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A strong balance sheet and cash flow, new products that should attract novel investor attention, a low dare to undertake profile and underpriced fill…It all spells opportunity

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Microsoft (MSFT) — 52-week stock price

By Gene Marcial

With savvy investment pros increasingly talking about the stock market circling toward a bottom, price and technology issues are getting the thumbs-up. After the drubbing they’ve taken in the gone by two years, the pros say, these sectors are poised to lead the parade when the market turns.

John Linehan, who manages asset manager T. Rowe Price’s (TROW) $6 billion Value Stock Fund, says set store by stocks have become greater quantity compelling on the basis of their depressed valuations as moderate by several metrics, including price-earnings ratios.

Investors could play the coming value-tech upturn by buying happy one stock: Microsoft (MSFT).

The world’s largest software set, with a market cap of $158 billion, is not only an undervalued tech stock but is furthermore a safe and enticing duration play, according to Linehan.

True, the stock has been a disappointment, having slid from a 52-week high of 32.10 a share on Apr. 24, 2008, to 16.75 on Jan. 23, 2009. But it has since edged higher, to 19 on Feb. 6, even after reporting disappointing proceeds in January for its fiscal second quarter ended without ceasing Dec. 31, 2009. The company situated a profit of 47¢ a share on revenues of $16.6 billion, vs. analysts’ consent foresee of 49¢ on revenues of $17 billion.

Still, none of the 34 Street analysts who track Microsoft recommends selling the stock. In real existence, 22 reprove Microsoft a buy and 12 card it a grasp.

Linehan says Microsoft, trading at just 9.5 times his 2009 earnings projections, is undervalued because it deserves to trade at a higher price-earnings fixed relation. He figures that in a "normal" pedigree emporium, Microsoft merits a p-e ratio of 13 to 14. He expects Microsoft will earn around $1.85 a share in 2009 and $2.25 in 2010.

Microsoft is a compelling value stock play, says Linehan, in member because of its strong balance sheet. It generates free cash flow of about $1 billion every month and has $23.7 billion in turn into money and investments as of June 2008, even after gainful out $116 billion in dividends and share buybacks in 2008. That suggests the reserve’s 3% dividend yield is pretty sure, he adds. Microsoft has also been slashing costs, including reducing its personnel count of 91,000 by 5,000,

Microsoft’s new products, says Linehan, which include the new Windows 7 system, should attract fresh investor attention. Microsoft plans to launch the new version of its Windows operating combination of parts to form a whole in 2010, followed by an improved reading of the Office suite of applications. It is also moving into new fields, including cloud computing, at which place Microsoft runs its products on computers at its own premises centers for customers without their having to purchase additional software.

Rumors are swirling that Microsoft plans to launch its own smartphone—a cell phone that features more advanced functions, including Internet access. A Microsoft smartphone would compete head-to-head with Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and Research In Motion’s (RIMM) line of BlackBerry devices. If the new phone gains widespread consumer attention, Microsoft’session stock could detonation, at least in the short term.

Analyst Kevin Buttigieg of investment firm Stanford Group notes that in the past four years, Microsoft’s garner traded at an average p-e of 19. The high was 23 and the undignified 15. While the economy has had a negative impact upon Microsoft’sitting operations, the stock’s current valuation other thing than discounts this weakness, he argues. Buttigieg rates the stock a buy by a 12-month price mark of 24.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/feb2009/pi2009029_487963.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

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NEW YORK — Sales of U.S. magazines at newsstands and other deal out in small portions outlets dropped during the second half of 2008 to the degree that readers looked on account of ways to trim discretionary spending, but overall circulation was largely flat.

In releasing twice-annual promulgation figures for magazines, the Audit Bureau of Circulations said combined single-copy sales averaged 43,367,098, down 11 percent from the help half of 2007. The totals are based on all 535 magazines that reported circulation in both 2007 and 2008.

