I am asking myself the question, what is so special about Gmarket Inc. (NASDAQ: GMKT)? Jim Cramer made a mention about it on his show yesterday, and was going on about how it is going to take on EBay, and Amazon. I had never heard of Gmarket before, and neither had a lot of people. The site itself is a Korean auction site, with very little that would appeal to the regular North American. The site does NOT have a very aesthetic appearance. Pictures are flipping out from animations, and the site over-uses images with very little text. I have no idea why Jim would think the site looks better than Ebay. From an economical perspective, there is a good chance that this company would do very well in Korea. Probably even beat the American competition like Ebay. Although, that is probably going to be the only market for this company. If they tried to enter the North American market, they would lose because we won’t put up with ugly looking webpages. When designing retail websites these days, one of the key components is a nice clean design. Too bad Gmarket didn’t listen and their site is UGLY. Luckily for Jim, people don’t do a lot of research, and jump at whatever he says. The stock is up 1.64 or 8.01% to 22.12 in early trading today. I expect that the stock will fall back down to its previous trading prices after a week, and then the stock will be a decent deal.
Digg Unveils New Features
New Digg Features O’ Plenty
by Kevin Rose at 6am, Dec 18th, 2006 in Digg Website
Big update today. Tons of new features to share with you – many inspired by feedback you’ve given us over the last few months (thanks!). Check out this video … (( http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/18/digg-break ))
The new digg update dramatically changes the site around. Bye bye ugly left hand side bar, hello top navigation. That isn’t the only change though, as this is a major update to Digg. It will be a while before I’m used to the new design, but so far I am really enjoying the new look. The site continues to try to draw on the users, and bring them the stories they want to see. This allows for customizing the page how you want it to appear. Watch the video and see the goodness.
L-3 Communications Suffers After Loss
L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: LLL) stock opened and moved to around 78.60 after the news that they have cut their revenue and earnings for 2007. The reason for the cut is due to the loss of a contract to provide Arabic linguistists for the Army. The deal was said to be worth up to $4.65 billion. The contract was instead awarded to DynCorp (NYSE: DCP) who is up 17% with the news that it has the contract. Overall, the loss of the contract to L-3 is going to hurt revenue forecasts by about half a billion for 2007. Although the stock opened dramatically lower, it seemed to increase slowly in early trading but then fell back again. This could be a long day for LLL shareholders. Volume on the stock is just exploding, it has already passed the average daily volume and the markets haven’t been open for very long! It has been a while since I have seen so many trades on a stock so quickly. This is all an interesting turn of events; just last week, Jim Cramer had this as one of his daily stock picks.
Yusuf (Cat Stevens) Makes Rare Performance
Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens before he converted to Islam, is going to make a very rare performance on SIRIUS Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) Wednesday December 20, at 12pm ET. He will be in studio to discuss his first studio album in 28 years, and to give an exclusive performance. If you are able to check it out, you can find it on The Spectrum, channel 18 only on Sirius.
It has been a while since most of the people in North America have heard Yusuf’s music. He left the music world in 1978, having converted to Islam, and has devoted himself to charitable work. He continued to make music but it was dramatically different; such as traditional Islamic songs. Now he has returned to his roots with a new album, “An Other Cup”, in the folk-pop style that he is most famous for.
RIM Making Big Gains on the Market
Research in Motion Limited (TSE: RIM) stock price has made huge gains today. The stock was up over $7.18 per share or 4.88% in afternoon trading. I still don’t know for certain what is causing the huge jump. Yesterday, RIM filed a lawsuit against Samsung over the name of Samsung’s phone called BlackJack. They claim that this device looks and sounds a lot like the BlackBerry. I imagine that the reason the stock is up today is still the suit news. I am expecting that RIM stock will drop before the day is done or it will drop on Friday as people look to take profits (people always seem to take profits late in the week). Whatever the case may be, it is good to see a Canadian company like RIM compete and succeed on the global market.
