Illumina has certainly had a spot of deflation this year but from a huge peak. ILMN has come from behind and nowhere to take over from AFFX by the look of it. Life cycles in high tech are short, though Microsoft has done well for a couple of decades. But I have MSFT in my list of companies which won't do well over the next decade.
Deflation is certainly pounding all and sundry in the stock markets. The list of companies I keep half an eye on nearly all have no profits and mostly losses, many of them large to huge. What has happened to the idea that companies should make profits and pay their owners dividends of such high proportions that money is made by investors.
There seems to have been a shift to speculative gains on borrow and hope with little substance to the technology and marketing skills being developed with the shareholders funds and borrowed money.
Shakespeare and perhaps Islam had reasonable ideas when they disparaged both borrowers and lenders [husbandry and friends going awol due to debt with interest payments being the Devil incarnate]. Borrowing, lending and interest are all reasonable ideas, just like borrowing a car from a friend and returning it with a full tank of fuel and a carton of wine to boot, in the boot, is a good arrangement for all. [The boot, in English, for unAmerican readers, is the trunk].
I'm pleased to be invested in QCOM which makes wonderful things, which nearly everyone wants to buy, which benefit the users enormously, makes a large profit, and pays much of said profits to the shareholders and which has no debt, with a large stash of cash to enable further developments such as Mirasol and to tide the company over when the tide goes out and so many are seen to be not wearing bathing suits. It is old-fashioned but seems like a good idea.
On a micro scale, zenbu.net.nz [in which I'm a large shareholder] and zenbu.co.nz are cash rich, profitable, users love them and they do good works. If you click on the second one, you can do a search for things in New Zealand, or put in an address, and Google Street View, which is now built in, will so the thing you are interested in, as well as the surroundings. You can also click on the satellite view for a bird's eye view of the surroundings.
Flying in corporate jets to Washington to beg the government to transfer money from Qualcomm in San Diego to General Motors in Chicago seems a very useless thing to be doing. It would make more sense for Qualcomm to take over the bankrupt assets of GM, fire most of the people, cancel the unwanted product lines, build mobile cyberspace using Qualcomm technology into all vehicles and get back to business. Cutting out the Washington brigade who take the money and a large cut for themselves before passing the rest on to spendthrift wastrels is an excellent idea. Qualcomm doesn't even have a corporate jet [as far as I know].
Mqurice |
