Yahoo To Reject Microsoft Bid 302
Many outlets are echoing a subscribers-only report in the Wall Street Journal that Yahoo's board has decided to reject Microsoft's takeover offer. The NYTimes offers the only other independent reporting so far confirming this claim. The report says that Yahoo will formally reject the offer in a letter on Monday, since they believe it "massively undervalues" the company. Microsoft offered $31 per share, a 62% premium on the stock price at the time, for Yahoo; but the latter believes that no offer below $40 per share is tenable. The AP has some background on Yahoo's options in responding to the bid.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Informative)
Quotes:
At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy. I'm going to fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google."
Thereafter, Mr. Ballmer resumed trying to persuade me to stay... Among other things, Mr. Ballmer told me that "Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards."
Quoted from legal papers in a court case brought by Microsoft.
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
While the yahoo board would obviously be tempted with a cash only offer, getting stuck with M$ stock at this time would be nothing the Yahoo board could, in all good conscience, recommend to its share holders. Oddly enough, a substantial portion of the rise in Yahoo share price that resulted from M$'s bid will remain because of M$ admission of defeat in the Internet market place, simultaneously that admission of defeat does not bode well for M$.
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:4, Insightful)
yahoo shows this in their insane logic that shares in their company are worth 2x what they are selling for in the market.
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
1/2 of 1% of a company's outstanding shares being traded in a given day is a VERY high volume. This means that even on a big news day, well over 99% of shareholders still think owning the stock is a good idea. They value it therefore at some amount higher than the going price.
In order to get these people to sell to a buyout offer, you have to make it go from 1/2 of 1% thinking that they should sell to 50%+1. To convince all the shareholders between .5% and 50.0000001% to sell means you have to raise the price, substantially.
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Not necessarily. You're not making a distinction between voting and non-voting shares. In order to achieve a buyout, Microsoft only has to convince the voting shareholders, which may be a substantially smaller number than the total shareholders.
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
> cards, completely reliant on the fickle advertising market and pumped
> up share prices.
This would be the same market Ballmer proposes to run Microsoft into debt in order to buy into?
c.
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Interesting)
Any tech company can be called a "house of cards". After all, what real assets do they own other than some buildings and equipment? The value of a tech company isn't measure that way. The foundation is the people they have and the talent pool they can draw from. Google has an immense talent pool that has shown itself being capable of solving many, many problems that bring value to people's lives. Advertising is just one avenue they use to monetize that value.
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
If google started charging for search, would you seriously not investigate the nearly equally good alternatives?
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
When is somebody going to step back and look at this phrase? Yeah, come to think of it, every media format on Earth, from newspapers to radio stations to magazines to TV stations, has companies that are completely reliant on the fickle advertising market. Been going on for 200 years+ of American capitalism; I don't see it stalling any time soon.
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The new thing here is the internet, and people becoming used to the idea that you don't need to look at ads in order to make use of it. How many of us AdBlock? How many people have switched to Firefox after seeing how wonderfully effective it is?
You use radio, newspapers and TV as examples of ad-supported media that has stood the test of time. As a single data point, I can tell you that I haven't listened to commercial radio since early high school (around '95 or so). After I started listening to Triple J
Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Ballmer: "Google's not a real company..." (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it's not a "real" company... (Score:5, Insightful)
He has viable competitors out here, about which he can't do a fsckin' thing.
Oh, and _zero_ market loyalty, after ten years of abuse. Make that negative numbers...
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Ten years? Try thirty.
TEN years of abuse? (Score:5, Insightful)
MS was a customer hostile enterprise (eventually proved criminal, time and time again) from the day Gates crawled out of bed and set it up in 1975, with mission: Enrich ME, fuck everyone else. (Remember the anti-hobbyist memo [wikipedia.org] (first of many famous incriminating memos)? [google.ca] The leopard doesn't change its spots.)
I make that 32 years. The cost to civilisation is incalculable, and we'll be paying for decades to come. Millions of lives are made worse by Windows and every other worthless MS product, every day.
Ballmer was hired and retained to continue the disgusting legacy.
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. (Score:5, Insightful)
--- and a good many more who wish the joke could be retired along with the other long-since-gone-stale running gags that pass for humor on Slashdot.
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--- and a good many more who wish the joke could be retired along with the other long-since-gone-stale running gags that pass for humor on Slashdot.
