Posts Tagged money 98
Why Don’t These Dow Stocks Make More Money?
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on March 11, 2012
Within the Dow Jones Industrials (INDEX: ^DJI) , you’ll find plenty of high-quality companies that do a great job of making money. but not all Dow stocks have shared that success, so you need to know which companies might have some dangers lurking beneath the surface.
One way to look at a company’s ability to turn capital into cold, hard cash is to drill down on its return on equity. a close examination can tell you a lot about what makes a company tick.
Later in this article, I’ll reveal the five Dow stocks with the worst returns on equity. but first, let’s revisit the concept of return on equity to pinpoint what we’re looking at.
The three key parts of ROEReturn on equity doesn’t refer to your returns but rather the company’s return on the shareholder equity on its balance sheet. By calculating earnings divided by shareholder equity, you’ll get return on equity. but you can further break out return on equity into three separate components: net margin, asset turnover, and leverage.
Margin tells you how profitable a company is. Asset turnover, on the other hand, indicates how efficient a company is at moving its products or services. and leverage focuses on the division of the company’s capital structure between debt and equity; companies that use debt effectively can greatly boost the returns for their equity investors. seeing a breakdown of all three components tells you more precisely how a company earns money.
The Dow’s worst ROEsLet’s turn to the five stocks from the Dow that have the lowest return on equity over the past 12 months:
Company
Return on Equity
Net Margin
Asset Turnover
Leverage Ratio
Bank of America (NYS: BAC) 0.6% 1.8% 0.07 4.94 AT&T (NYS: T) 3.8% 3.1% 0.47 2.47 Alcoa (NYS: AA) 4.7% 3.2%* 0.63 2.32 Travelers 5.7% 5.6% 0.24 4.20 Kraft Foods (NYS: KFT) 9.1% 6.1% 0.56 2.64
Source: S&P Capital IQ. All figures are for trailing 12 months.*Adjusted to reflect continuing operations.
When you look at companies with high returns on equity, you find that different businesses have different attributes that help them boost ROE. Yet looking at these low-ROE companies shows much more commonality among all of them. none of these companies has particularly strong net margins, and while they all use leverage to a reasonable extent, their asset-turnover figures are uniformly subpar.
Bank of America stands out, although it’s not entirely fair to apply return-on-equity figures to a bank because leverage plays such a huge role in determining bank profitability. but what B of a lacks that many of its bank peers have is a healthy profit margin, with so much capital producing so little income in recent years.
One-time impacts play a big part of some of the companies showing up at the bottom of the ROE ladder. AT&T also weighs in with poor ROE, although its figure took a big hit after its failed T-Mobile merger and the huge charge it had to take against earnings. Just a year ago, AT&T’s return on equity was more than 18%. once profit margins recover to their normal figures, AT&T shouldn’t stay on this list for long. Similarly, Travelers had a terrible 2011 because of the many catastrophic events that hit during the year. Assuming more normal loss experience in 2012, the insurer should return to the double-digit ROEs that prevailed in past years.
For Alcoa and Kraft, however, low returns on equity could last for a while. Low aluminum prices don’t appear to be breaking anytime soon, and until they do, Alcoa will have a hard time generating the profit margins it needs to boost its ROE. Similarly, the food retail business is notoriously low-margin, and stubbornly high commodity costs have pinched margins for some time. Eventually, relief from the commodity markets could help both of these stocks, but it’s not a sure thing by any means.
What to do Return on equity isn’t the only thing you should focus on in your stock research. but as a starting point, it can provide a good guide on where to pay attention as you dig further.
Low-ROE stocks aren’t likely to be your best bets. If you’d prefer some more promising ideas, let me invite you to look at some stocks that may give you a better starting point. The Motley Fool’s latest special report reveals the names of three smart stocks for long-term investors. The report is free — but don’t wait: Read it today.
at the time this article was published Fool contributor Dan Caplinger likes looking at stocks with a critical eye. you can follow him on Twitter. He doesn’t own shares of the companies mentioned in this article. The Motley Fool owns shares of Bank of America. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools don’t all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Fool’s disclosure policy looks at things the right way.
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Why Don’t These Dow Stocks Make More Money?
Can i start my own web site and make money?
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on March 10, 2012
Question by julie: can i start my own web site and make money?I would like to start a web site to make some extra money, but I wanted to make a web site were people who are feeling down or are depressed or have anyother problems in that matter to be able to chat with me, but is this possable to do and to charge them a fee? and if so how would i even go about it were do you even start. just an idea because i would love to help people but at the same time i would need a little bit of profit. any ideas for me? thanks
Best answer:
Answer by GandalfWell, what are your qualifications to make people feel better? it is easy to start a web site but much harder to get people to visit and pay for a service. You would need to develop channels into the web site through advertising, cross linking, search engine optimizing etc. This would cost you money before you could expect to make money.
