Long or Short Capital

This post could have been titled “We tried to sell-out but Google wouldn’t let us.” Why wouldn’t they let us? Because Google’s Firefox referral is a complete abject failure — we didn’t get paid for any of our referred downloads. Live and learn. Bye Google referral, we’d rather invest our money in lime futures than waste sidebar space with your link.

This week we have better sell out. Adverts in our RSS feed. Yahoo finally has them and we’re going to stick them in, and report the results one week from today. And you’re going to love them because who doesn’t love ads???

I’ve often heard that you can spot tourists in NYC or San Fran because they are the ones staring up at the buildings. But I realized today that if you follow that advice, you always end up mistaking architecture students for tourists.

Quarter-to-date performance has been excellent and revenue is growing in the low triple digits. The subscriber base has been growing at a modest rate, so Longorshort has exhibited significant dividend growth leverage. Via my model, the implied current market capitalization of Longorshort is $12,545 and each subscriberstake is worth $193. To be fair, my model wasn’t designed to analyze this kind of investment, but it is otherwise incredible in its brilliance and accuracy.

Cash flow. We all know what it is. Everybody wants some. In light of our new Long or Short Capital dividend policy, we need it. But how do we get it?

Simple. Sell out as much as possible. Each Saturday we will try and take it down a notch and whore ourselves in new and shameless ways. As part of the deal, the following Saturday we’ll let you know how successful our greed was.

This week’s sellout: Download the limited edition Firefox through the button on the top left of the sidebar. This only applies to people who don’t have Firefox installed already.

You can put cash money in our pockets and make us rich beyond your wildest dreams. Don’t know what the Firefox browser is and why it is good to use? Well we don’t know either, but rumor has it that it turns html into gold and sends it directly into your bank account. Either that or it makes you 4 inches taller and 3x as smart.

Each time you download Firefox and install it, use it, and love it, Google issues us a single share in their company. Or gives us a dollar. We’re unsure about that part.

Download it now before Google runs out of Firefoxes and has to make more.

Update: This will no longer work, since we removed the button.

This Marketwatch headline just caught my attention.

Game over for Chinese Internet game operators?

I have no opinion as to the veracity of that statement, but it got me thinking: why do these silly little journalists even bother hiding the fact that they don’t actually do any sort of journalistic research? Instead they just take the subject matter for an article, figure out a pun title and and have a team of monkeys* fill the rest.

Do newspaper firms even do old-school style journalism anymore? Why not shift the paradigm overtly and stop paying lip service to research? Just report the world based on low hanging puns. Think of the brave new world we could create! Everything reported would be thin slice reactions based not on events but the visceral vocabularic responses which they inspire.

You wake up, put on your mumu and go straight to marketwatch.com to see the latest news:

RIMM results are Berry Good

Lack of Toy Sales Spell ‘Dr Doom’ for Marvel

When I buy a newspaper company, or, more likely am handed one for free as I walk up from the subway, it’s going to be amazing. Investors will thank me, ladies will love me. Truth is much harder to produce and less marketable than superficial entertainment.

Recommendation: A savvy private equity firm should pick-up some newspapers on the cheap and apply the Game Over Paradigm; it would be Game Over for the competition.

Mr Juggles advised on this article

* People know monkeys for their proclivity for eating bananas and flinging their feces, but few know of the unparallelled productivity which a properly incented monkey is capable of. A few bananas go a long way

Combining the web, real estate speculation and networking effects, the milliondollarhomepage.com is a tribute to abstract brilliance. That is precisely the kind of thinking that leads to oversized wealth or companies built direct marketing and affilliate relationships like Cendant. Creating value from thin air. Awesome.

For people thinking about buying a 10 pixel square for $100, think about 1) the value of an inbound link from a Google Page Rank 7 site and 2) how many clicks over the 5 year holding period which you would need to come out money good. 5 clicks a day for 5 years brings you at capital cost of $0.01 per click.

Recommendation: Long the milliondollarhomepage, buy buy buy

In a throwaway article about drug trafficking (link) on ESPN.com, I noticed something that I found to be amazing.