Overall circulation was 345,176,148 during the 2008 period, a 0.9 percent ear-ring. Subscriptions increased little, by 0.5 percent.

Although overall circulation was stable, the drop in single-copy sales translates to less revenue because publishers typically make more from newsstand sales than from subscriptions, which are sold at a discount but help publishers boost circulation totals to lure advertisers.

In some cases, publishers break verily or take a loss on subscriptions after paying commissions, uttered John Harrington, publisher of The New Single Copy, a newsletter without interruption the publishing industry.

Single-copy sales are particularly vulnerable in an household downturn because they rely on impulse buys at newsstands, supermarket checkout lines and other deal out in small portions outlets.

“At this point, it is purely a contemplation of the arrangement,” Harrington aforesaid. “Everything in the store is selling less.”

The recession also has weighed down advertising prospects, even now weak from the flight of readers to the Internet.

Several magazines own trimmed staff, and people have ceased publication. U.S. News and World Report, which is privately owned, switched from weekly to biweekly and then to monthly within the by year.

Cosmopolitan remained the top-selling magazine at newsstands, through 1.8 the masses single-copy sales, a 6 percent drop. People was second at 1.5 the public, a 3 percent increase, making it the only major celebrity weekly to show gains. No. 3 Woman’s World dropped 7 percent to 1.2 million.

AARP Bulletin and AARP The Magazine had the largest circulation overall, each at more than 24 million. Reader’s Digest was third at 8.2 the masses, dropping 12 percent.

Despite worries about readers getting more of their news from the Internet, the three top news magazines all showed gains in single-copy sales as coverage of the historic presidential campaign intensified. However, total circulation for Newsweek and U.S. News dropped sharply, as long as Time’s was flat.

People and Time are published by Time Warner Inc. Newsweek is a publication of The Washington Post Co. Cosmopolitan is sold by Hearst Corp. Woman’s World comes from Bauer Publishing.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008724334_webmagazines09.html?syndication=rss

NEW YORK —

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Starbucks Corp., that is trying to refashion its resemblance in the same proportion that a added recession-friendly coffeehouse, offered more details Monday on the breakfast “pairings” it will barter beginning March 3.

The cultivator of the palate coffee chain said it determine introduce value-meal type options in quest of $3.95 each in its U.S. company-owned stores. Customers can fraternity a tall latte and an oatmeal or a slice of reduced-fat cinnamon swirl coffee cake. Drip coffee drinkers can get a tall brewed coffee with a breakfast sandwich at the same price.

Starbucks said it will also slide from the stocks sum of two units reinvigorated breakfast sandwiches - a bacon sandwich with ovum and gouda cheese and a ham sandwich made with egg and cheddar.

Regular prices for the drinks and food items vary depending on the location of the store but a tall latte and an oatmeal can cost as a great quantity as $5. Starbucks said the pairings will provide customers with an average savings of as much in the manner that $1.20.

Seattle-based Starbucks has struggled to keep its customers because the recession has deepened and has been promoting loyalty cards and other options to give customers more value without hurting its meed brand status.

The company first mentioned the pairings hold out month after it released fiscal first-quarter results that showed same-store sales - or sales at stores undisguised at least a year - cruel 10 percent in the U.S. The sales drop was the biggest yet for the company.

Starbucks also has had to make room because a new lower-priced competitor in the specialty-coffee industry since McDonald’s Corp. introduced espresso-based coffee drinks in its U.S. stores.

Earlier Monday, McDonald’s said its same-store sales in January jumped 7.1 percent worldwide and 5.4 percent in the U.S.

Starbucks shares fell 16 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $10.38.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008723874_apstarbucksbreakfastpairings.html?syndication=rss

ELKHART, Ind. —

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Making his situation in the mostly dire terms, President Barack Obama said that if Congress does not quickly pass an economic stimulant package, the nationality leave slip into a crisis likewise deep that “we may be powerless to reverse” it.

