Media Exposure By The Numbers
Since November 2010, I’ve sent out 12,471 queries to the media. I know this because the software platform I use keeps track of them. That’s about 5 a day for a decade. The learning comes not so much from what I’ve sent out, but rather from what comes back. Based on the responses I get,
Why The Tax Cut Bonuses Ring False
Every once in a while, when a baseball player hits one out of the park at an away game, the fan who catches the ball throws it back on the field. Why celebrate the opponent’s achievement? As rebukes go, it’s not subtle. Sometimes I wonder if the rank and file employees who got $1,000 “tax cut”
The Feminine Touch, Hopefully
Jane Fraser was selected to be the next CEO of Citigroup, the first woman to run a “money center” bank. One can only hope that she will best the performance of her predecessors. Aside from a decade of irrational exuberance in the price of Citigroup shares (see graph below) any time frame in which one
Bullet Proof Balance Sheets
This post was based on an article I wrote for Kiplinger with my client Ken Berman of Gorilla Trades. I negotiated with Kiplinger to designate Mr. Berman as a contributor and deliver original articles to them on a regular basis.
Reminiscing The IPO Market
The unicorns are filing one after another for initial public offerings and the excitement in the IPO market is taking me back to 1982, when I was working at a publication called Going Public: The IPO Reporter, the pre eminent journal tracking initial public offerings. I joined the staff in late 1982, and the total tally of
Elon Musk’s Mark Twain Moment
Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Clemens. Clemens was a very clever writer. So it should come as no surprise the very name he chose for himself — Mark Twain — would be steeped in mystery and uncertainty. Since time immemorial sailors have marked the depth of by throwing a weight in the
Innumeracy Hurts
Innumeracy — the numerical version of illiteracy — hurts. It hurts more because unscrupulous parties use it to paint a convincing picture that is at odds with reality. Discourse, opposition, and needed change can all be suppressed by preying on innumeracy. To see this in action, consider the case of Walmart back in the spring of
When Capitalism Hurts: Amazon and Detroit
When Amazon released its top 20 contenders for its vaunted second headquarters this morning, I quickly scanned the list — not for my city, Philadelphia — but for Detroit. I was sad Detroit didn’t make the cut. It was a bad day for them and a bad day for the country, I thought. It made me
And Now, Fake Earnings
With earnings season here once again, and the term fake news ricocheting across social and traditional media, it’s not too great a leap to get to the concept of fake earnings. Lots of companies present earnings that aren’t really earnings. For example, in January Intel reported earnings of $10.3 billion, and then adjusted earnings of $13.2 billion, about