GBL, or gamma butyrolactone, is sold under the counter at retailers and gyms with claims to build muscle, improve physical performance, enhance sex..

Seems consistent, nothing interesting…but then we continue..

..reduce stress and induce sleep.

These things seems to be in opposition. How can something enhance sex/improve physical performance AND induce sleep? But, wait, there’s more…

When taken orally, GBL is converted to the “date-rape” drug GHB, or gamma hydroxybutyrate.

It’s also a Forget-Me-Now pill! What’s a Forget-Me-Now? According to Gob from Arrested Development:

pills that create a sort of temporary forgettingness. So if somebody finds out how you do a trick, you just give ’em one of these, and they forget the whole thing. It’s a mainstay of the magician’s toolkit, like how clowns always have a rag soaked in ether.

These pills are the right mouse button of pharmaceuticals, capable of anything depending on the context. GBL — the one stop drug for a man who wants to enhance his sexual performance to perform date rape via the “Forget Me” method, and then still be able to sleep anxiety free later on.

Recommendation: Pending FDA approval, which we assume will come any day now for a pharmaceutical product with so many important uses, our massive stockpile of GBH will become liquid gold.

I believe strongly in applying six sigma to everything, from ironing my dress shirts to creating this website. But, there is a limit to how much efficiency improvement I can squeeze out of my creative stone and past that limit I have to look to source my content from other channels, even overseas. Thus, my official position on outsourcing is brought to you by Jack from EZGone in New Delhi whom I hired through elance.com. He has has prepared a series of short speeches on outsourcing, which he has injected with humor, rhetoric and truth, according to my exacting specifications. What follows is Part 1. Read it aloud with a Brtish accent for maximum effect.

Outsourcing Outsourcing: What Is Outsourcing And Why It Is Growing?

Friends, I hope that I am not sounding vague to some of you. I know, I know most of my learned audience knows about outsourcing, but let me give it a try.

In purely religious terms, it could be seen as one of believers and non-believers. And both sides, there is no doubt in my mind, have very strong, logical arguments as why they are believer and non-believer.

Friends, at the outset, let me make clear to you that I belong to the camp of believers and I would like to focus on a crucial strand of this outsourcing business — why it is great for firms who believe in outsourcing and actually do it.

The making of things was outsourced decades ago to foreign nations such as India, China, Japan, Philippines etc. Today, we Americans are hardly aware that most of the things that we see today around us, like our TVs, computers, cell phones, underwear, dentures, cartoons, financial analysis, investment advice etc., must come from somewhere, but we have no real clue who is making them, or how. We are really busy in hiking, trekking, vacationing or any other activities of our choice that we hardly get time to consider these things seriously, and perhaps, we have enough trouble figuring out how to remove the packaging.

Experts believe that even humor is being outsourced.

Perhaps, the modern day hip-hop youngsters won’t believe this, but there was a time when Americans actually made physical things called “products” right here in America. Once upon a time, right here, workers would go to large grimy and encrusted buildings called “factories,” where they would take a raw material such as iron ore and perform industrial acts on it, such as “forging” and “smelting” to make their own things. And, as you can easily imagine, by the end of the day, they smelt terrible (not perfumed) but they were satisfied that they had turned the ore into something useful, for example a bicycle.

But now, we don’t make anything. Rather, we have learned, intelligently, how to get the things done at much lower cost and much faster speed. Credit, of course goes to outsourcing.

Pending the routine audit of our 1st quarter results, Long or Short Capital plans to begin paying a quarterly dividend, using the cash generated by our hilarious operations to create value for our subscriberholders. The board considered a number of strategeric options including: a hostile takeover of Marginal Revolution, paying bums to advertise for us, and blowing all the cash on hookers and coke. Instead, we have decided to initiate a quarterly dividend of $1.

Our reasoning was simple: We realized that we value you, our readers, and now you will finally be able to value us. Literally. Assuming a $1 quarterly dividend, no growth, and an 8% discount rate, being a subscriberholder is worth $50.

Who are your subscriberholders:

Email and XML subscribers as of 10/28/05. These are the only readers we can reliably verify and who will be eligible for this quarter’s dividend. Additionally, we feel that they are also the stickiest readers and we are big proponents of RSS usage. They have the largest stake in us.

