Long or Short Capital

Long or Short Capital Research LLC is revising its price target for GOOG down from “Infinity” to “Infinity-1.” Our new price target of “Infinity-1” reflects a deceleration of the growth in online CPC advertising, the saturation of search engine advertising and increased traction of the idea that Eric Schmidt had the easiest path to billionaire status in history. Google’s stock should now be seen as a “Key Long Term Holding” rather than a “Core Long Term Holding.”

We cannot get enough of Cephalopods (see our earlier analysis of Octopi investments and hand puppets) and we contiue to see this investment as one whose bull thesis will climb a (sea)wall of worry.

What if the Fed stops raising rates? Will we see a rapid decline in the dollar denominated Cephalopod index as foreign banks pull their investments out of dollars and move into safer currencies like the Baht or Flooz? And more importantly, what will happen to the Cephalopod Index?

Putting your 401k in inhabitants of the deep seas can make even stalwart investing professional as ourselves ripe with anxiety. This will put you at ease. In this video a Giant Pacific Octopus (yes the same type that killed the shark in our earlier analysis) either dominates a submarine or tries to copulate with it, all while writing the great Octopus novel with a spare tentacle. We think it answers all relevant questions as to the fundamentals the Cephalopod index.

Recommendation: For investors with a higher risk profile, we recommend investing directly in the Giant Pacific Octopus, even though it is trading near its 52 week highs at $74.06. We appreciate the diversification provided by the Cephalopod index, but if we had to put our cephalopod eggs in one basket, that basket would be the Giant Pacific Octopus. It is not only blowing away the relevant operating metrics, it is actually destroying and/or eating its submersible competition.

(Thanks to collision detection, the only place that loves the Octopus as much as I do)

After almost two weeks of daily posting (henceforth to be referred as “excessive posting”), Long or Short suffered an outage on Saturday that made people unable to sell their subscriberholderships and brought posting to a halt. Some of this has been attributed to poor internal controls, such as allowing Debacle to do whatever he wants on the backend or letting Kaiser alter accounting records to mask related party transactions which would reveal how much Long or Short paid for his sunglasses. Irregardless, we are halting this post 20 words early and will halt posts early all week until this problem is resolved.

No matter how good our kung-fu is, it will never defeat guns.

-Iron Robe Yim

Subscriberholders are locked in; moneys to be distributed as well as a new “In Kind” non-monetary payment.  Email subscribers we have your email; RSS subscribers got secret squirrel messages.  Glee abounds.  Our future is bigger than LiveDoor.

We are currently running a sophisticated multivariable marketing analysis of our readers. These three variables are what we think most embodies, you, our readership.

1) Investing
2) Taxes and Accounting
3) Candy

We have set out Yahoo Ads to default to Taxes & Accounting on Long or Short Capital (our new/future home). On our current/old home Long or Short @ Blogspot, we have set the ads to default only to Investing. Based on today’s results we will let you know whether you like Candy, Accounting or Investing the most.

Once we know this extremely valuable information, we plan on combining it with all the other information which we have surreptiously gathered about you from your recurring visits and selling it bundled to the highest bidding e-marketing firm or to satan himself.

Recommendation: Check out our privacy policy.

Did you see the 2nd episode of 24? I’ve been a bit behind but I’m catching up on Tivo. When the show ended, Jack Bauer was in an airport with about 15 Russian terrorists. It looked like he had a handgun but they all had AK-47s. Also, his new girlfriend’s son is in the same building and I get the feeling he’s going to go overboard trying to protect that kid. No way Jack Bauer gets out of this jam. He’s done for this time.

Long: Russian Terrorists
Short: Jack Bauer

Note: I haven’t felt this good about an idea since I shorted Google at $87. That one didn’t work out so I feel like I’m due.

We have new, mature-themed analysis ready for consumption. But we debated internally the value of solid, humorous economic analysis versus the cost of sketchiness. On the one hand, Long or Short Capital cannot display this piece directly on our site; after all, 2/3 of our staff have children who may be able to read this site (if only we knew where they were). On the other hand, fiduciary responsibility demands that we satiate our subscriberholders desire for financial humor before all else, even decency. So in order to read the article you must answer an “adult” question. The correct answer will link you to the adult article. Good luck and no cheating please.

What is a laser disc?

A) A frisbee with a laser attached.

or

B) A video techonology similar to DVD’s but the size of a record. (sub question, What is a record?).

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

-George Washington

It is a little over a week till the end of our Q2’06 and it is time for our subscribers to think about the impending riches which await them per our dividend policy.

But how can you get more rich? Email a link to the best Long or Short Article (see the list of Our Best Posts on the left sidebar) to a good friend of the other sex. In fact, to make it easier for you, I have written the email for you so that you can just copy and paste it.

Dear [Insert Recipient’s Name],

Oceans of Love,
[Insert Your Name Here]

We have tested this email with science, and it has proven to be the most successful at generating pageviews and ad revenue. Be sure to CC us on all emails (misterjuggles@gmail.com), and whoever sends out the most gets a digital kiss from our staff. We love you too.

Given Johnny Debacle’s large personal investment in the Denver housing market, all of us here at Long or Short try to keep an eye on the housing market. As a collective, we are skeptical that housing trends will hold up and are worried about having to bail Johnny out of his housing debacle.

Even more concerning, however, is the emerging bubble in housing bubble blogs. These blogs, devoted to detailing the demise of the housing and refi boom, have begun to proliferate more quickly than Freedom Loans or all those anacondas I let loose in the Everglades in the 80’s.