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Right now they've got Steve Ballmer in a corner. This is a man who is driven to win at all costs. Despite the flury of lawyers and PR folks advising against a hostile take over, I can't see him backing down. His identity and authority is too closely linked to his gratification.
Yahoo has no choice but to try to work out some sort of partnership with Google, if only for its own survival. Fortunately, I do not se
How much was Eric Schmidt responsible? (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought you were going to say, "... when they took on Eric Schmidt". Novell was at the top of the network software market. Through a lot of foolish moves, like buying Word Perfect for $1.1 billion, if I remember correctly, in 1994, Novell became "Who is Novell?"
I don't have any idea how much Eric Schmidt was responsible for the downfall of Novell. He became CEO of Novell in 1997. By 1999 [wikipedia.org], "Novell had lost its domi
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Good to have more search engines (Score:4, Interesting)
What happens next (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Microsoft ups their offer. Yahoo board indicated they wouldn't consider anything under $40.
2. Microsoft walks away. Shareholders revolt after stock drops big time.
3. Microsoft wages a proxy fight and tries to win over shareholders over the board's head.
(3) is the most likely outcome. Microsoft already said something like "we won't take no for an answer".
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My bet... (Score:3, Interesting)
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An anti-trust case has no legs to stand on in this case.
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The gap between Google and Microsoft+Yahoo (in terms of search engine, advertisings, etc) is big. I don't see any reason why the EU would have to react.
Re:What happens next (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely Ballmer knows many/most Yahoo! engineers aren't happy with the idea of being Microsoft employees (even if they do endure it, they won't do so happily, which affects productivity). Also most/all of Yahoo! is built using tools not easily integrated into Microsoft's (but this could be mitigated with a slow integration process). So the actual value of Yahoo! for Microsoft isn't all that great. Is this worth wiping out all of Microsoft's war chest and going into debt to boot? I doubt it.
Instead, imagine what would happen if Yahoo! vanished overnight. Yahoo! users would migrate either into Google services or Microsoft ones. Ballmer might believe that he can woo the majority of them; even if not, it still raises Microsoft's market share, even if while doing so it does the same for Google. And this might be achievable by doing exactly what Ballmer is doing: getting Yahoo! directors (and employees) to fight with Yahoo! stockholders. Yes, it might not wipe out Yahoo! overnight, but as a consequence the stock might topple downwards, and who knows what might happen then - the board might get replaced, internal turmoil, etc. etc. Even if it doesn't kill Yahoo!, it might make it less competitive, again, something that is good for Microsoft.
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Yahoo! users would migrate either into Google services or Microsoft ones.
MS has the most popular desktop OS, has its browser as the default on the most popular desktop OS, and has its search engine as the default homepage on the default browser of the most popular desktop OS, but they're still having trouble with Google/Yahoo. Something tells me it wouldn't be worth that much to just buy and get rid of Yahoo.
Rather than removing it entirely, I imagine MS finding ways to beat Google in the adspace game after getting two of the top search engines.
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And to your point, I would have agreed that #3 is the most likely, although the final paragraph in the WSJ indicates that Yahoo has taken the "poison pill" in order to prevent a hostile takeover and that Microsoft may have to oust the entire board to do it.
I find that particularly interesting - either they (Yahoo) are very desperate and are hoping for a miracle, or they really do believe
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would borrow money to do the Yahoo deal.
Microsoft is *so* desperate that they want to get in bed
with the banks, so they can become 'too big to fail'.
The problem for Microsoft is, even if they were to go belly up
tomorrow, it's not the end of the world. In fact, it would be good.
Ballmer and Gates are so full of themselves that they really believe
they are indispensable to the world economy.
In fact, Microsoft is a *huge* drain on the economy.
Good for them! (Score:2)
Microsoft can't see beyond the desktop. Everything they do is tied to selling OS's and Office. They had absolutely nothing to offer Yahoo! beyond an aging and stale brand name.
Kudos to Yahoo!'s board for showing some cajones and nailing yet another nail into Redmond's coffin.
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Idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
That means they don't make money. At least not compared to the already-inflated value of their stock. The value of their shares should be down in the single digits right now based on their income -- a P/E from 15-20 would be much more reasonable. Microsoft comes along and offers to buy them out for an amazing amount of money, and they turn it down?
Refusing this deal borders on illegal, assuming their job is to act in the interests of their shareholders.
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, money (shareholders) always prefer instant gratification, seldom does it care about the company and its long term health, it can always move to the next company.
