To All, Mini Barron's review. The first section is pretty much devoid of interest, except for one great letter in the Mailbag from Gary M. Kelly. That letter, titled "Ding-Dong Market," is a true classic. Every time he reads a line that sounds like the market ringing a bell announcing a bear market is due, he puts (gong) in the parenthesis. You have to read it rather than have me describe it, but it is funny and right on.
Other than the great letter, Abelson makes fun of the AOL Time Warner fiasco. But it felt dated to me. MIchael Berger's hedge fund blows up. Strategists make incredibly boring predictions. And there are not one, but two different internut model portfolios in the issue.
In the second section, old telephone buddy, Andy Bary (he used to interview me once a month when he was doing the options column for The Wall Street Transcript, back in the days when the Earth was cooling) of The Trader takes a somewhat rational look at Intel's fake quarter. Here are some of his findings, most of which I have already covered on this thread in my note, "Intel Shares a Joke With The World": 1. Beating estimates was mostly manufactured and not real. Duh! He gets some of the numbers very wrong to Intel's favor, but his intentions are good. Turns out that Intel had told the analysts to factor in a certain number for capital gains in their estimates and then took 4 cents a share more so the quarter wouldn't be totally flat.
2. Andy noticed that microprocessor revenues were down from the quarter last year. Extraordinary demand, my acidophoulus. I noted the same thing. It was bad enough that Intel scammed the analysts on the capital gains and the merger flim flam, but they told the world that they beat estimates due to a very strong market for its mpcs, especially the Coppermine. Odd none of the Wall Street analysts asked them how negative year to year revenues translate into gangbuster sales. <g>
3. The reason for analysts raising their estimates was because of guidance that Intel will take more capital gains in the future. It had nothing to do with the core business.
4. Andy notes that the poor quality of the earnings didn't bother investors. IMHO, that is because most of them cannot read and chew gum at the same time, and Intel was handing out megapacks of Wriggly's Spearmint. <g>
5. In another bit, Bary talks about how GE Capital got whacked by storms in Europe, as did Berkshire Hathaway. Of course, Berkshird Hathaway doesn't scam capital gains on its insurance co. portfolios to make estimates the way GE (and now, Intel) do.
6. Bill Pesek mentions that Alan Greenspan is talking out of both sides of his mouth, which is a few feet above what I think he talks out of. <g>
Probably not worth buying, except for the ding dong letter.
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