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Roland Hughes

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  • Walmart Scraping the Bottom With KMart

    By Roland Hughes - February 8, 2012 | Tickers: COST, JCP, KSS, SHLD, WMT

    Those of you who have been reading my posts on here have come to realize that I don’t watch or pay attention to the generated-for-Wall-Street numbers found prevalent in most other posts. I watch the feeder streams and the weather up river. This keeps me from being the one swimming in the river when the Wall Street generated numbers suddenly say there is a 30 foot high Tsunami wave more »

  • Why These Ag Companies Could Plummet in 2014

    By Roland Hughes - February 6, 2012 | Tickers: MON, SYT, DOW

    There is a perfect storm brewing in the agriculture market which should hit both Dow Chemical (NYSE: DOW) and Monsanto (NYSE: MON) around the end of 2014. This perfect storm may or may not coincide with the bursting of the agricultural bubble. I’ve already told you the ag bubble will burst on or about the time T-Bills hit 6%. If you did not read that post, I’m sorry more »

  • Industrial Engines: Bets to be Made in Ethanol

    By Roland Hughes - February 5, 2012 | Tickers: F, GNRC, GM, HMC

    During the 1990s companies applied for permits to build ethanol plants at a furious pace. Nearly every industry was on board with the idea that tank grade hooch would stop us from having to send sons and daughters to die in countries only “big oil inc” cared about. Everybody that is, except “big oil inc.” Despite being ordered to create an infrastructure to transport alcohol, “big oil inc” refused. Instead more »

  • Has HP Become a Turkey Vulture?

    By Roland Hughes - February 5, 2012 | Tickers: CERN, HPQ

    Quite possibly the best NCIS quote ever:

    “That’s what they call a turkey vulture. 20 years past a cougar, likes to hunt, but too old to take down the prey.” -- DiNozzo

    In a way, it is a fitting description of Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ). No matter what they purchase and try to kill off to promote their own less than mediocre stuff, it keeps coming back to life. In 2002 more »

  • Wal-Mart Gets Schooled

    By Roland Hughes - February 4, 2012 | Tickers: MCD, WMT

    It’s no secret that 1975 was the last year America had a trade surplus.  Few people know that same year Sam Walton created the Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) cheer after visiting a Korean tennis ball plant.  Many claim this is the year Wal-Mart officially turned its back on American manufacturing and lead most of Wall Street in the direction of cheap knock-offs from third world countries with horrific labor practices more »

  • 2012: The Year of the Strategic Default?

    By Roland Hughes - January 30, 2012 | Tickers: BAC, C, WFC

    There can be absolutely no denying mega-banks have angered consumers beyond anything we have seen since the Great Depression and the backlash from the bailout is a long way from over. The President ordered every financial institution touching the bailout dollars to refinance mortgages in trouble at the new, historically low rates, and the banks plowed on robo-signing foreclosures. Trouble still looms despite one recent class action suit being thrown more »

  • Nokia - The App Developer’s Choice

    By Roland Hughes - January 30, 2012 | Tickers: MSFT, NOK

    There has been a lot of speculation in the investment community about Nokia (NYSE: NOK) lately. Lots of chitter chatter about them switching to Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) operating systems on their phones and the fact their phone sales are down, or so it seems. Well, you really need to listen to the geeks more.

    http://blogs.computerworld.com/19643/microsoft_paid_nokia_250_million_in_fourth_quarter_to_adopt_windows_phone_7_billions_more_to_follow

    Microsoft paid Nokia $250 million to “adopt” Windows because even more »

  • Amazon the New Betamax

    By Roland Hughes - January 29, 2012 | Tickers: SNE

    If you are of a “certain age” you remember all too well the VHS vs. Betamax wars. Thousands, if not millions, of consumers world wide got stuck with equipment an industry chose not to support. At that time Sony owned the patents on just about everything and they tried to milk the economy dry with licensing fees for blank tapes, movies, and player equipment. JVC, despite its dire financial straights more »

  • The Myth of Record Farmer Profits - Part 2

    By Roland Hughes - January 18, 2012 | Tickers: CF, MON

    In part 1 I told you 2008 was an interesting year, now we will find out why. That year, anhydrous ammonia, which was still sitting in the fertilizer company tanks from the spring, went from $400/ton in the spring to $1200/ton in the fall. Last time I told you to remember that a ton of anhydrous could provide enough N for 6.56 acres. That gives us the more »

  • 2012 The Year Netflix Became a Memory

    By Roland Hughes - January 17, 2012 | Tickers: DISH, NFLX

    I realize that Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) has some incredibly rabid fans on the Fool site, but, you need a healthy dose of reality. Netflix kissed off around 600,000 subscribers last year while adopting a business model designed for failure. If you don’t believe it, you simply haven’t been around long enough.