“We can’t yield to wait. We can’t wait to see and hope for the best,” Obama said in Elkhart, Ind., a community reeling in job losses during the recession that has defined his young presidency. “We be able to’t posture and bicker and resort to the corresponding; of like kind failed ideas that got us in into this mess in the first place.”

Obama took the Washington debate Monday to a Midwest setting of everyday Americans, sought to build encouragement for a massive infusion of government spending.

The popular president got at smallest one biting question for the time of a candid question question-and-answer session, when a woman who identified herself as Tara took Obama to task without interruption the side of some of the tax lapses of his high-level nominees.

“You’ve advance to our county and asked us to give credence to you, but those that you have appointed to your Cabinet are not uncorrupt and can’t handle their own budget and taxes,” she aforesaid. Others in the town-hall session booed her, but Obama interjected: “No, no, this is a lawfully begotten discussion.”

Obama said he has taken responsibility for the cognition that some people shouldn’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else. Two nominees, including Tom Daschle, who was in line to be writer of Health and Human Services, withdrew from consideration after revelations of delinquent taxes.

But he added that the mistakes were honest ones and related: “If you’re not going to decree anybody who’s ever made a mistake in your mode, then you’re not going to have anybody pique your jobs.”

On the economic crisis, Obama acknowledged that the legislation currently circulating in Congress is not beyond critique, flat poking fun at its authors at one eve. Said Obama: “It’s coming out of Washington. It’s going through Congress.”

“You know, look, it’s not perfect,” the president conceded. “But it is the right sizing, it is the appropriate scope. Broadly speaking, it has the right priorities to create jobs that will jump-start our economy and transform the economy for the 21st centenary.”

The $827 billion Senate version of the plan was expected to defile the Senate on Tuesday. However, it remained to be seen how much GOP support it would draw. And it must be reconciled with the House version, which totaled $820 billion in spending and demand cuts. Senate and House negotiators were already preparing to deal, with the design of a bill on Obama’s desk by the close of this week or beginning of next.

Obama went so estranged as to say he could not assure that every item in the stimulus plan would work as hoped. But he said he has no doubts that “delay or paralysis” in Washington will deepen the country’sitting crisis. He was speaking in northern Indiana, where the unemployment rate soared to 15.3 percent in one county in December, up a whopping 10.6 percentage points from December 2007. The region has been hammered by dint of. layoffs in the recreational vehicle form of productive effort.

“Doing in no degree is not an selection,” Obama said. “We’ve had a good debate. Now it’s time to act.”

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008723337_apobamaeconomy.html?syndication=rss

Several relatively uncorrelated asset classes appear to have become increasingly attractive amid the current turmoil

By Alec Young From Standard & Poor’session Equity Research

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After declining sharply in 2008, global equities got off to a rough start in 2009 — the S&P 500 index declined 6.4%, and the MSCI EAFE pointer fell 7.9% year-to-date (through January 29). In adding, the S&P SmallCap pointer and the MSCI Emerging Market index compounded their sharp 2008 declines by falling 10.9% and 6.2%, respectively.

We think to be true broad-based global equity volatility is not surprising given deteriorating worldwide fundamentals and increasing global righteousness correlation. As a consequence, superior stock picking is more important than ever. In addition to Standard & Poor’s Equity Research’sitting STARS recommendations, we commit investors also consider a broader array of asset classes in their examine during the term of positive absolute returns.

Some asset classes offer strong capital appreciation opportunities, while others merely represent an chance; fit to make productive yields on cash reserves. We believe an equal-weighted portfolio comprised of the four strategies outlined below has the potential to generate positive absolute returns for the time of this difficult period. Alternatively, the volatility of traditional equity-only portfolios be able to be reduced through the inclusion of one or more of these less-correlated asset classes, in our view.

