The value of always staying invested in the index.

Interesting data from Business Insider. The key take away from the chart was that even if you missed the 10 best days for staying vested in the market (when the lows help you average out), the rate of return almost halves from the 9.22% average return rate.

Summary:

• Based on my DCF analysis below I feel that the stock is undervalued. Please see the conclusions and detailed analysis at the end of the report.
• With the iwatch patent approved, and iphone6 in the wings, this analysis is still conservative.

Analysis:
My analysis is based on the following financial data for Apple:

Financial data used to feed the model

As always, please click on the image to enlarge.  The per-share information for aapl:

Financial per share data for aapl

Recently read a nice article on how to improve in your career. As described in the article, there are two approaches to reach a better career path:
1. Boredom induced - where your skills grow faster than your challenge dfifficulty and
2. Anxiety induced - which is the other way round.

Growth patterns for the career.

It nicely suggested that the second approach is better.

National football league  - hands down!

Based on a chart from here.

Highest paid athletes - per sport

World unemployment numbers as seen on the BI website. Please click on the image to enlarge.

This chart show s the global unemployment and also shows how much of the youth are unemployed. Youth unemployment being higher is generally more troublesome because it indicates that the strongest and the fittest part of the population is not able to find work - which can typically lead to the downfall of the society.

* Designations vary across companies so we cannot use those. Same with grades.

* Paychecks by themselves vary with cadre industries and grade. So you may not be able to use paychecks to compare the growth with others.

I think a fair metric to find out how you are doing with your career would be the metric:

Age normalized pay (ANP) =  (Current $ annual paycheck) / (Age)

Units:  $/yr

This simple metric should tell you how you are doing. So irrespective of the age, industry, group, designation of a particular employee you can find out how you are doing. The requirement of converting everything to US$ removes the discrepancy in earnings across different countries.  You could use any currency but they have to the same when doing the comparison.

The higher this metric the better you are doing.

E.g.
An employee earning 120K at the age of 35 has the metric at 3.42K/yr. On the other hand a much younger employee in the same group, possibly at the same grade earning 97K at the age of 27 is much better poised in his career since his ANP comes to approximately 3.6K/yr.

Modified from an answer read over the internet:

The two types of shares are essentially the same, except for the cost. Warren Buffet has refused to split the shares to get a lower share price and reports that Berkshire wants a very different type of shareholder. He is interested in the investor who is in for the long run, minimally concerned about daily price fluctuations, and minimal transactions and the high price associated with Class A shares maintains this.

Berkshire started to offer the Class B shares after (1) stockholders wanted a mechanism to gift shares to family members, and the gift tax limit is $10,000 ( so in the beginning you could gift a Class A share and it was less than 10K, but as the price rose this became impossible) and (2) private funds were getting ready to buy the Class A shares and then sell fractional interests via their fund.

Warren wanted to accomondate the first and prevent the second.
The floor manger for the Berkshire shares on the trading floor works to keep one Class B share = 1/30th of a class A share. It is not always a perfect 1/30th but it is often very close.

Berkshire also wants the price of the share to accurately reflect the underlying value of the business, and thus have minimal fluctuations.

The Class A shares also have a bigger voting right than the Class B shares (memory tells me that the Class B shares have a 1/200th of a vote even though they are about 1/30th in price.)

As always, please use your own judgment and research while investing!

First to market is important, but not rush to market #finance #quote
— Techmuser (@techmuser) April 16, 2013

Contemplating about this since a while now. Market timing is critical from a product ingestion stand point. However, ensuring that the product is stable and adds value is equally important. This has been evidenced from the recent apple maps release.

In the past 5 days gold has fallen approximately 14% from its highs.

Reasons:
* Early last week GS asked its investors to sell gold based on broad economic indicators. Targets 2013-$1450 and 2014-$1270.
* Global crises with the Euro bailout.
* Cyprus dumping 10 tonnes of gold to support bailout. Sparks mass selloff and a chain reaction.

Gold has been oversold beyond limits as pointed out by this chart:

Gold is oversold - 4.5 times standard dev below 50DMA

Gold has fallen over 4.5 standard deviations below its 50 day moving average (DMA). It has fallen below the 4 standard deviations mark only 10 times since 1975. This may be a good time to buy?

Shrinking working age population leads to increased #labor costs in #China. Vietnam, Indonesia cheaper! Will it manipulate the Yuan again?
— Techmuser (@techmuser) April 11, 2013

Now that the labor costs are going up, and the age of the working population increasing, how will China keep its exports at the top levels.