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Informative)
We are talking about a deal that instantly infuses into the Yahoo shareholders' bank accounts more money than the company would earn in 20 years. It IS long-term benefit, and they ARE idiots to reject it.
Insiders think it is worth $40? Who the hell are they fooling? Themselves, obviously.
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Their profits are dwindling, their effort to stimulate said profits are failing, and they are cutting their workforce by 7% because of this. I have friends at Yahoo, and the smarter ones have been looking to jump ship for months because they can see the writing on the wall. A buyout at MS would at least give these people a reason to stay (assuming MS only fires the chaff).
I think
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what they are doing is EXACTLY in the interests of their shareholders. if MS really wants then that bad they'll have to pay more.
It was always going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
The other main option, namely attempt a takeover by proxy by trying to fill the Yahoo board has now (broadly) been nullified. If the current board is taking a position that will (if the takeover happens) make YH shareholders more money then they are not going to vote on MS stooges who would immediately accept the MS offer.
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Unbelievable and surreal.
The stance the board has taken is only going to make it worse when/if MS actually does do a hostile takeover.
*shakes head*
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Yahoo have nothing to loose in attempting to shake a couple more dollars out of MS. It was a 62% premium on the back of a weak Yahoo boardroom who don't know what they are doing, coupled with poor recently reported results. It is nowhere near a 62% premium on the real worth of the company
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Buying Yahoo will not make Microsoft smarter. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has proven, over many years, that it does not know how to run a search engine. Buying Yahoo will not magically make Microsoft smarter, especially since Yahoo has proven, over many years, that...
Well, that took long enough.. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is backwards. Give it five or ten years, and Yahoo could be buying microsoft (and not just because Yahoo's value is going up.)
But Yahoo's value would plummet by at least 75%, according to my completly random guess, if it were a division of MS. Imagine if your yahoo mail account was suddenly an MSN account. Your Yahoo IM suddenly merges with MSN. They both become worse than trash - I cannot imagine an organization (aside from the current executive branch of the us government) that I trust less than microsoft - all incompetence aside.
If they were people, I would invite Yahoo over to a backdoor bbq. MS, on the other hand, I'd invite to.. nowhere.
- d
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Yahoo has sharks circling. This is because it's dying much faster than MS. Yahoo, is essentially an empty brand name, content, and a database -- i.e. just like AOL before it. It has executives who have never understood its client base, nor cared for one single second long enough to find out what they want. It is astonishing that it survived the 1st dotcom crash -- it was in trouble then. Ev
Re:Well, that took long enough.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Already happened [yahoo.com].
The mod up to +4 (Score:2)
Allow me to humbly suggest a moratorium on "Microsoft is dying" posts - at least - until the company stops posting record gains and growth each quarter.
Record gains? (Score:2)
That could happen much sooner than you expect. Google for "microsoft cash" [google.com] and look for a diminishing trend over the last five years. If you had a stockpile of over $50 billion to start with, it's not so hard to post record gains, for a while. Until you need to start borrowing. [webmasterworld.com]
At this point, corporations are no different from either individual persons or co
This is done (Score:5, Interesting)
The FTC should reject this. (Score:2)
Thank God. (Score:5, Insightful)
He's an idea. Sell you stupid DRM pipe dreams down the river of wasted time and turn into what you should be, a DIVIDEND paying LOW GROWTH utility company. Make a good operating system with no bells or whistles that will pass any anti-trust case, sell it for a low enough price that the trouble of downloading a bit torrent crack isn't worth it. Make it so I can add/remove modules over the Internet at will for low low prices. Then make a a version that looks fucking fantastic and sell it like a Mac for a premium to fanboys and people who think translucent colored baubles are the shit.
Someone over there has finally woken up. I have been teaching Office 2007 and for god's sake it's a great product. 90% of the things that have made want to skull fuck the assholes in the Office department to death are gone. The menu system is great. The Page layout break controls are great. The automatic formating is now controllable. Best of fucking all you can now set the default action for paste to be text only.
I want Microsoft to stop being a bitch like Sony. (Don't FUCKING sue yourself.) Don't get delusions of being a media company or and Internet company you twits. Give me my fucking retained earnings as a dividend, make Office for a profit, make Server for a large profit, and make Windows so it works underwater in space, in the future, across standards, platforms, without a hoot because it is a god damn utility that doesn't give a fuck because everyone has to use it and doesn't hate it because it just fucking does its job come hell or high water.
