The sour grapes relating to the Facebook (FB) IPO continue in today’s WSJ as Morgan Stanley’s (MS) CEO James Gorman defends the firms handling of the process.  It is my opinion that the firm acted well within its duties and I would wager that if the stock had rallied rewarding speculators, the firm would be...Read More

It looks like Apple (AAPL) is getting close to a release date on their TV product.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see it launched earlier than anticipated as Apple tends to under-promise and over-deliver. I’m also quite optimistic that they should be able to utilize their dominant technology infrastructure to deliver advertising that could add...Read More

In the story that never quits I found a very interesting quote in a Bloomberg article about Facebook (FB) CFO David Ebersman approach to pricing the IPO. “Ebersman’s aim was to maximize the company’s IPO proceeds and to cap the first-day increase at 10 percent, said the people, who asked not to be identified because...Read More

In one of the silliest stories of the year I’m continuously amazed at the “outrage” over the Facebook offering.  IPO investors are upset that they didn’t get the initial spike to make their day trades successful.  Any actual “investor” would be happy that the stock has dropped precipitously from the IPO price as now they...Read More

It is absurd to think that because Facebook’s IPO hasn’t resulted in instant gains for investors that bought at the IPO price, the banks that led the underwriting are at fault.  IPO’s have the odds stacked against them for retail investors as insiders are selling their stock to the public.  They aren’t selling their shares...Read More

Goldmans Sachs (GS) is staying aggressive by taking principal investments in the tech sector similar to a venture capital firm.  While the strategy has worked out quite nicely for Goldman lately I’m somewhat surprised to hear this due to the Basel III guidelines which reduce the attractiveness of principal investments for banks.  I would expect...Read More

For those investors that are beating down the door to buy the Facebook IPO, it might be a good idea to think about why insiders are willing to sell their stock.  It doesn’t mean that the price won’t rise or that in 5 years the market cap won’t be double what it is currently, but...Read More

Facebook (FB) is valuing itself at as much as $96 billion in its upcoming IPO.  This reflects a valuation of 24 times sales in the past 12 months versus 5 times sales for Google (GOOG).  While Facebook likely can grow revenue at a greater rate than Google over the short term, paying such a premium...Read More

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-03/zuckerberg-facebook-backers-plan-to-sell-5-5-billion-in-stock.html INVESTING IN THE FINANCIAL MARKETS INVOLVES RISKS. OPTIONS ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR ALL INVESTORS.Read More

This was a really interesting article on some of the concerns that advertisers are having about Facebook, and the inability to track whether sales are coming directly from their advertising efforts.  I remember hearing similar concerns about search advertising earlier in its development and I think it is likely that Facebook will make it easier...Read More