Investment-Grade Corporate Bonds

As a worsening global recession and significant “fleeing to kind” buying have depressed U.S. Treasury yields, many investors are buying investment-grade corporate bonds because a highroad to improve the yield on their coin reserves without adding too much risk. Bulls contend that the higher risk of investment-grade incorporated bonds is largely discounted by their wide spread over comparable Treasury bonds. While advocates acknowledge that corporate defaults are likely to continue to rise at the same time that the thrift deteriorates, they vie this risk is largely reflected in course depressed valuations.

The iShares iBoxx Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD) pays dividends quarterly and recently yielded 5.5%. Its annual expense ratio is 0.15%.

S&P Dividend Aristocrats

While recent equity emporium turmoil has been broad, U.S. companies with a long history of increasing their dividend payouts have historically outperformed their peers. The S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats index, comprised of the 50 highest yielding constituents of the S&P 1500 Composite index that have increased dividends each year for at minutest 25 succeeding regularly years, fell only 23% in 2008 versus a 36.7% drop for the S&P 1500 Composite index. (Of course, past performance is not declarative of future results.)

Many yield-oriented reasonableness portfolios have been undone by one over-reliance on the financials sector, which is home to many companies by above-average yields. This strategy mitigates that problem in that reduced dividend payouts result in expulsion from the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats characteristic. In well leavened of widespread financials sector dividend reductions, there are currently only four financials in the top 30 holdings of the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats index, which together comprise 56% of its market cap.

The SPDR S&P Dividend ETF (SDY) tracks the S&P High Yield Dividend Aristocrats index. It pays dividends quarterly and recently yielded 6.1%. Its annual expense ratio is 0.35%.

U.S. Dollar

As the global credit crunch and de-leveraging have spread, we believe the U.S. dollar has benefited from aggressive “flight to quality” Treasury buying in lieu of riskier fixed-income securities. In etc., the dollar has benefited from a dramatic decline in overseas economies, which has forced foreign central banks to ease aggressively, undermining their currencies. The gains accept been in the greatest degree signal against the euro, pound sterling, and Canadian dollar as the Eurozone, United Kingdom, and Canadian economies have deteriorated sharply, forcing their central banks to slash rates.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/feb2009/pi2009026_373265.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

The holy grail is a boarding-house/401(k) mixture that pays out for the rest of your life—but shaken administrators may not subsist inclined for it

By Amy Feldman

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With Social Security on shaky ground and pension plans disappearing, more retirees exercise volition have to rely on their 401(k)sitting to support them in old age.

That’s not very reassuring to anyone who has dared to lacerate open a recent statement and peek inside. The market meltdown is the chief culprit. But even if the dispensation were rock-solid, 401(k) plans would still be a problem. For years, most investors haven’t saved enough, allocated their assets wisely, or figured out in what state to derive down those assets in ways that would make them last a lifetime.

If you’re approaching retirement right now, there’s no easy fix for your portfolio. But if you are in midcareer, you may soon be obliged a chance to structure your 401(k) in a much various way. A twelve or so asset managers and insurers, including AllianceBernstein (AB), AXA (AXA), Barclays Global Investors (BCS), John Hancock (MFC), MetLife (MET), and Prudential (PRU), are designing a new breed of retirement instrument that combines elements of pensions and 401(k)s. These products—call them hybrid 401(k)s—have begun slowly rolling out. And while they deviate in structure, all combine annuities—essentially, insurance contracts that cater periodic income payments—with an investment portfolio. The hybrids won’face to face protect investors from intense market swings. But they’ll guarantee a certain effect of monthly income for the come to a stand-still of your life.

Among all the competitors, San Francisco-based Barclays Global Investors (BGI), one of the most felicitous units of Britain’s troubled Barclays, is regarded as a trailblazer. BGI is the world’s largest asset manager, with about $1.9 trillion when exposed to its control. It’session a research-oriented shop that invented such now-familiar retirement products as index investment strategies and target-date funds, which shift their asset allocations since the owner approaches seclusion. Its latest idea is to make 401(k)s more like pensions for a like reason participants receive income for their entire departure. The product is SponsorMatch, a product that combines a target-date fund and an annuity.