I agree (Score:3, Funny)
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For Excel 2007 they've made adjusting charts extremely painful and non obvious. To me that is a huge downside - the rest of the changes I'm fairly neutral on. Spreading the Blender interface to more programs is great of course (Ribbon is essentially a port of the Blender buttons interface).
LetterRip
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Re:Thank God. (Score:4, Funny)
Make a bid, which is rejected.
Generate a massive amount of negative media buzz, causing the stock price to fall.
Repeat the original bid "I offer $31 for your company", which is now accepted with relief "$31 a share is more than fair."
Dogbert: "Yeah, $31 'a share' would have been fair." implying they just sold the entire company for $31,being too paniced to read the fine print.
We'll have to wait and see how this high-stakes corporate waltz plays out.
Yahoo is bluffing - and plays lousy chess (Score:2)
Most of Microsoft's business are thriving - Yahoo is not.
The numbers are sobering. Yahoo's stock owners will not get a better chance than this. For their sake I hope they are just bluffing to try and get their price up - because there is no other reasonable strategy on the
WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I, personally, don't care either way. Until 2002 or so I was a huge Yahoo user. Now, except for some occasional visits to Flikr, and for being subscribed to some YahooGroups mailing lists, many of which I in fact was a subscriber of since it still was an independent company called eGroups, I hardly ever remember Yahoo exists. Now, if Microsoft were trying to acquire Google, then I'd worry. But the way things are, it acquiring Yahoo doesn't matter much.
Something stupid this way comes.... (Score:2, Insightful)
The clue train..... (Score:2)
It is compatibility problem really (Score:5, Interesting)
Companies are not compatible with each other. Yahoo is a open source powered services giant. MS is Windows maker who struggles to make Windows more credible in large installations. Would MS pay $46 billion to further advertise open source technologies and operating systems like FreeBSD?
I suggest Slashdot people who thinks Yahoo is lame because of their homepage check http://developer.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com] to see what Yahoo actually is.
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No, but it might be worth $46 billion to destroy one of the larger installations of open source software out there, in addition to starving open source projects like Zimbra of corporate support.
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I suggest Slashdot people who thinks Yahoo is lame because of their homepage check http://developer.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com] to see what Yahoo actually is.
Huge Flash sign thanks to Flashblock... lame side indeed.
Considering a developer site lame just because they use flash is a bit childish, sorry. They are living in REAL WORLD, real people, serving to REAL developers some free SDKs which also includes Flash/Flex applications. It is not like some 133t wannabe thing, it is some part of a company who considers $46 _billion_ a cheap price for its worth.
The "huge flash sign" you speak about is some Yahoo developer explaining why OpenID, a vendor neutral, OPEN technology is a big step for Yahoo. You know, they adopted
Phblllltttt! (Score:2)
interesting (Score:2)
Yahoo board to reject Microsoft bid (Score:2)
The decision, first reported by The Wall Street Journal on its Web site, could trigger a showdown involving two of the world's most prominent technology companies.
If it wants Yahoo badly enough, Microsoft could try to override Yahoo's board by taking its offer -- originally v
It's called negotiation (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you sleep with me for $1 million? (Score:2)
"What kind of girl do you think I am?"
"We've already established that. Now we're just haggling about the price."
So Yahoo! would sell out for $40, eh? Why am I not impressed with their integrity.
The *REAL* problem is that "shareholder value" now has a circular definition of stock price, and anything that raises the price is increasing "shareholder value" even if the real assets of the company are being destroyed
MS needs internal change, NOT external change (Score:2)
Non search properties (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it possible Microsoft is after these? Like Palm wasn't after BeOS?
What would the acquisition of these other properties do for Microsoft? For Google? Google could sell the search and advertising off and get a lot of mileage off of the other parts
I think it's all this other IP that puts Yahoo! in a much better position then the narrow "Search Merger" view provides.
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Hello stock price freefall!
$40 as a minimum is quite reasonable when you consider the massive devaluation which will occur the moment the deal goes through.
Re:Excuse me? (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft will borrow money to buy a losing Yahoo. (Score:2)
Yes but, as I understand it, Microsoft's offer of real money was only up to half of the total.
Re:Microsoft will borrow money to buy a losing Yah (Score:2)
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If MS gets to choose, then I believe that the assertion that the payment would be in MS stock is correct.