Fall 2006 Finals Complete
I have finished up my academic portion of the semester. I had two night classes this past semester and finished both finals this week. The finals were about what I expected; nothing too surprising, although my fingers on my writing hand are hurting! I’m sure my marks will be lower than my semester’s work, but I’m sure I’ll do alright. It feels good to be done classes, since now I don’t have any stress from trying to remember all the information that we had to know. I can let my mind go free again and explore new knowledge on its own. This semester has been a busy one, with working my coop job full-time Mon-Fri, and then the two night classes on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Then working my other job on weekends. Not to mention soccer games on Monday nights. My schedule was pretty much packed solid. Next semester should be nice with classes taking up my mornings leaving me with a lot of time! I suppose I could use that time to study for the classes… but that’s not likely going to happen. I just calculated how much books are going to cost me.. this is going to be my most expensive semester yet, they are around $750.. and thats with one class not listing anything yet!
Updated Google Finance
For the past week I have been getting used to Google Finance’s new front page. They launched the new front page on Monday. The new design is cleaner, and provides more information that is relevant to the user. It remembers the stocks you recently have been looking at and includes them in a list so you can see them all updated on the recent quotes section. As well with the recent quotes, it provides recent news stories on them as well. One addition with the redesign I like is the Sector Summary, and the Top Movers tabs. Both features provide more information which is never a bad thing. Other features include the market summary which has some currency exchanges as well.
One comment that I would like to make about the whole design is that, the user should be allowed to make some customizations to the site. Such as the http://www.google.com/ig/ site, I want to be able to add and remove pieces that I feel are more important to me. As well, with things like the currency exchanges, I would like to be able to choose which currency exchanges are being updated. Overall though, I’m happy with the redesign and I hope that google is able to steal some market-share away from Yahoo! Finance.
Mosaic Opens Strong
The Mosaic Company (NYSE: MO) opened today and shot up strong. At one point this morning the stock as up over 1.00 but edged back and was up 0.81 to 23.09 at around 10AM EST. The day has barely started and the volume traded today is already at 20% of the average. The stock was featured on last Friday’s Mad Money show. Cramer was mentioning that the stock was likely to be promised things from presidential hopefuls in the upcoming presidential elections due to Iowa. I do not know how American politics works, or the significance of Iowa, but I believe Mosaic can stand on its own as a strong company without the presidential speculation.
When he began to talk about the company, I immediately knew what company he was talking about. Living in Saskatchewan, I live near Saskferco, a company which Mosaic has a 50% stake in. This potassium mining facility is at Belle Plaine just west of Regina. As well, the football stadium in Regina, Taylor Field, was just renamed Mosaic Stadium for the corporate naming rights. Both of these things, make the whole Mosaic Company seem closer to home, even if the company’s headquarters is in Plymouth, MN.
BIDU Roundup
Baidu.com Inc (Nasdaq : BIDU) continued on its roll again today. After profit taking yesterday, the stock continued to rise up 4.12 to 122.06 at around midday on Friday. Last night on Jim Cramer’s “Mad Money”, he mentioned how eBay is going to benefit from its partnership from Baidu. I was saying that a month ago when Baidu was trading for 96.10, too bad I didn’t buy any stock then since it has gone up 25.96 in a month!!
Baidu is always an interesting dot com stock that seems to be announcing positive news frequently. Just last week they were announcing that they will be entering the Japanese search market. This should be easier for them as they have experience with the Chinese search market. There are some similarities between the Chinese and Japanese languages which will be easier to understand that it will for companies like Yahoo.
I am not sure how the mindset of the Japanese will react to a move like this. I know that if a Japanese company enters the Chinese market, there will most likely be a negative reaction due to their long history. I don’t have the experience to know if that will work the other direction. I suppose the Japanese could always choose an American search engine…
A dog ate some guy’s XBox 360!
I have been in a situation like this before; “Some guy sold his 360 on eBay only to have it shipped back to him a month later after being pretty much devoured by a dog.” I remember when my dog was still a puppy, it would chew everything. I used to get so mad whenever it chewed on anything of mine. What I don’t understand in the case of the story is, why they buyer sent the item back to the seller. It seems strange since the seller still has the money. Maybe the buyer is collecting some sort of insurance for the item. Regardless, check out the pictures in the article; it looks like he got off lucky since it’s salvageable.