Employees in SponsorMatch will period up with roughly half their assets in annuities by the agency of the time they reach departure age. That’s a potential lifesaver—and, of course, it helps BGI. The firm’s business in 401(k)session and other defined-contribution plans has about $250 billion in effects. Not a puny problem, but it’s a entire footnote to the company’s massive pension operations at a time when 401(k)s have been extending and pensions shrinking. “This is a business opportunity, otherwise than that it goes beyond that, to all further a moral pursuit,” says BGI Chief Executive Blake Grossman.

The timing for this new mule product has proved tricky, however. With trauma spreading in the financial markets and incorporated plan sponsors preoccupied, BGI has yet to perceive its first institutional client among the large corporate 401(k) plans it has targeted. Some of BGI’s rivals have nabbed early adopters for their own hybrid products, however altogether have struggled. “We are in the same stage of exhibition with these retirement products as we were with electronics 20 years ago. We are going to find away what the public likes,” says Don Ezra, global superintendent of investment strategy at Russell Investments and author of the forthcoming book, The Retirement Plan Solution. “Twenty years from at once, there will be a clear winner.”

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_07/b4119061756100.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

The 217-point jump in the Dow Jones came as optimism grew that the horrible January jobs report would propense lawmakers to pass the incitement plan

By David Bogoslaw

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While the Standard & Poor’s 500 and other equity indexes have managed to put in brief advances in recent weeks, the "500" veered uncomfortably close to the 800 level in January, stoking reverence among strategists and analysts that the market will retest the Nov. 20 low of 750 and may not check there. Indeed, with consumer spending at a standstill, credit still in effect frozen, and job losses accelerating, there’session no reason for investors to begin buying just yet.

The 217-point suffer by a leap in the Dow Jones industrial average on Feb. 6 came as optimism grew that the loss of nearly 600,000 jobs in January—the worst single-month decline in 35 years—was precisely what was needed to satisfy lawmakers to pass a sweeping stimulant plan now estimated at $900 billion.

But Richard Sparks, senior rectitude analyst at Schaeffer’s Investment Research in Cincinnati, worries that more of the factors supporting the stock place of traffic now are based added on possibility of good than on verity. That could hamper any substantial upward momentum in stock prices, he says.

The various uncertainties around in what manner big a stimulus package the Obama Administration will come by approval for, what it will comprise, and how effective it will be could keep would-be equity investors sitting on their hands—and their cash— for the foreseeable future. Besides an all-out exertion to be successful the endure of reluctant Senate Republicans, President Obama has been hitting the airwaves at least once a day by direct updates to the public designed to put pressure on lawmakers opposed to the stimulus package. "The big key in the near term is we need a credible stimulus plan through of the Senate and a credible ‘unfair bank’ plan out of [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner," says Alec Young, chief equity strategist at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research.

There’s concern the stimulus package that emerges from the Senate subsist pleased be as disappointing as the House translation, which allotted a mere 7% of total funds to infrastructure, with just one-quarter of that to have being spent in the inside of the next 12 months. The Senate parcel devise inspire more intrepidity if it has more meat on it, provisions like the proposed impost credit of up to $15,000 to anyone who buys a primary residence in the next year, which was added on Feb. 4 to stoke Republican endure, says Young. Things like that could help interrupt a drop in stocks to new lows, he adds. The initial "bad tier"proposal in January to withdraw toxic mortgage-backed assets from banks’ balance sheets drew criticism for not specifying in which place the money to buy the assets would come from and for what reason the unwanted assets would be priced.

"There’s a lot of money on the sidelines and no rush to get into this market," says Young. He also cites the formidable technical resistance in the S&P 500 index betwixt 850 and 900 that is preventing any sustainable gains in equity prices.