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The quality of money
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on February 19, 2012
By Raymund Fernandez Cebu Daily News
There is money and then again there is Money. And it is not always about the amount of it. What the money looks and smells like is always elemental. there is beautiful money and there is ugly money. but to tell the difference one must look at that money from a short distance, in what the modernist philosophers called the “disinterested” perspective.
To recall, the modernists believed that the experience of beauty is immediate and unmediated. It is not subject to reason. When one sees a beautiful thing, the faculty of taste immediately kicks in and tells the rest of the mind, “I am feeling the beauty experience.” This step in the experience process is not rational. You might say, we are all wired this way. And the wiring might come from 2 Million years of collective human experience.
But after the fact of the beauty-experience, reason kicks in and asks the most fundamental questions. Am I the only person feeling this? Will others feel the same way? why? these are questions that determine whether this particular beauty is universal. The issue is well discussed in modernist philosophy. Beauty is universal when the viewer is looking from a disinterested perspective. if one observes the beauty of something from a position of disinterest, then aesthetic judgment is universal and everyone ought to experience more or less the same aesthetic experience from observing that same something. This is because truth is supposed to be universal. And the truth of anything is best manifested by the aesthetic experience it offers anyone who might look upon it.
But determining “disinterest” is always a tricky thing. It is most certainly a rational act. And this is the reason why modern societies such as we are supposed to have required judges. Judges are institutionally appointed to look at things precisely from the “disinterested” perspective. It is presumed that they do not look at things from a mere personal perspective using any old ordinary aesthetics. they are presumed to be absolutely “disinterested” so that whatever judgment they make is always universally truthful, just and therefore beautiful. When there is any doubt at all regarding this, their credibility as judges is lost. so also society’s trust in their judgment and the whole system of the judiciary.
Institutional judges are there to validate or invalidate, as the case may be, our own judgement capacities. And humans judge all the time. It is our first guide to behavior. It is not just a right, it is a requirement to survival. And if we were confronted with a bundle of money, say P50 million, we would be excused to ask whether the money looks beautiful or not. For there is money and once again there is Money.
The Cebuano language has words to describe the quality of money and the making of it. Pangwarta is the most base. It presupposes any possible means to make money, usually bad. It is money devoid of moral considerations. Prostitution is pangwarta. This word has a specific usage suggesting a specific meaning inclusive of means usually illegal, gambling, smuggling, theft, graft and corruption, etc. these are all pangwarta.
Pamugas is somewhat similar. It refers specifically to money made in order to fulfill the person’s most basic needs. It is money that is the person’s hedge against starvation. Given this condition, the person is ethically allowed to be liberal with the means for making money. Prostitution can be pamugas. but we are bound to accept this as ethically allowable only if the prostitute is living on the edge of starvation. beyond that, the act becomes simply pangwarta.
But there are proper and acceptable means for making money. Pangita is a Cebuano word to refer to the general act of looking for one’s money, one’s fortune. It is a wonderful word because it harks at the idea of money and sustenance as something that must be searched for, the way a hunter may search for prey or treasure, the fisherman for fish. but as a descriptive word for the quality to money it is one step below panginabuhi.
Panginabuhi is a word one step removed from the very concept of money. It refers literally to life and how a person may support life, one’s own as well as others, through work. It might refer to the concept of wealth, the fact that wealth is not necessarily rooted in money or gold. The word refers simply to the relationship between life and resources including a person’s labor. It is a wonderful word that specifically refers to the nobility of life and what a person does to preserve it.
These words lined together, pangwarta, pamugas, pangita, panginabuhi, describe an aesthetic range, which, true to the modernist view, is also a moral range. It tells us immediately that money and the making of money has always been seen by us and our ancestors for quality. It is the marker of our development as a people with a culture and a language that we still keep the elegance to thinking required to see and describe money in all its nuances. these nuances are worth thinking about right now.
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Make Money Online – 3 Idiot Proof Solutions to Internet Marketing
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on February 18, 2012
Internet Marketing isn’t new. It’s been around for a while, but not everyone who endeavors to make money online, actually makes a profit. most spend a lot of money learning how to make money online, but never actually get there. the sad part is, they spend money, but don’t make money and they end up in a financial hole, losing money. but. Marketers around the world know that once you make the first hundred, the rest falls into place because you’re driven to excel.
There are three things you have to do to make money online.
Drive Traffic
This is a massive big key to making money online. whether you pay for traffic, use article marketing or just pick your clients up and the door and drop them off at your website, you’ve got to drive traffic to the site.