Evidence: in just one query on Google’s blog search, I turned up the blogs below. Undoubtedly, there are more out there. Is the public aware of this pernicious threat? What is being done by Greenspan/Bernanke & Co to ensure a “soft landing”? We need answers, the Fed, and we need answers now.

http://bubblemeter.blogspot.com/
http://housingpanic.blogspot.com/
http://thehousingbubble2.blogspot.com/
http://socalbubble.blogspot.com/
http://bighousingbubble.blogspot.com/
http://seattlebubble.blogspot.com/
http://www.nyhousingbubble.blogspot.com/
http://www.theburstingbubble.com/
http://www.piggington.com/
http://housebubble.com/
http://marinrealestatebubble.blogspot.com/
http://getforeclosures.blogspot.com/
http://bubblebobbleisthebestgameever.blogspot.com/

Please, the Fed, raise the blogging interest rates or constrict the blog money supply now. The Irrational Blogbooberance must stop now.

From across my Bloomberg.

Lifetime Networks, known for its tear-jerker television movies, is running newspaper and TV ads asking viewers to “dump DISH” after EchoStar Communications Corp.’s Dish Network dropped the channels.

…….

The campaign was expanded today following ads yesterday that said EchoStar is depriving women of critical information. A contract dispute forced EchoStar, the No. 2 U.S. satellite-TV provider, to pull the Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network channels from its lineup, EchoStar said Jan. 1.

“We want to get back on the air at a fair and reasonable rate,” [The Lifetime representative] said.

…..

Lifetime today ran radio, TV and print ads in cities including Orlando, Atlanta, Dallas and Houston. Yesterday’s newspaper ads, two full pages side-by-side, told viewers to “Take Back Your Lifetime!” The letter to EchoStar Chief Ergen says that by removing the channels, “millions of women will not get the inspiration and support they need and deserve.”

EchoStar’s Cicero offered to broadcast, at his company’s expense, any valuable information or public service announcements to its viewers that they are missing by not watching Lifetime.

Brilliant move by Cicero, knowing that there is nothing of value which Lifetime broadcasts. Other than that one movie about the mom who had an autistic anorexic daughter and then lost her husband to the flesh eating bacteria while she herself was fighting a rare form of eye cancer — that one moved me.

Recommendation: EchoStar (ticker: DISH) is clearly short Melodrama. Maybe you should be too.

After an incredible November, December was competely lackluster in terms of revenue generation, a decline in clicks from 30 to 11 and a lower CPC rate across similar levels of traffic. We still are on pace for our dividend guidance, but subscriberholder growth has cooled dampening our expectations for both revenue and dividend growth. Our Blogad revenue has been almost as much as our Yahoo ads at their current runrate which is disappointing to some degree. Our intuition suggests that the Yahoo ads should yield twice as much per impression given the incentivized nature of our subscriberholders. So far, ad clicks in our RSS feed have amounted to 3 in November and 2 in December, fairly negligible.

None of our content is hedged, so we are subject to the volatility of market prices for sourcing our posts, as our staff’s time waxes and wanes. With that being said, we are optimistic that these trends will improve in January. Q2’06 ends on February 1st, 2006, so there is still some reason to be optimistic for a boost in production, dividend and revenue growth, and an acceleration in subcribers. Our slogan for the quarter is “Work hard. Be nice.”

The market to provide slot machines is surprisingly innovative. Since the one-armed bandits went digital, the machine makers — spurred by the casinos’ incredible drive towards efficiency and profitability — have added numerous features (graphics, sounds, videos, machines linked across casinos in order to increase payouts, frequent player clubs, ticket-in-ticket-out etc.) to their machines. They are much more reliable, profitable, and fun for the consumer than the average slot machine even two or three years ago.

Contrast that situation with the ATM. The functionality offered by the average ATM is not significantly greater than that offered two to three years ago. They are not faster or easier to use and they have always been fairly reliable. Meanwhile, the cost to the consumer has been increasing rather than decreasing (although, in fairness, this is probably not the fault of the actual machine manufacturers). Some ATMs used to offer stamps for purchase but that effort now appears dead. The ATM industry needs innovation.

Therefore, I propose the combination ATM/Slot Machine or the SLOTATM. In states where slots are legal, this machine will offer the ultimate in gaming entertainment and cash withdrawal services. It will have a number of new and innovative features including:

1. Consumers will be able to choose whether to withdraw the exact specified amount of money and pay a $2 ATM fee or they can instead elect to withdraw a randomly chosen amount between $95 and $125 and no ATM fee will be charged. Most consumers will get back ~$96-98 while a few winners will get more. Net net, the revenue generated by the machine will be greater than in a strict fee scenario but consumer satisfaction will increase because they will have paid for a gaming experience rather than ATM usage. [Note that traditional bells and whistles will go off as the random payout amount is being determined.]
2. Bank of America has over 16,000 ATMs and all of them are already linked. Any large bank could offer huge payouts by spreading the jackpot nationally across their network, Powerball-style.
3. Bank loyalty will increase and customer defections will decrease as consumers will not want to lose their frequent player points.
4. Consumers will receive more money withdrawal options. For instance, they will be able to specify “big bills” or “little bills” rather than having to accept whatever bills the machine happens to spit out. Is there anything worse than withdrawing $200 and receiving all $10 bills?
5. Long lines at convenience stores will be reduced as scratch ticket gambling addicts will instead line up to repeatedly withdraw money from ATM’s.
6. Possible feature would be to have extreme outlier type events, say 1 out of 10,000 withdrawals gets twice as much money and 1 out of 10,000 gets zero. The zero payout outcome would be well known as “The Whammy” and all ATM’s would hear the echoing cries of “No Whammy, No Whammy, No Whammy, No Whammy!”

It makes so much sense is there any reason that Alliance Gaming (AGI) and Diebold (DBD) can’t get together and get this done?