First quarter earnings season guide

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 8, 2009 in Blog | 2 comments So the 1st Quarter for most U.S. companies ended on March 31st. Back in olden days it would take companies a long time to close their books and so most of them would report their earnings about 6 weeks after the close of the quarter. But with today’s super spiffy enterprise resource software, many companies can close their books at the moment the quarter ends! That means that the first...
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Secret of long-term economic success

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 6, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Wow! That’s a bold title. Right? Let’s distill it all down to principles shall we? The model for long-term economic success is: income > spending = savings (or investments) savings/investments are directed to places where benefits > costs And that is all it takes. The wonderful thing about this is that it is scalable. Meaning that it applies equally well to individuals as to...
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Research & development spending continues

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 6, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments I hope that everyone’s weekend was outstanding! Waaaay back when the blog was in its early days I had said that strong, well-managed businesses typically behave in a rational way, even if their investors do not. That meant that there would be opportunities in a recession that did not exist in a boom. When the economy is in recession everything is cheaper: labor, raw materials, other...
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Fast rise after FASB change

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 2, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Good afternoon folks! You may have heard that the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 8,000 today. This means that the DJIA has had its best 4 week run since the 1930s. So what was the catalyst today? The Financial Accounting Standards Board changed an obscure rule having to do with how investment assets are valued on financial institution balance sheets. Technically the change had to do...
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State of the market

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Apr 2, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments Did you see the financial markets yesterday? They opened up almost 100 points down, but closed up 150 points. The reason that this is noteworthy is that the 250 point rise from bottom was likely attributable to the auto makers saying that their results were bad, but improving. For a change the market was responding to business news and not “bailout news,” or “economic...
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Ousted!

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Mar 30, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments A short blog posting… The CEO of General Motors, Rick Wagoner, was fired today by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Never mind all of the issues surrounding that, the point of the post is that the leadership of institutions is being forced to change. In my understanding of the world, that is a good thing if we are to reemerge from the Crisis in better shape. Sayonara Wagoner!...
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Financial institution pay packages

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Mar 30, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments If you have been following the blog since its inception you know that I have been talking about the ill effects of poor incentive compensation packages on financial institutions. At times I have railed against the packages and have identified them as being one of the primary causes of the financial and economic crisis with which we are all dealing. Today’s Wall Street Journal has an...
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