Even the insistent arguments by optimists for the sake of hard-to-beat equivalent in hammered stocks are difficult to believe unless you’re confident about 2009 profits. estimates. The consensus view on 2009 earnings per share for the entire S&P 500 pointer is currently $58. Divide the level at which the S&P 500 closed on Feb. 5, 846, by 58 and you get prices at 14.6 times profits.. "That’s not cheap," says Young. "If the stimulant doesn’confidentially work, the market could be much lower."

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/feb2009/pi2009026_443101.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

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With businesses scrambling to render their energy use — both to save costs and frontier their carbon track — Microsoft and other software vendors are building tools that make up tracking environmental data easier.

Today, Microsoft is releasing a emancipated add-on to its enterprise instrumentality planning (ERP) software for midsized businesses.

“ERP systems are really good at giving you the financial numbers, only where they fall short is with the environment or social issues,” said Jennifer Pollard, a senior Microsoft product manager.

The Environmental Sustainability Dashboard is designed for use by a facilities manager, environmental- compliancy officer or anyone in the company with the responsibility of tracking energy use and conservatory gas emissions.

It displays graphs of direct energy usage, such as coal, oil or natural gas burned on site, and mediate usage — energy purchased from a utility. The information be able to be used to chase efficiency programs or evaluate improvements, like being of the class who shifting from oil heat to electric.

Sole Technology, a Lake Forest, Calif., sports garb and footwear company, has a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2020.

George Bock, vice president of IT, aforesaid the company already uses Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP software, and the addition of the environmental dashboard is “a perfect blend for us.”

The dashboard allows the company to get up data it’s even now collecting and keep track of specific efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

While the visitor’s carbon-neutral requirement is driven by its environmentally conscious chief executive and trip, Pierre Andre Senizergues, it is also seeing require to be paid savings through the effort.

“Just purely on the IT side, there’s a huge opportunity for companies to be very environmentally conscious and debase cost and overhead,” Bock said. “… The payback put on it is incredibly fast.”

Dwight Klappich, a Gartner analyst who follows supply-chain applications, said in that place’s a greater trend toward adding environmental measurement capabilities to business applications.

Some applications are very sophisticated while others are “putting a green spin onward stuff they might have already been doing,” he said.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoft/2008722648_btgreensoftware09.html?syndication=rss

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Not lingering afterward right a Netflix customer in December 2001, I became so obsessed that one friend, after hearing me rave besides anew all over the wonder of the online DVD-rental service, told me in exasperation that he thought I had joined a cult.

Seven years later, I’m still a member and still getting four DVDs a month. Amazon.com might be the only other Web service I’ve used considered in the state of long.

Despite my fidelity, I’ve taken Netflix for granted.

Time to change that. After toward a decade in operation, Netflix deserves to be recognized in the same proportion that one of the greatest in quantity successful dot-coms ever.

Many of us may take underestimated not just how innovative this company is, but also how well-managed it is. It’s pulled off a feat that’s too rare among Internet companies by pairing a leading, disruptive menial duties with a powerful dealing model. And it’s continued to conquer each rival even as analysts have fretted that it would stumble with every new challenge.

Even more amazing is that the company appears to be gathering moment after a decade, a neat trick that fellow first-generation Web icons probably eBay and Yahoo could alone dream of emulating.

The underlying strength of Netflix came into sharp focus freshly when the group reported fourth-quarter earnings. The results would have been spectacular anytime, but were downright astonishing coming in the between the extremes of the global economic meltdown. Among the highlights: record earnings and a big jump in subscribers.

The conventional explanation for this surge is that consumers are moving to Netflix as a mean collation alternative. Less going to the movies, greater quantity staying at home to rent. That’session true, but it’s too been a longtime trend. And it besides sells the company short, suggesting that Netflix is an accidental beneficiary of the ailing economy.

Doing things right

In fact, the company has done a number of things right along the way, many of what one. aren’t obvious.

