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• Next Forecast: You'll review Markman's '07 predictions

  Posted Jan 04 2008, 11:35 AM by Jon Markman
  Filed under: Investing, Internet, Amazon, News Corp., Yahoo, Trading, Ford
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  Whenever your job is getting you down, just be glad you aren’t a financial journalist who has to make annual predictions that live forever on the web.  Since the advent of MSN Search and Google, there is no hiding my most unfortunate calls in the drawer anymore.  It’s all out there.  So as an addendum to my 2008 forecast, which you can read right here, here’s how my '07 predictions fared.  

  1. Bull market, year 5.  Well, sort of.  I forecast an S&P 500 gain of 13% on 2007.  We got 3.5%.  The Nasdaq 100 did go up 19%, though, so let’s average them out and call it good.
  
  2. Goldilocks lives!  I forecast modestly rising inflation, modest job growth and below-trend U.S. economic growth of 2.6%. This was right on, as annualized growth came to 2.8% in 2007.   Read More...

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• Cyber Monday's surprise winner

  Posted Nov 28 2007, 11:40 AM by Robert Walberg
  Filed under: Internet, Amazon, Retail, FedEx, Blue Nile, Wal-Mart
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  Now that the dust has settled back on our keyboards, which company was the big winner of Cyber Monday?  Was it a) Amazon with its new Kindle, b) Wal-Mart with its cheap big-screen TVs, c) Blue Nile with its sparkling diamonds, or d) none of the above? 

  If you guessed "d" then you are today's winner.  While anecdotal evidence suggests that each of the highlighted retailers fared reasonably well on Monday, the real winner of Cyber Monday was FedEx. 

  Internet sales totalled a whopping $733 million Monday, an impressive 21% jump over the year-ago total.  But to jack up sales so significantly at a time when consumer confidence is in the toilet required some serious effort -- and by effort I mean discounting prices.  Sales were everywhere online Monday, and that's why I'm not as excited by the retailers as I am by FedEx.  You see slashing prices might jumpstart sales, but it does so at the cost of lowering margins. Lower margins mean slow to no profit growth, and it's earnings growth that ultimately drives stock prices.   Read More...

  Discuss ( 26 comments) 45,892 Views Digg this | Email this | Link to this