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Showing posts from September, 2013

Who's Betting on Blackberry?

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Worth a $4 billion gamble? Among other deal announcements in Sept., 2013, an investing group from Canada has decided to bet on Blackberry, the tech company that was all the rage from the late 1990's until the iPhone shoved it off the scene in the mid-2000's. People still use Blackberry (yep, some still do!), and many companies support employee usage, partly because of an efficient messaging system. Yet with rapidly deteriorating market share and with its feeble efforts to catch up with what other smartphones offer (and with mounting losses), who would want to buy the company? A Canadian private-equity company has jumped in to take the gamble and assume the risk. It sees some value other market investors and the consuming public at large don't--up to about $4.7 billion worth. It has agreed to a buy-out to purchase shares it doesn't already own.  In recent weeks, Blackberry's CEO has announced large losses, lay-offs and a new strategy focusing primarily on

KLCI 4th Quarter Price Trend

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People who are new to the stock market may think that the stock market is a chaos market operating in a random manner. As you do more and more research into the historical stock prices you will see the picture clearer that the stock market is in fact rather predictable . Below are some KLCI historical charts for your viewing. As you can see interestingly, November is always "down" and December is always "up"; September is mixed, while October has been up for the last 3 years, but for this year I would say it might be a mixed month due to the strong rally in September with rather steep slope of rising.  How well history repeats itself depends on the actual outcome 3 months later. Happy Investing! 2010 Sept - Dec 2011 Sept - Dec 2012 Sept - Dec 2013 Sept - Dec

Fighting the Gender Fight at HBS

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The pot is stirring at Harvard Business School Harvard Business School made the front page of the New York Times last weekend.  It wasn't because one of its alumni is perched atop a Fortune 500 company or another announced a blockbuster merger with another mega-company.  It wasn't because one of its alumni is waging a ferocious shareholder campaign to take over a multinational company. And it wasn't because one of its alumni is the announced head of McKinsey, Goldman or Booz Allen. It was because its dean and staff are fighting a fierce fight to change the culture of the school and make it more accepting of the growing number of women on campus. According to the article, women now comprise 40% of the students in the business school. But the culture still remains entrenched in male dominance--in case-study groups, in classroom discussions, in the assembling of secret societies ("Section X," one is supposedly called), and in seizing the highest-compensation opportu