Yahoo Finance charts, still not working

April 24, 2015 by 2 Comments

by,

Suzanne Coleman

Well, if Yahoo cared about customer satisfaction, I’d be able to submit my concerns to them directly.  But since they don’t, I’ll post them here for all of the world to enjoy.

Yahoo’s Finance charts are not working, again.  You basically cannot place any faith in any of the charts or numbers that they present as they are often wrong.  It’s unfortunate since I have been a user of this service for almost 20 years now.

Today, their graph of the day’s activity shows no data points, over an hour after markets have been open.  No graph, at all.  I wonder if they do any quality control over there, or if all of the employees are secretly playing with video games, or themselves.

Must be nice for Yahoo’s tens of thousands of employees to have a job and never be held accountable for their product, reminds me a lot of the US government.  Personally, I have ethics and honor (I know, many people have never even heard of that) and their lack of respect for the consumer would never fly with me, nor would the failure to maintain a highly functional and reliable product.  Embarrassing.

Filed Under: Stocks and Economics, What You Need to Know Tagged With: , , ,

Apple to Report Earnings Monday after close

April 23, 2015 by Leave a Comment

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Suzanne Coleman

Apple’s post-holiday quarter earnings to be released this coming Monday after market close.  I think share price will rise to $142.

Filed Under: Apple, Stocks and Economics Tagged With: , ,

Apple Watch Sales

April 12, 2015 by Leave a Comment

by,

Suzanne Coleman

Well, Apple is keeping us in suspense again.  After they sold out of all the available Watch units on the first day of sales this past Friday, at least a few people (myself included) have been wondering, well, “HOW MANY DID YOU SELL?”  Apple hasn’t said even a peep about that, yet.

With the sell-out occurring in the first 10-30 minutes of availability (depending of which article you read), I’d guess they had to sell 3-5 million units.  Now mind you, this is an educated guess only.  I just read an article which noted 1.2 million possible units were sold, but only to US buyers (“Investors’ Business Daily” and “Fortune”).  Extrapolate that to the world, and I think you’d likely land in my estimated range of sales.  Just imagine how many will sell AFTER the first 24 hours?

Were all of those naysayers (not sure what their problem is, but they seem to have one) wrong?  We’ll soon find out.  Stay tuned!

Filed Under: Apple, Stocks and Economics Tagged With: ,

Apple Online Store, Delayed Opening for the Apple Watch but now Open

April 10, 2015 by Leave a Comment

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Suzanne Coleman

Well I was getting worried when it was 2:01am CST and the online Apple Store was still not open.  Finally around 2:14am I was able to see the Apple Watch preorders page instead of the multi-lingual (for the us site?) flashing statement that they weren’t open yet.  I hope this delay doesn’t portend future problems with the rollout of this and other products.

Now we just have to wait and see how many watches sell, and how people adopt them into their lifestyles.  This should be fun!

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NOTE:  I own Apple stock.

Filed Under: Apple, Stocks and Economics Tagged With: , ,

Wait, the Apple Watch Store is, Closed?

April 10, 2015 by Leave a Comment

by,

Suzanne Coleman

I just thought that since I’m up, I’d stop by and check out the online Apple Store where you are able to pre-order your personalized Apple Watch, starting in less than two hours from now, and see what’s going on, but when I went to the site I found out that it was “Closed.”  Uh, oh…

What does that mean?  I sure hope it doesn’t mean that the Store is broken and isn’t going to be able to handle all of those early buyers’ business.  At least while I wait to see what is going to happen, I can learn to say “We’re busy updating the Apple Store for you and will be back soon” in a variety of fun and fancy languages!  Apparently they have 3 different ones in Spanish, I wonder why?  And two in French!  I knew those Canadians never made any sense… 🙂

What I really want to know, is what is “snart tilbake” and where can I get one?!

Funny, now that I think about it, sitting here and watching these multi-lingual announcements flash by is not unlike standing outside of a large plate glass window storefront and watching what’s going on inside while you wait for the store to open.  So, just maybe, they haven’t completely foregone the good old making-customers-wait-in-line outside of their stores altogether, but have morphed it into an online waiting game instead.  And wait we will…

Filed Under: Apple, Stocks and Economics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Apple Watch in the Shower?

April 9, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Famous Girl on the Prowl. © Suzanne M. Coleman, all rights reserved.