Re:Excuse me? (Score:5, Informative)
The one exception is when insiders sell large blocks of stock -- then the market assumes there must be bad news coming, and the price does drop and remain low. But this effect is informational, and the magnitude of the drop has much less to do with how many shares are dumped onto the market than it does with what the dump says about the insider's opinions (e.g. what proportion of his stock he dumps, and how many other insiders do the same simultaneously).
In any case, the fact that there are "loose shares" dumped onto the market does not by itself affect the price.
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It is easy to see that Yahoo shareholders benefit, but this extra benefit comes out of the Microsoft shareholders' pockets. The only time it wouldn't is if there are synergies to be obtained from merging the two companies. That could happen, but it is more likely that there will be diseconomies of scale as a result of the merger, and the total amount lost by Microsoft shareholders will be more than what
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My point was merely that "dumping" stocks onto the market at below-value does not, by itself, affect the price of the stock for more than a few seconds.
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Sure, or course. The circling money vultures who could not really care any less about Yahoo! or it's business will flee to other more tasty rotting Interweb meat. And Yahoo will live another day.
The problem with American business and the financial "industry" built around it is that there is actually no interest at all in sustainable business, but rather exponential profit growth at all cost, even the death o
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In any case, yes, Yahoo's stock will take a hit, but the company will survive. Frankly, it's probably a good time to buy their stock once everyone that thought microsoft would take them over dumps theirs.
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Stupid survive instinct.
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Wouldn't it make more sense to sell long term bonds? Or heck... Why not just sell non-voting stock so you don't have to give a damn what the investors say? I'm just saying you can get capital some other way than the stock market.
Obviously, the shareholders at MSFT are basically the people that run the company so (Balmer and friends) so its not like if they make a bad decision that B
Only a silly investor gets sentimental (Score:2)
So.... Yahoo! won't come easy, MS will just mount a hostile take over. That won't
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It is these 'money vultures' who provide funding that gets ideas off the ground. And it is precisely their greed that takes money away from lower performing businesses and moves it into higher performing ones.
It is a third rate intellect that takes into account what is seen, but ignores the unseen.
Re:Not smart (Score:5, Insightful)
I challenge you to show how Yahoo is a sustainable business. Before the MS offer, they just announced that they would have to fire 1000 employees [google.com]. The company's revenues year over year are shrinking [nwsource.com] because their management cannot find a way to translate all of their site traffic into money. They have a history of failing to meet their own projections. At the very least this a poorly run company, and with the coming recession, I do not think its sustainability is out of the question.
Second as an individual that owns stock, and thus is one of these "money vultures," why should I or any investor want to own Yahoo's stock, outside of takeover speculation. The company offers no dividend, which means the only return on investment I will see in it is from the company's growth, something it has clearly failed to predict, manage, or deliver on.
You claim that the entire financial industry is built on "exponential growth" but you fail to ignore the fact that Yahoo abd most tech stocks choose to hold their stock out as a growth stock, meaning they can only justify their stock price by *gasp* growing. If Yahoo were too come out tomorrow, declare a dividend (like say Altria), and pay some of the $1.5 billion dollars in cash they have to their shareholders, than their stock would finally have some intrinsic worth NOT tied to their rate of growth. (Note: For an explaination of growth stocks vs. value stocks, check this link [axaonline.com] out.)
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I have a yahoo account (don't really use it), but I primary think of them as a search engine. Used them until after google came along, but joined the pack.
So based on that, here's my question - _if_ Yahoo is a search engine, and _because_ you point how they're not a sustainable business, then perhaps the real deal is that your post has three links in it, none of them from Yahoo. In fact, you use google as the first link to find out / prove how
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Its not that hard to be a stock vampire. If you had $1,000 and bought 1,000 shares at $1.00 and then just waited for an invariable 5% change price to $1.05 then have a limit sell then you just made 50 some odd bucks. This may seem small but if you do it at larger scale and of course higher returns you can scale it up to higher returns. Your not even waiting f
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-$12 commission. You can do the same thing in Vegas with a $1000. IE you bet $50 a day, and double down until you hit once. Even with $1600 it would be on average 1 month until you lost your initial $1600, by then you would have won $1550, so if you reinvested that you would likely make a year until you lost everything. The casinos hate this, not becaus
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I'm poor. I make under $30k a year and live in Los Angeles. Yet despite that, I am able to save 25% of my income each year and invest it, some of it in oil stocks to help offset the cost of commuting. The problem in this country is not that poor people cannot save and cannot live a decent life, it's that they choose not to. They choose to have children before they can afford it. They choose not to take out loans to go to college. They choose
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