NOTE: if you don’t have a site. You’re way back there before the beginning GET a SITE
Boldly take those first steps to build a heavy traffic pattern to your website. Internet Marketing Gurus get to be GURUS because they have a lot of people on their lists, buying their products and reading their stuff. Build traffic, no matter what it takes. Get traffic, get subscribers, sell product.
Increase Conversions
People don’t buy because you have great sales pages. they buy because you have created a relationship with them and they like you, trust you, want to do what you’re doing, or want your product. That’s not limiting, that’s a big liberating action that makes people happy. We’d all rather buy from a friend.
If you’re buying from a store and the clerk isn’t friendly, do you really want to give her your money? the same thing happens online. if your people aren’t happy with you, don’t like you, and don’t have a relationship with you (we’re not talking three kids and a dog), they’re not going to buy from you. Develop those relationships. Build connections and inspire trust in your buyers.
Be sure you’re offering them product to purchase, but include them in the process. Become their friend, fill their needs, solve their problems and provide them with answers they can purchase.
Improve Backside Profits
Whether they buy or whether they don’t, offer them mega bonuses on the backend. give them someplace to go to whether they buy your front end products or not, that has more products and an awesome savings deal on the back side. this is really important
Make Money Online – 3 Idiot Proof Solutions to Internet Marketing
Facebook’s not only about money says Zuckerberg
Posted by admin in Uncategorized on February 4, 2012
The social networking giant is hoping to raise $5bn (£3.2bn) in what is widely expected to be the biggest initial public offering (IPO) from an internet company, with experts suggesting its market value could be as much as $100bn ((£63bn).
Mr Zuckerberg emphasised that Facebook’s “social mission” was to “make the world more open and connected”.
He said: “We don’t wake up in the morning with the primary goal of making money, but we understand that the best way to achieve our mission is to build a strong and valuable company.”
“This is how we think about our IPO as well. We’re going public for our employees and our investors. We made a commitment to them when we gave them equity that we’d work hard to make it worth a lot and make it liquid, and this IPO is fulfilling our commitment.
The new space between economic and social value is still developing, and it is not always going to be easy to separate motives out. Prof Cathy Pharaoh
“As we become a public company, we’re making a similar commitment to our new investors and we will work just as hard to fulfil it.”
Since its inception in 2004, Facebook has attracted 845 million monthly users worldwide and last year made a profit of $1bn dollars (£630m). Registration documents reveal that founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 27, owns 28.4 per cent of Facebook.
Previously, Google held the record for an internet company flotation, raising $1.9bn ((£1.1bn) when it went public in 2004.
‘Facebook’s product is a social vehicle’
Mr Zuckerberg’s comments about making money may seem out of place in the world of massive stock market flotations. but Professor Cathy Pharaoh from Cass Business School told Channel 4 News she is less surprised that the remarks have come from Facebook’s founder.
“If it’s a huge flotation as this one is, it’s highly unusual for someone to say this about what they’re aiming to do,” she says.
“But then again, Facebook is unusual. It’s a company which offers people the opportunity to participate and mould the product, not just consume it. Its product is a social vehicle.”
Prof Pharaoh believes Facebook is part of a larger trend: “I think Mark Zuckerberg genuinely believes in the social value of his product, but he’s an unusual individual and it’s an unusual product.
“I work in the not-for-profit sector and I think more and more companies are learning from that sector and stating their social values, claiming the social value territory.
Facebook: smiling all the way to the stock market?
For profit or pure motives?
But it seems the line is blurring between companies which are set up with the aim of making a profit and those promoting more socially conscious agenda.
Prof Pharaoh points to ice cream makers Ben and Jerry’s as an example of where social value was a big part of its asset value when it was sold off.
We don’t wake up in the morning with the primary goal of making money. Mark Zuckerberg
She says: “Social business networks, like the Social Venture Network in the US, have been emerging, whose members combine for-profit and non-profit companies around values of sustainability, social value, and whose products have additional social value, such as the Body Shop, Belu Water.
“Many social businesses are still small, like CafeDirect and Fairtrade, but there are also major green energy companies like Statkraft. These businesses aim to create social value while making a profit. The new space between economic and social value is still developing, and it is not always going to be easy to separate motives out.”
The flotation documents make clear it clear Mr Zuckerberg will enjoy almost complete control over the company, to the tune of 56.9 per cent of the voting shares.
Facebook’s revenue last year was $3.7bn (£2.3bn), up from $153m ((£97m) in 2007, with the majority earned through advertising.
Facebook in numbers845 million – The number of active users of the site483 million – The number of these social networkers who log on every day130 – The average amount of friends per user250 million – The average number of photos uploaded each day70 – the number of languages on the site3,000 plus – The number of Facebook employees1 billion – in dollars, the profit Facebook made in 20113.71 billion – in dollars, Facebook’s revenue in 2011
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