2013: Rising labor costs in China

The birth control scheme has resulted in a check in population, but at the same time this makes fewer individuals available for labor, driving the costs up over time. To keep the economy booming, there could be 2 ways out:

1. Remove birth control and let population grow again. Not sure if this is possible since the mindset of the population changes over time.
2. Like always, devalue the yuan so the labor is still cheap and the exports continue at the same pace they are right now!

Russia launders money in Cyprus, Cyprus invests in Greece, Euro bails out Cyprus (with a haircut), so who is the Euro helping? #finance
— Techmuser (@techmuser) March 20, 2013

 The tweet above pretty much sums up the situation, highlighting the confusion with the Cyprus bailout. It also makes clear why Germany is pushing Cyprus to burden its depositors with a one time cut. Germany does not want its tax payers to bear the cost of all the money laundering by the Russians and the careless investments by the Cypriot banks.

Social mobility or rather Income mobility describes the ability of an individual to move up in the income strata of the society. This is also an indicator of the income elasticity.  As seen in the figure a larger number for this metric shows a smaller chance of being able to move up the income groups based on previous wealth. Surprisingly, there is a higher income inequality in the US and also a lesser chance of changing income strata despite being a developed country.

Social mobility versus income comparison

Get 10 new $100 bills. Cut them into thirds. Put all of the left sides in one envelope, right sides in another, and middles in a third. Send the envelopes separately.

1/3rd of a bill is not legal tender. Therefore, each shipment has no value. However, banks can reissue the money as long as you have > 51% of the material for each bill. Therefore, if one of the shipments is lost, the recipient still gets $1,000. [1]

You can fully eliminate the risk of loss (and reduce shipping costs) at the expense of latency. Wait for the recipient to acknowledge the receipt of each shipment before sending the next one. If a shipment is lost, split the bills into smaller parts so that you always ensure that you and the recipient have more than 51% of the bills. Once the recipient has 51% of the bills, you can stop making shipments, saving you costs.

This information is based on the data related by the national housing board of India.

Real estate price variation - Data statistics as per the national housing board (India). {{Click on the image to enlarge}}

Biggest gainers in 2012 (Q2): Pune
Biggest losers: Kochi

A small amount of inflation is actually necessary for economic growth. At zero inflation, money sitting in an account can be more valuable than taking an economic risk.

It is even worse if there is deflation. Deflation is a viscious cycle, where money is even more valuable in the future than now. The deflationary spiral goes like this:   Increased value of future money --> save more ---> less investment ---> less capital ---> fewer jobs ---> lesser salaries ---> increased value of money --> ....

Two main reasons:

Till now I was of the opinion that owning the physical commodity of something like Gold was best achieved by owning an ETF that buys and manages physical gold (GLD, SGOL).

The amount of gold represented by the Shares will continue to be reduced during the life of the Trust due to the sales of gold necessary to pay the Trust’s expenses irrespective of whether the trading price of the Shares rises or falls in response to changes in the price of gold.
Each outstanding Share represents a fractional, undivided interest in the gold held by the Trust. The Trust does not generate any income and regularly sells gold to pay for its ongoing expenses. Therefore, the amount of gold represented by each Share has gradually declined over time. This is also true with respect to Shares that are issued in exchange for additional deposits of gold into the Trust, as the amount of gold required to create Shares proportionately reflects the amount of gold represented by the Shares outstanding at the time of creation. Assuming a constant gold price, the trading price of the Shares is expected to gradually decline relative to the price of gold as the amount of gold represented by the Shares gradually declines. Investors should be aware that the gradual decline in the amount of gold represented by the Shares will occur regardless of whether the trading price of the Shares rises or falls in response to changes in the price of gold. The estimated ordinary operating expenses of the Trust, which accrue daily commencing after the first day of trading of the Shares, are described in the Trust’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, incorporated herein by reference.

According to a recent projection by one of the analyst, Apple (aapl) is slated to have $200B in savings pretty soon.

Apple projected and historical cash per share

During the recent patent wars, these giants have had to give out their numbers here

Smarphone sales comparison - apple (aapl) and samsung USA

Comparison of tablet sale performance - aaple and samsung in the US.

.As can be seen from the numbers in the US markets, Samsung sales numbers are not even close. Hence if Andriod is really doing well in the US, it should be selling a lot more of HTC and other manufacturers than Samsung.