13 comments

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  The Dividend Guy

  1 year ago

  Good point. At the end of the day it is all about the money the company makes and how well it reinvests that money. Products can be fickle things - Perhaps other than something like Coca-Cola.
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  Hunter Nuttall

  1 year ago

  De Lorean had a great product too. Coke not fickle? What about New Coke?
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  Mrs. Micah

  1 year ago

  Yeah, I'm more ready to own a lot of companies. Maybe 500? ;) (I must be so rich!)
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  t h rive

  1 year ago

  John Travolta's back? I would need more proof than 'Hairspray' to back that claim...
  
  investing, it's about being comfortable, ahem:
  
  http://variableinterest.blogspot.com/2007/12/it...
  
  yey dividends!
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  Steve (Brip Blap)

  1 year ago

  @LOD: Yep - reinvests OR (as you obviously focus on) pays it out in dividends. Coke is a decent example. Hunter, I think New Coke was part of a massively clever strategy to create massive demand for Coke Classic - it's another one of those moments in corporate history where ol' Steve straps on his tin foil hat and starts pointing at conspiracies. I still think it was all a scam to drive up consumption.
  
  @t h rive: You clearly never saw 'Battlefield Earth.' How that got passed over for an Oscar... but I digress. :)
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  Shawn@MoneyBrick

  1 year ago

  I thought you were going to start talking about really owning a company for a moment there! But, your post went in a nice direction. I feel that what you said has Buffett written all over it. According to those who let out his secrets, he basically looks at companies in the same way you mentioned (you were very brief, of course) and it's all about the bottom line for him. Companies like Coke that don't spend much on capital machinery and aren't so glamorous are great for him - as opposed to companies that appear in the sky like fireworks and then just as quickly disappear.
  
  However, I'd like to say that the basic goal of any company is profit. Maybe the goal is not profit for the investors, but profit for the entrepreneurs, managers and board-of-directors, surely. It's only when things go awry that a company is putting out goods or services at a loss. The ideal situation for any company is to give the customer what he or she needs/wants, and to make a healthy net profit. So basically, no company really aims for that negative situation you mentioned.
  
  I say this because you said that great products mean nothing to you as an owner. However, as a follower of Seth Godin, I feel that a great product equals a great company! If a company's product is desirable to its audience, that audience will expand and grow and thus profits will do the same. Companies do, of course, have to make sure that people will buy their products/services for more than it cost them to develop, produce and market.
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  Free From Broke

  1 year ago

  Interesting you use Apple as an example. Didn't they start to build up again once Steve Jobs came back on board? So, no, the product can't be all you look at. You have to look at who is managing the company as one of the important factors.
  
  Oh, thanks for reminding me that my dream of playing with the Electric Mayhem or wrestling Andre the Giant will never come to fruition!
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  Steve (Brip Blap)

  1 year ago

  @Shawn: Well, I was right there with you until you said that if a company's product is desirable the audience will expand and grow and profits will do the same. It is not an automatic correlation. You can mismanage a great product - prices can be set too low/high, marketing can be bad, etc. I have seen awesome products that just couldn't be sold profitably... now, maybe just awesome to me, but still the great product = profitability equation isn't automatic. Seth is awesome, but I disagree sometimes with his "if it is truly great, people will come." iPods were cool, but let's face it, there was a LOT of kick-ass marketing going on there.
  
  I would also say that the goal is profit, but some companies mistake short-term profit for "good" profit. I won't get too long-winded in comments, but I worked for a marketing-intensive cosmetics company at one point. They were VERY careful which products were named after the company and which were called by generic names. Even though the $1.99 cologne sold at Wal-Mart would sell much, much better with the "big name" attached, they didn't want to damage their other brands. So they took some short-term loss of profit to enhance their long-term prospects. A lot of companies miss this point and churn out junk that makes money in the short term, but hurt the company long term. That's a major distinction, if you ask me...
  
  @FFB: Right! What Jobs did - in my opinion - is come up with great products but more importantly he made them profitable through marketing and demand. A Zune is practically the same as an iPod, but the marketing and presentation and 'mystique' weren't even close.
  
  And yes, sorry, your dream of wrestling with Andre the Giant (May 19, 1946 – January 27, 1993) is not going to happen.
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  t h rive

  1 year ago

  i watched "The Thin Red Line" again last night. Travolta plays a pretty cool part in that flick. Practically a cameo. Good movie.
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  Writer's Coin

  1 year ago

  Well done. Not letting on that you were talking about investing from the start is a great way to get readers into thinking of investing as owning a business and not gambling.
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  Lucky

  1 year ago

  I disagree! Intellivision was great... when i was a kid, i couldn't get enough of Burger Time and Lock and Chase.
  Good article though... I'm a regular reader. Keep it up.
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  Lucky

  1 year ago

  One more thing... what you said about tv vs. movies is why I got tired of the show "Lost". It would have made a great movie but after a few hours, you just want an ending and to go on with your life. The show sucks the life out of you.
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  Steve (Brip Blap)

  1 year ago

  @Lucky: No, no, you misunderstood - I liked Intellivision, too. I meant Atari was the perfect toy, except for maybe the Intellivision. The Atari's graphics were much worse but the games were cooler. I loved the Star Wars game with the Walkers.
  
  And I never got into "Lost", but you've described the problem with about 99% of the dramas on TV - most of them would make excellent miniseries or long movies. "Lost" sounds like it would have made a great 1 or 2 season show, then end it - but of course that advertising money is going to keep it dribbling on to a dull and unsatisfying conclusion (like "Angel", for example).
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