How does a subscriber collect a dividend:

For Email Subscribers: Send an email to misterjuggles@gmail.com from your subscription email with your paypal address and we will send you $1. Cash money.

For XML subscribers: Send an email to misterjuggles@gmail.com with the “Subscription Verification Code” enclosed (you should have received a “magical word” on Sunday in our feed). Enclose your paypal address and we will send you $1. Cash money.

All unused money will be reinvested back into the website.

What about your next quarterly dividend:

Our next quarterly dividend will be determined by the following formula. The lesser of $1 per subscriberholder or (80% of revenue) divided by the number of subscriberholders at quarter end. The latter formula would have yielded a $1.50 dividend, so the $1 dividend has quite a bit of cushion. After this quarter, we will require people to fulfill some sort of registration, as of yet undetermined, to be eligible. It shall be light.

We will also revise up the dividend if our revenue per a subscriber improves; we will never revise down or suspend the dividend without a proxy vote of registered subscriberholders.

Why are you doing this:

1. We will be the first and only site to issue a dividend.
2. This dividend cements our place among the elite internet companies. Please note that our quarterly dividend will be larger than that of Yahoo, eBay, and Google combined.
3. It combines finance with the absurd.
4. It turns our subscribers into stakeholders and incents them to grow our revenues, by bringing in traffic or driving themselves to our sponsors. We believe proper incentives can solve any problem, from internet site readership to global poverty. Hence our support of the Grameen Foundation.
5. We obviously are not in this for the money so this is a much more appropriate use of the ad revenue.
6. Numerated lists are pretty sweet.

How do I become a subscriberholder:

Use the buttons and forms at the top left to subscribe via email or XML. We recommend the latter, since Feedburner helped us with this process and we are totally long them.

All other inquiries should be directed to misterjuggles@gmail.com. The management of Long or Short are proud to be economists, who are utilizing incentives, science and research to improve the lives of the rich.

Risks and Uncertainties
Neither the SEC nor any state securities commission has approved or disapproved of the subscriberholdership securities or determined if this prospectus is truthful or complete. As a subscriberholder, you are being granted Class B shares in Long or Short Capital LLC. You should probably realize that Class A shares (there is actually only one Class A share and it’s held by Mr Juggles) have perfty-perf votes per share compared to 1.25 votes per share for Class B.

Our fiscal quarter ended on 10/31/05, and we had a banner quarter, our best quarter ever, thanks to the stalwart efforts of management and their compensation package which was heavily weighted towards long dated options in the company’s non-existent stock. We have a lot of skin in the game, so you should trust us.

Unaudited Financial Results for Q1’06

Income Statement

Revenue $109.03

Cost of Sales $0.00

Operating Income $109.03

Balance Sheet

Cash $0.00

Accounts Receivable $430,000,109.03

Inventory $3.99

Accounts Payable $3.99

Cash Flow Statement

Operating Cash Flow $0.00

Capex $0.00

Distributions $X.00

Performance Metrics (mix of Kanoodle/Blogads/Adsense/Yahoo)

Visits 81,431

Pageviews 143,151

Clicks on ads 402

Ad impressions served ~268,000

Subscribers by Email 30

Subscribers by XML 33

Inbound Links per Technorati 26

Inbound Links per Google 7

Readers are to submit questions by email to misterjuggles; if we get enough questions and of enough quality we will post a quarter end conference email in which we promise to cuss out any analysts who ask pesky questions. As a preface, let us just say that our own Project Propeller was an unmitigated success. We feel great about our first quarter, we are proud to have delivered earnings per a share of $DIV/0 and we will continue to build on our resume of greatness.

Dear Johnny,

Investingly,
Your theoretical female reader

Dear Reader chick,

It looks like this.

-JD

Recommendation: Short Moviegallery, Long Mammals.

Investment analysis trumps political analysis yet again. Conservative originalist lackeyish with a hint of espirit de redeconstructionalism? Like that matters when the woman can’t dance.

