Finance Roundtable

I used to think I was a lone nut, but this 24/7 Wall St. article on 'how to kill a brand' agrees:

Advertising is viewed by most shareholders as an expense. In my view, it is a capital expenditure, not terribly different than building a factory or buying ...

A while ago, Paul Kedrosky was looking for good Web 2.0 companies to short in the event of a bubble. The first company listed was Google, and I definitely had my doubts: Google is in the very 1.0 business of search-and-ads, and is exploring other businesses. But those ...

I just found the excellent Information Arbitrage blog, which has an exciting article on the Web 2.0 Summit. The term "Rock Star" shows up three times, all in reference to .com CEOs.

Of course, this time everything's different: Instead of just a business plan, a dropout, and ...

Yesterday, their assets under management topped $1 billion. Today, they rolled out another 31 funds. I still think WisdomTree Investments is a terrible deal. Right now, for every $1 you spend on the stock, you get $2.23 in assets under management. Compare that to better-known and better-established ...

Microsoft's rollout of the new Zune player is not exactly getting a boost from their decision to create an alternative, non-transferable, Microsoft-issued currency to 1) Helpfully disguise the fact that Zune songs cost just 1/4 of a penny less than iTunes songs, and 2) Keep customers from getting ...

Maybe paranoia isn't the best reaction to the LSE. Daniel Drezner links to a list of possible NYSE competitors, and the reasons they aren't a serious threat. Phew.

Carl Icahn (who according to the book is actually a pretty interesting guy) has raised his stake in Take Two Entertainment (makers of the once-controversial Grand Theft Auto series and the freshly-controversial Bully).

This should be interesting. Icahn is proud to admit that he's "

Bill Cara sees good things in Russia's future -- they're going to join the WTO, which gives them a little more export leverage. But if you think China's habit of censoring economic disagreement is bad, just take a look at Russia. Investing in a country where bad business ...

Please, please give a big "So, what?" to the news that George Soros' managers are adding lots of equity positions. Look at the roster of stocks they've added -- alternating between bellwethers and stalwarts without a single original idea or outsize position among them. These guys are closet indexers ...

TheStreet.com is running a ten-year Jim Cramer retrospective -- seven pages worth of what was up-to-the-minute a decade ago. I definitely haven't read all of it (or much of it, really -- just auditing to see if his columns match his book). But one column reminded me of ...