    http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/netflix-gets-out-of-dvd-business-spins-of-qwikster/

    How far back does your memory need to go? Remember CompuServe more »

  • Food vs. Fuel Argument About to End

    By Roland Hughes - January 10, 2012 | Tickers: SYT

    Big Oil and feed lot operators have been seeding the waters of public opinion with a lot of quarter truths and outright lies since America started down the path of hooch powered cars. Of the two, the feed lot operators tended to howl the loudest. So, a lot of research dollars went to the various land-grant colleges around the country to come up with various feed blends using both wet more »

  • Welcome to the Death of Netflix

    By Roland Hughes - January 8, 2012 | Tickers: DTV, DISH, NFLX

    There has been much hoopla from those left holding a bag of confetti known as Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) shares about how it is going to suddenly reach $1000/share and cure world hunger all at the same time. This is a company that had a good business model, then really pooched it. Perhaps this tale is yet another testimony for the ban on “fake weed.”

    http://alcoholism.about.com/od more »

  • The Myth of Nationwide Coverage

    By Roland Hughes - January 8, 2012 | Tickers: ATT, DT, S

    We’ve all seen the ads on TV. Every carrier in the business claiming to provide “nationwide coverage” or “national coverage,” yet we’ve all dropped calls crossing the street and tried to dial when on vacation only to find we had no service, not even roaming.

    Just how blatant is this false advertising? This is an interesting set of maps. Not certain about the dates, but it does show more »

  • American Airlines - Dead Broke and Dead Last

    By Roland Hughes - January 6, 2012 | Tickers: DAL, UAL

    Some of my friends think I'm rather snobbish when it comes to flying.  I don't do it very often so I'm very picky about it.  To start with, if I see seats on a plane going for less than $100, I won't take the flight.  If I see airlines running big commercials offering sub $100 seats, I won't book a flight on them.  Likewise, if more »

  • 2012 Year of the Audiobook

    By Roland Hughes - January 6, 2012 | Tickers: AAPL, BKS

    There has been a lot of chatter about Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) and its recent stock drop, but, I personally believe they have a lot to look forward to if they keep the company together.  I have good reason to believe this too. 

    2012 will be the year of the audiobook.

    Every new ebook reader has quietly added the ability to play audiobooks.  When it comes to audiobooks there is more »

  • A Volt in the Pan

    By Roland Hughes - January 5, 2012 | Tickers: GM

    Today GM (NYSE: GM) announced a recall without using the "recall" word so they wouldn't have to deal with all of the bad press surrounding a recall.  Like "this car catches fire in a crash" wasn't bad enough for the Ford Pinto?

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/gm-add-more-steel-volt-191359347.html

    GM has a huge incentive to fix the problem and protect the Volt's image. Although the car isn more »

  • Burrito as a Health Food

    By Roland Hughes - January 5, 2012 | Tickers: CMG

    Recently Chipotle (NYSE: CMG) CEO Steve Ellis urged Congress to restrict the use of antibiotics in livestock production.  There is currently a proposal floating around to severely restrict or eliminate the use of seven antibiotics that also have human applications.  Naturally corporate farms around the world are howling like a little kid with his fingers slammed in a car door.

    I grew up on and still live on a family more »

  • A World Without Kodachrome

    By Roland Hughes - January 5, 2012 | Tickers: EK

    It seems like only yesterday that Kodak (NYSE: EK) was announcing the end of LIFE as we know it.  Yes, for those of us of a certain age, LIFE will always been that "middle" incarnation of the magazine that was published as a weekly from 1936 through 1972, then a monthly from 1978 to 2000.  It had to be massively expensive to produce given its odd size and astounding photographs more »

  • Publishing in 2012 and Beyond - Bye Bye Big Houses

    By Roland Hughes - January 2, 2012 | Tickers: AMZN, AAPL, BKS, ORLY, SNE

    While the investing world probably doesn't care about privately held publishing houses, they will, or should, care about who is going to benefit from the end of publishing as we know it since many of them will be publicly traded companies.

    The Legacy business model of a large publishing house choosing a handful of new authors each year and wooing them with a token advance while supporting immensely paid more »

  • It Won't Be a Surprise When RedHat Goes Under

    By Roland Hughes - January 2, 2012 | Tickers: ORCL, RHT, VZ

    Last spring I was contacted by Newt Global Consulting LLC about an OpenVMS project in NYC.  The target platform was RHEL (RedHat Enterprise Linux) and the customer was RedHat (NYSE: RHT) itself.  According to this agency RedHat was migrating this system for Verizon (NYSE: VZ).

    http://www.sas.com/success/verizon.html

    There were supposed to be four agencies filling five contract slots each to convert 1500 FORTRAN source files more »

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