Effortless Computing by Apple

Image: Apple

Apple is the best loved technology company today, with its array of sleek design, and cool user interfaces. Its users are rabid defenders of the company, and are in fact their best advertising, while developers can't stop building app after endless app to try to ride the wave. The other tech companies seem to be playing an losing game of catchup, and appear to be at least 1 generation behind every time Apple launches something new. 

Its revenues are growing faster than its cost base, and growth investors might find Apple actually cheap, but from a value investing point of view, Apple certainly does not have enough safety margin to embark on a new investment now. Read more below.

Disclosure: I currently have no holdings in APPL, though I do own its competitors such as MSFT, which APPL has played no small part in making them into value-plays by reducing them to what seems like yesterday's technologies. I also am writing this on an iMac.  

Over-reaction - an INefficient Market

Image: The Economist in 1997

Pheim Asset Management's Chief, Dr Tan Chong Koay, says “I need a crash to do well,”.

At this talk at SMU, he speaks about his brand of value investment, where he believes market timing plays an important role in getting his market beating results, and from my perception, he really is a GARP investor (Growth at a Reasonable Price).

He also does not believe that markets are perfectly efficient, in fact, precisely the lack of efficiency is what allows profits to be made.

"Now, not every stock market player can have the courage to plough in when everybody else is selling. There is always the element of risk but savvy investors will know how to assess their chances. “If you want to make money, you need to take calculated risks, and you do not want the market to function efficiently and perfectly. If you believe the equity market is efficient, you will never be a star,” said Tan. However, attempts to time the market perfectly might be futile too. “Trying to buy the shares at the lowest price and sell at the highest is unrealistic,” he said, and after careful study of the company’s fundamentals and making that crucial ‘buy’ decision, “investors need patience to wait for the companies to prove themselves” – and to allow the price to move up to its fair value."

On a separate note, here's another piece I wrote, for those interested in how re-insurance works.

This Book Claims to STILL be Beating the Market

A great little book to read, for some laughs, The Little Book that Still Beats The Market has been lauded as a much needed back to basics for me. See my review here.

Lest we state the obvious, the book in one sentence is "Buying good businesses at bargain prices is the secret to making lots of money."

Greenblatt, the author, goes on to explain in about 100 pages what is a good business, and how to recognise what do bargain prices look like, with 2 metrics - earnings yield (trailing EBIT / Enterprise Value) and return on invested capital (trailing EBIT / (Net Working Capital + Net Fixed Assets)). 

Will Groupon Ever Be Profitable?

Image: Getty Images via @daylife

Forbes examines whether Groupon has any merit at all in coming to IPO. It asks whether Groupon meets these 3 criteria:

• "Value Creation happens when customers use a product because it meets their needs better than the competition’s. An example is Netscape’s Web browser. For much of the mid-1990s Netscape was the market leader.
• Value Capture is when a product’s price exceeds its makers’ costs to design, produce, sell and ship it. Since Netscape gave away its browser for free, it succeeded in creating value but failed at capturing it.
• Value Renewal occurs (rarely) when a company adapts to new technology, changing customer needs, and upstart competitors. Steve Jobs renewed Apple’s (AAPL) value brilliantly starting with 2001′s iPod introduction and kept doing so with iTunes, the iPhone and the iPad."

They have a really good point with Value Capture. It seems many internet companies are creating value, but failing to capture or monetise it. Twitter and Facebook comes to mind. In fact, I wonder whether anyone has done a survey to figure out how much money is paid by advertisers to advertise online, and how much revenues those advertisements bring.

Print Your Own Food?

3D printing, or what is known in the engineering community as rapid prototyping, is according to the video, on the edge of reaching the all important consumer market. These machines used to be so expensive that only engineering production firms own them, and they usually just outsource it as these machines are.... expensive. Well, these guys at 3D Systems are looking to bring them into your homes. And at first, you wonder, what the heck am I going to do with it? Well, same thing you could have said with the IPad, what the heck am I going to do with it? And then you realise what things you can do with it.

Even if it doesn't find its way into every consumer's home, I would believe that schools would find this pretty useful. Or maybe there wouldn't be so much printing required that every home needs one, but printing centres can spring up to cater to those who want to print something, the way we used to bring our film into processing centres to be developed.

Is 3D printing in our future?