Market Blog » The Arora Report Stock Market News

IT’S DEATH BY APPLE FOR BEST BUY

April 3, 2012

“Best Buy has simply become a show room for Amazon,” I wrote about two years ago. At that time, Best Buy stock was trading at $45. As of this writing, the stock is just above $24. After Best Buy (BBY) reported earnings on Thursday, there has been a barrage of negative articles on Best Buy and how Amazon.comis beating Best Buy. There was a similar barrage after the earnings report in the previous quarter. Kudos to Forbes reporter Halah Touryalai for writing,“Amazon Is Not A Threat To Best Buy, Markets Overreacting, Analyst Says. ” It takes guts to write contrary to prevailing wisdom especially when the

GOOGLE’S BRAND NEW CHALLENGE TO APPLE’S IPAD

April 3, 2012

The iPad has been a big success for Apple (AAPL). Apple bulls dream of iPad gaining and maintaining a market share similar to iPod. As a matter of fact, this is one of the propositions underlying some of the very high targets by analysts on Apple stock. Until now, there has been some justification for such a proposition. Tablets based on Google (GOOG) Android have not met with much success, even though Android phones are a huge success. Playbook from Research In Motion (RIMM) has been a flop. Kindle from Amazon (AMZN) and the Nook from Barnes & Noble (BKS)

WEEKY MARKET DIGEST: INCREASE IN PERSONAL SPENDING 400% OF PERSONAL INCOME INCREASE

March 31, 2012

(The Weekly Digest reproduces the morning capsules made available every morning before the market open in the Real Time Feeds to the paying subscribers.) INCREASE IN PERSONAL SPENDING 400% OF PERSONAL INCOME INCREASE March 30, 2012 February personal spending came at 0.8% and personal income came at 0.2%. In the short-term, in a consumer driven economy like the U.S., increase in personal spending is great for the stock market. However, in the long run, without commensurate increase in personal income, personal spending will fall off. This is a red flag. If personal spending increase continues to far exceed personal income

APPLE INSIDERS DUMP STOCK

March 29, 2012

In the month of March, Apple (AAPL) insiders have been dumping their stock. It is said a picture is worth a thousand words. There is no picture here, so the table below will have to do. I am purposely not regurgitating in one thousand words the contents of the table. The words are better used to describe what this selling means. Gauging sentiment is an important part of my investing method. For the purpose of analysis, these days we gather sentiment data from individual investors in four classes in addition to the data from institutional investors. For an astute investor,

FORGET LIPITOR, HERE COMES THE NEXT BIG THING

March 28, 2012

In 1971, a Japanese biochemist, Akira Endo, started work on what turned out to be the next big thing in the prevention of heart attacks and strokes, known as statins. In 1978, Merck (MRK) isolated lovastatin from fungusAspergillus terreus. Lovastatin is naturally contained in red yeast rice, a traditional Chinese fermented rice that is bright reddish purple in color. Lovastatin was first marketed as Mevacor in 1987. Merck started perhaps one of the most successful health related campaigns to convince the public and doctors of the dangers of high cholesterol and the effectiveness of statins to control it. Another statin, atorvastatin, marketed

FACEBOOK IPO A GREAT BUY, BUT NOT WITH LONG LOCKUPS AND FAT FEES

March 28, 2012

I have been advocating backing up the truck and buying all the Facebook (FB) shares an investor can get in the IPO. (For background please see:Facebook IPO Is Nigh, Should You Buy?) When an IPO is as white hot as Facebook, plenty of scams are bound to raise their ugly heads. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has done a good job of warning investors about scams. I encourage investors to read the write up by FINRA before considering pre-IPO Facebook shares. In the United States, securities offerings such as shares of Facebook must be registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

APPLE NEEDS SOMEBODY TO SAY NO TO BAD DESIGN

March 26, 2012

An ex-Apple (AAPL) engineer, Michael Margolis, tweeted, “Now there is nobody to say no to bad design.” Margolis was referring to the design of the new Apple TV set top box that was released alongside the new iPad earlier this month. Margolis claims that the new designs were tossed out five years ago because Steve Jobs did not like them. Whenever user interfaces change, some previous users are not going to like new designs. Today, many experts would think the new design is brilliant because it brings more of a sense of uniformity to Apple products. It is amazing how short investor’s memories

MORE ON PNSN

March 26, 2012

Stops hit in today’s action. We recognize that aggressive subscribers are still holding this position and therefore we will continue to provide updates on PNSN. PNSN sell off appears to be triggered by a proxy filing by the company. The proxy has a section on debt restructuring, which details March 13 agreement. Perhaps some investors were reacting to it today. No action by Smart money was seen today. After today’s s sell off, PNSN is dirt cheap. There is no evidence of fraud or illegal activity; however the way the stock is trading, there may be concerns.