Famous Girl on the Prowl.
© Suzanne M. Coleman, all rights reserved.

by,

Suzanne Coleman

Ok, this is really hilarious!  A day in the life with an Apple Watch, watch it here:

http://www.wsj.com/video/apple-watch-what-living-with-it-is-really-like/13DDE53D-4DF3-4EDD-A519-4B2E3CA4F11B.html

After I watched this hilarious video, I wanted to send a quick note to Joanna who put this video report together but I couldn’t figure out how to reach her.  The new era of communications…  anyway Joanna, awesome work!

On the down side, after this was done playing, the Wall Street Journal website flipped me to another video and stuck me in a loop so I couldn’t get back to this video’s page no matter how many times I tried to go back.  Ridiculous and strange behaviors.  I have also seen this on forbes.com.  Come on guys, if we want to read another article we will, don’t try and manipulate viewers, it’s nothing short of extremely creepy and annoying.

Filed Under: Apple, Extra!, POP News, Stocks and Economics Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Apple Watch Demo on Packaging, Real, or Fake?

April 8, 2015 by Leave a Comment

by,

Suzanne Coleman

Fortune.com had an article today which included a link to a youtube video that appears to show the “unboxing” of the Apple Watch.  I am attaching the link below for you so that you can go and take a look.  I am not sure if this is legitimate or not.  The watch appears to be real based on how it works, but I question the packaging as the box inside of the box isn’t secure and almost falls open as it is removed from the outer white box.

When I clicked on the youtube.com link to see the original video I was brought to a much longer video which said it was for a “fake” Apple Watch (I did not watch this video).

The cool thing is that this clip shows the metal loop watch band (Milanese) and how it magnetically attaches at the wrist.  If this is the real thing it looks great and like it would be fun to wear.

Here is the link:

http://fortune.com/2015/04/08/apple-watch-unboxing/?xid=yahoo_fortune

Filed Under: Apple, Stocks and Economics Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Stock Market Correction, And?

March 27, 2015 by Leave a Comment

by,

Suzanne Coleman

I am still reading posts about the stock market that warn of a stock market correction.  If these people were paying any attention, they would realize that we have already had a stock market correction.  A correction is defined as drop in a stock or index of over 10%.

A large number of stocks have pulled back over 10%, for example Tesla (TSLA), Discover Financials (DFS), Walmart (WMT), Alibaba (BABA), IBM (IBM), Priceline (PCLN) and others.

Apple (AAPL) who had historically excellent profits on their last quarterly report is now down about 8%.

The thing is, some of these stocks have had negative earnings reports or other issues affecting their stock, but when does this define a correction and when does it not?  The concern about a correction is really discussing the impact of the overall economy, or other issues, on the prices of stocks in the market.  If people don’t want to hold stocks and sell, then that can lead to a correction.

The stock market has obviously (based on some of the stocks I watch) shot up over the last years.  Is this irrational exuberance?  Is this based on the flow of money into the stock market, placing it at the equal and opposite risk of flowing right back out?  Are these investors going to stay with the market thru thick and thin?  All of these answers are complicated.  Anything can lead to an exodus from the market, which of course will lead to prices crashing.  So trying to predict it is a bit foolish, since the market is based not on company values but on human behavior.  Humans are very predictable, and some of their predictable traits en masse are following leaders, bad or good, making rash decisions, panicking, placing their trust in “authority figures,” believing what they are told without researching it for themselves, and others all of which can lead to a market crash at any time, with, or without, any underlying financial reason.

If you are concerned about a market correction, take your money out of the market, or place stop orders (which don’t really protect you and can actually harm you even more…).  There is no guarantee in the stock market, as of now, and it’s unlikely that there ever will be one.  There are some protections, but still, the big players will continue to win over the individual investors as I have learned the hard way.  Right and wrong do not enter into our systems very well, and it’s more of a situation where you need to protect yourself or face the risk of wasting years fighting the criminals who steal your money.

Filed Under: Stocks and Economics Tagged With: , , , ,

Are you a victim of search discrimination?

March 26, 2015 by Leave a Comment

the UGH

by,

Suzanne Coleman

I’ve been working on this website for a few months now, and I’m starting to get used to how things work.  It’s been a lot fun for me.  One thing that wordpress (who writes the software that runs this blog, find out more at http://www.wordpress.com) does for its users is provide us with info on what people look at on the site, and what they are searching for that brings them to our site.  They call this the “stats.”

As this site gets more and more viewers, I have enjoyed seeing what people are searching for that brings them here.  It’s fun!  I enjoy knowing that I might be helping someone out by providing them with some info they need, or giving them a laugh or two for the day.