The first, big decision it got right was to offer a subscription with no late fees. Less visible, but more challenging has been building all the pieces of its patented distribution arrangement, which will lief grow to 60 centers. This involves a delicate step rhythmically of spending just the right amount of excellent at the right time to match the go at an ambling gait of subscriber growth to make sure increasingly near service.

On a recent vacation in Hawaii, I dropped some Netflix DVDs in the mail on a Thursday afternoon and accepted any e-mail Friday morning saying that the companionship had received them. Amazing.

Netflix moreover has continued to update its Web interface, including letting subscribers add movies to their queue whenever they’re still in theaters. This allows the company to assemble immense amounts of information about what its subscribers want in advance to adjust record, and even to use as leverage when negotiating royalty payments with studios. It’s a near-perfect demand-fulfillment system that gets shaky solely when it comes to dealing with the biggest blockbuster titles.

While Netflix has dropped prices of some subscription plans to stay ahead of competitors, it hasn’t cut them too radically. And at the same time, in the most recent quarter, it reported that the cost of acquiring new customers had fallen steeply, giving a boost to the foundation line.

Finally, Netflix has gone completely against the conventional wisdom of Silicon Valley, which says product is overseas. Instead, Netflix has focused only attached serving customers in the U.S. A company with bigger egos ability have moved outside the domestic market and in the process would have immensely complicated its deals with movie studios, raised its distribution costs and made operations far more difficult to manage.

Disciplined approach

The result of this disciplined approach is that Netflix has bested iconic companies like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster. Although Netflix has only in regard to 25 percent of the annual revenue of Blockbuster, investors give Netflix a market capitalization that’s 10 times as big. That efficiency be the ultimate miracle of be fond of and respect from shareholders.

Having conquered this market, Netflix has been expanding into online video streaming. In this arena, Netflix faces a strange array of competitors, from free, ad-driven services like YouTube and Hulu to pay-per-use rivals like Apple’s iTunes Store. But I think Netflix may have already outflanked many of them, including Apple.

Over the exceeding year, Netflix has divide a number of deals to deliver its streaming service through hardware devices like the Xbox and TiVo lawful to your television. And while Netflix won’t disclose the details, it appears another time to be carefully balancing the sprouting of streaming customers and the need to build strange infrastructure while striking deals for content.

If Netflix manages this transition artfully, if customers be permanent to move to streaming and at a distance from physical DVDs, the company will reap important savings over time on things like postage and inventory. Of course, it’session become according to fashion for analysts and pundits to once again fret that streaming force of will decimate Netflix, just as Blockbuster and Wal-Mart were sure to cast them down.

As for me, I’m transacted betting against Netflix.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008722651_netflix09.html?syndication=rss

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These days, you can roll up to an ATM at the grocery, the pharmacy, the gas station, the hardware store, the office, even the ballpark. You can check your Bank of America balance on your iPhone. You can text Chase, and Chase will text you back.

That’s banking today: It has grown from an almost quaint relationship between teller and customer into a massive, dizzyingly interconnected network that touches almost every adult in this country.

And the federal government — working without a road map and without a net — is putting together a plan to keep banks from collapsing.

Not just to get the banks lending again. To keep them alive.

The government is expected to announce Tuesday a plan that analysts expect will include lifting soured mortgage assets off selected banks’ books, possibly along with guarantees against other losses and maybe more direct injections of cash.

Getting it wrong could trigger a replay of what happened after Lehman Brothers collapsed last fall — the stock market in free fall, seizure of the credit markets, ripples of layoffs.

Perhaps even a run on other banks — so many customers rushing to pull out their cash that it would make the bank run in “It’s a Wonderful Life” look like a feel-good holiday movie.

So how did we get into this mess?

And how do we get out?

Bad policies

Most financial experts agree a cocktail of bad economic policies and lax government oversight led lenders, borrowers and investors to take huge risks.

Greed and recklessness trumped fear and reason, and they led banks to the brink.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008722754_banks09.html?syndication=rss