even some of his motives, but no one can question his unparalleled leadership in a great cause, or his abilities with both the spoken and written word.

There are 10 federal holidays, but only four of them are dedicated to one man: one for Jesus, one for the man given credit for discovering our continent, one for the military and political founder George Washington, and one for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
December 10, 1964
Library of Congress

Feeling Stumped? Pacing Might Help Clarify Your Thoughts

For instance, a study led by Arizona State University psychology professor Arthur Glenberg found that arm movements can affect language comprehension. Children are more likely to solve mathematics problems if they are told to gesture with their hands as they think through the problem. Another line of research has found that unconscious eye movements help people solve certain kinds of brainteasers.

Body actions also seem to subtly shape preferences over time. Expert typists, when told to name their favorite two-letter combinations from a random selection, picked out easy-to-type couplets, but couldn’t give a reason why they preferred them.

The Informed Reader – WSJ.com

The source for the above (there’s more if you follow the link) is Don’t just stand there, think from The Boston Globe.

I think, therefore I mess up

The Daily Howler points out this strange discussion by John Judis in The New Republic [emphasis the Howler’s]:

Could it be that voters lied to pollsters this time, too?

Andrew Kohut, a pollster for the Pew Research Center, thinks so. Kohut is the eminence grise among pollsters. His interpretation was published in The New York Times. Suffice it to say, it carried a lot of weight. Kohut’s argument goes as follows: Clinton did much better in the final count than Obama among poorer, less educated voters. These voters “have more unfavorable views of blacks” than wealthier, more educated voters. Kohut doesn’t accuse these voters of lying.

So, to summarize Judis:

1. Could it be they lied.

2. Andrew Kohut thinks so.

3. Kohut doesn’t accuse these voters of lying.

Don’t they even read what they write?