As I review the search results, wordpress also shows what search engine brought people here.  I’ve learned something very interesting by looking at this.  My search results almost never come from Google, even though Google is the most used search engine, the last I read.

So this is probably due to what I have heard about before, that Google accepts payments to rank different sites in your search results, bringing some higher, and pushing others lower.  This site gets tons of hits from Yahoo! search and Bing, and even other places I really don’t know that much about, but rarely from Google.  It’s too bad, I feel like maybe you guys who are trying to find me are having trouble because the big company doesn’t want to serve up the information you are looking for.

Does anyone else have any experience with this?  What has happened to you?  Let me know in the comments.

Filed Under: POP News, Stocks and Economics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Apple’s future domination: Apple Watch, AppleBank, and ApplePlay

March 16, 2015 by 1 Comment

by,

Suzanne Coleman, MD

______________

UPDATE:

Interestingly, about 9 hours after I posted this original analysis to “The Slice Iconic,” “The Wall Street Journal” published an article claiming that sources say that Apple is working on a TV service.  They give specific details but it appears to be unofficial information at this point.  Many other news outlets have now referred to the WSJ’s article.

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When I first heard of the Apple Watch I didn’t think it was going to be of any value so I didn’t even include it in my projections for the company’s success.  Now that I’ve seen it and understand it better, I think it will be the next iPod.  But they will need to make it useable without the iPhone first.  Then adoption will be widespread.  Will this lead to the end of the iPhone?  No, I don’t think so.  I think that the aWatch will have 3 main adopters:  business people, teens, and cool people.  Other than that, it will depend on the individual’s needs and tastes.  The iPod blew up the market in teens and young adults, and the rest is history.  The iPhone came out of the iPod and now the aWatch is coming out of the iPhone.

I see the aWatch being used as a portable device to make and receive calls, send and receive texts, provide reminders, follow stocks and alerts, for travel information, paying your bill, oh, and as a watch.  And it plays music too.  According to gizmodo.com, it can do this without the iPhone.  It uses wireless technology to send the music to your bluetooth-enabled earphones/headset.  I’m guessing it can also play music over the included speaker.

The iPhone will be the new iPad as device sizes contract for portability.  If you need something bigger, the new Mac can be used for typing and photoshop work etc. while at work, on the train, plane what have you.  It’s an Apple World future.

Outside of devices which dominate the world of information and communication, I see the following.  Apple Pay is going to be huge.  Well, really, it already is.  I can’t recall ever having seen something new adopted so quickly into a market.  Again I ask, how are they monetizing this product?  I don’t know their strategy, not being privy to it, but I can theorize.

What if Apple eventually opens up the new AppleBank?  Apple already has users using its “credit card” and software.  Apple has plenty of liquidity to provide and manage loans in large numbers, and they have a massive customer base.  How hard would it be to turn Apple Pay into AppleBank Accounts with Apple Pay replacing checking and credit cards?  Then, if you feel comfortable, when you need to buy that new Apple Car, you can get your Apple Loan, and one day that Apple House might be in your sights too.

Even if Apple Pay never morphs into a more complex payment system like a bank, Apple will still have the potential to make millions, and more likely billions, from it annually.  Adoption is already widespread by users and businesses.  If Apple takes a small commission from each transaction as a convenience fee, that will quickly add up to additional profits.

Into another huge market segment, personal entertainment.  Apple TV was never a hot item, but Apple didn’t drop it.  We are now seeing the market  for media entertainment shift again in its delivery methods and Apple is working to get ahead of the curve by its deal with HBO to provide their content as a sole provider.  Hmm… where will this lead?  I believe I mentioned this in an earlier article, Apple could be exploring the possibility of being a full-service provider of personal entertainment and this is one of many new steps in that direction.  Cable and satellite might be cut out of the deal altogether.  Netflix and Amazon have probably already started to squirm at the thought of such a massive new competitor.  Apple could call this new endeavor ApplePlay.  Only time will tell if this will become a fully functional segment of their business.  If it does, it has the potential to be very profitable.

Apple is positioned very strongly to maintain and grow its current marketshare for personal computing devices over at least the next 2-3 years.  Any of the other areas that it is currently exploring would only add to that success.

 

For the audience:

If there was an AppleBank, would you open an account?  Let us know in the comments below.

 

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NOTE:  I own shares of Apple stock.

 

 

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Filed Under: Apple, Stocks and Economics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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