Readers who read our reseach report on John Roberts and his familial ability to break-it-down knew that Miers’ nomination was doomed because the woman clearly can’t shake it herself and lacks any rug-cutting progeny. FYI to Harriet: the new court will hopping and if you aren’t getting down, you ain’t getting in.

Recommendation: Potential SCOTUS nominees should consider buying a dance pad and practicing in the confines of their own home.

I would like everyone to know that I am writing a future best-selling series of business books. It will be a syndicated series, kind of like Chicken Soup for the Soul. You know, first it was Chicken Soup for the Soul, then it was Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, then Chicken Soup for the Deaf Prostitute’s Soul, then the ground-breaking, recursive Chicken Soup for the Chicken’s Soul. My series will be similar and follow the formula Investing in Public Equities is like [Blank].

The first edition will be Investing in Public Equities is Like Dating. Here’s the idea: During one of the many rocky periods in a particular personal relationship, I remember asking my parents (married for 25 years) whether or not they had ever gone through tough times when they were starting out. Their basic answer: Relationships, despite what your girlfriend just told you, aren’t supposed to be “work.” “Work” is supposed to be “work,” hence the name. When a relationship is right there won’t be a lot of analyzing, discussing, and dissecting every aspect of the relationship as if it’s a third, independent entity.

In fact, finding a promising investment thesis is similar to meeting a new girl who might be dating material. Examine the similarities:

Dating:

Is she truly interesting? Can she take a joke? Does she come from a decent family (i.e., just how crazy will she be later in life)? Is she good looking all the time or only in dark bars? What do your friends think of her?

Investing:

Does the management team know what they’re doing? Does the company have sustainable barriers to entry in their key businesses? Is the company well positioned for the next 3-5 years? What do the company’s customers and suppliers say?

Sometimes — ok, a lot of times in Mr. Juggle’s case — things just won’t feel right even when the answers to most of these questions are positive. Just as a relationship can lack chemistry, a stock can look promising in theory but fail to perform. You will find yourself constantly justifying the stock to your friends, talking about how great the company is and how the chart is smiling at you. And much like your first relationship that you dragged on far too long, you’ll be tempted to “work through it” and stick around. Again, examine the similarities:

Dating:

I’ll put more effort in our relationship… Ok, I’ll try to change… I’m sorry…

Investing:

There was no operating leverage but we’ll see it next quarter for sure… They’ve assured me they have the financing in place…. The investment period is almost over…Management has a lot of “skin in the game”….

Listen to Juggles: Don’t do it.

Now the reason I think relationships are a particularly good analogy for investing is that it’s just as tough to know when you should cut your losses in a stock as it is when things go south with your girlfriend. You’ve been through a lot and there’s a shared history; is there something fundamentally wrong or are you just being impatient/unreasonable/(insert common male or investor characteristic here)? Finding an investment thesis is at least as hard as going back to dating, and you never want to bail on a good idea early. So ask yourself: the stock isn’t working but is this a healthy argument with your future wife or maybe you and the stock are fighting again because things just aren’t right between the two of you. Does the stock want you to “work on it” or “pay attention to its needs” more often? These are probably signs you should set cut that stock loose.

But don’t think it’ll be easy. The day you finally give up on that stock – it’ll go up 5%, just like your ex-girlfriend will wear a short skirt and slut herself around showing you how many other boys like her. But your better off man, you are way better off.

Recommendation: Long book writing, short dating.

The stock secured loan to Phillip Bennett mentioned in my Lending No-No article was, in fact, unhedged, according to this RefCo article in the Journal.

The Refco stock Mr. Bennett pledged as collateral for the loan is now nearly worthless, damaging Bawag’s own financial situation. Earlier this week, ratings firm Moody’s Investors Service said the loan exposure represents a material proportion of the bank’s core equity and more than two times Bawag’s estimated 2005 earnings. Moody’s is concerned that the potential loss content of this exposure could negatively affect the bank’s capitalization.”

Given what should have been known by the lender, that may have been the worst loan in modern Western World history. At some point, I’m going to have take nominations for worst loans ever. I would definitely count the 57 different Chinese banks that lent money to one guy (which he used to speculatively buy apartments in Hong Kong) as one loan.