What: Dallas Arboretum Cool Thursdays - Perfect for family, friends, or a date. Picnics and coolers are encouraged so guests can enjoy the show on White Rock Lake.
When: Thursday's this Summer 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Where: Dallas Arboretum on White Rock Lake
Need More Info:
What: Plano Concerts in the Parks Series (Stevie Ray Vaughn Tribute Band)
Where: Oak Point Park AmphitheaterWhen: Saturday, June 7th --- Gates open @ 6:30 - concert starts at 7:30 --- picnic baskets and coolers are welcomeCost: Adults $12, Children $6, Seniors $6 -- tickets can be obtained online or if they are still available at the doorNeed More Info: ?
With Father's Day just around the corner we thought we'd take this opportunity to highlight a great company - My Publisher. You can gather up all those digital photos and make dad a great book! and the best part is if you're crafy and include some shots of your own dad with the grandkids you can give the book to your own dad as well - they are currently running a special create one book - get
We are a big fan of all things the Arboretum puts on and summer camps are just another one of their great programs. Check out this great listing of summer camps for your little ones...hurry registration is already starting to fill for some of these camps!Arboretum - Go Wild Summer Camps -
Man, oh man, are you lucky Dallas Mommies in for a treat with this one. Matt Davis, owner of 818 Images, has graciously agreed to do a giveaway for The Trendy Mommy readers in the Dallas metroplex. The lucky winner will receive the following:~ a complimentary photography session for their family~ complementary 4x6 print~ complimentary 5x7 print~ complimentary 8x10 print~ complimentary 16x20 print{
In honor of Mother's Day - our weekend edition will be dedicated to all the wonderful places your family might take you for a Mother's Day Brunch.1. Nana Grill2201 Stemmons Fwy (In the Wyndham Anatole Hotel), Dallas, TX A Mother's Day champagne brunch from 11am to 2pm is $85 at this lofty perch atop the Anatole. 2. Blue Mesa Grill7700 W Northwest Hwy Ste 740, Dallas, TX It's first come, first served. The buffet brunch is $14.95 with complimentary mimosas. 3. The Marriott at Legacy Town Center7120 Dallas Parkway, Plano, TX - Featuring a live duo, Jazz Harpist Cindy Horstman, as well as coloring books and puzzles to entertain our younger guests. Adults -- $35.95, Seniors -- $28.95, Children 6-12yrs -- $16.95, Kids under 5 eat free at the Mothers Day brunch Dallas 4. Mignon4005 Preston Rd #
We're so excited about our newest giveaway, Stephanie, owner of Redesign Your Decor, is giving away a One Day Room Redesign (a $250 value) to one of our lucky readers residing in the Dallas Metroplex (sorry to everyone else - we have another great giveaway coming up next week that you can all enter!).In 2004, Stephanie went into business for herself and created Redesign Your Décor- Interior Redesign and Home Staging. Stephanie believes most people enjoy purchasing items for their home. It's where you put these items when you bring them home that make all the difference in the world. Redesign Your Décor will take your treasurers- your existing furniture, accessories, and artwork and rearrange it to give it that "pulled together" designer look. The end result is a room you love!Recent Cli
This weekend has hit me quite hard. I had to do my taxes. One thing that a lot of bloggers don’t tell you is that when you make a lot of money online, the tax man wants to talk to you about where the money went.
However, thanks to the stimulus package, I’m doing [...]
It’s your old pal sir jorge here with a weekend edition of this blog. I’ve been feverishly working on killing boredom in the work place and trying to stay positive.
I took a nasty fall trying to land a kickflip at work and it still hurts like crazy. My shoulder is all jacked up. That’s [...]
WEEKEND CANDIDSMary J was getting her contractual obligation on this weekend. She attended the opening of the New Apple Store in NYC's Meat Packing District:...Whoopi was there as well.Vanessa Carlton was chic at Ocean Drive Magazine's Paint The Town Green event in Miami.Solange Knowles at People's Grammy kick-off shindig. Say what you want, but i like this look. She took a risk, and i think it worked. "Dare to be different sn[b]itches." [PHOTOS VIA DLISTED]MARY-KATE!Check out my girl Mary-Kate covering the latest issue of NYLON:...Ciggy-Cig put in some work for this editorial. Now my day is complete. [SCANS VIA OLSENFAN.NET]
- I read his fist book and loved it. He has some wonderful insights into today's market.
- Excellent article on Bernanke
- He has made himself a billionaire buying things nobody else will invest in. See what he is buying now
- Can they catch iTunes?
- This is a great regular blog section. I read it daily
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David-the-Tool Beckham was inducted into the LA Galaxy team earlier this week. The site was basically Presidential in nature; limos, photogs, banners and confetti. Plus the stupid wife in the pink space dress covering her mouth like a Mary Tyler Moore wannabe.David Beckham has launched his own blog in coordination with his family's move to the States.Correction: someone is writing a blog for/as David Beckham in coordination with his family's move to the States.Michelle Rodriguez has a girlfriend. Good for her. Still, I would be a little afraid of that bedroom scene.An investigation has begun into whether Paris Hilton received special treatment while incarcerated. Well, duh. Then again she did have that mental/medical problem that miraculously disappeared once she was released. Maybe they mean "special" in the short-bus sense (if you get my drift).Lindsay Lohan has reportedly started carrying around Machiavelli's The Prince. Great...that means she is learning how to become the ruler
David-the-Tool Beckham was inducted into the LA Galaxy team earlier this week. The site was basically Presidential in nature; limos, photogs, banners and confetti. Plus the stupid wife in the pink space dress covering her mouth like a Mary Tyler Moore wannabe.David Beckham has launched his own blog in coordination with his family's move to the States.Correction: someone is writing a blog for/as David Beckham in coordination with his family's move to the States.Michelle Rodriguez has a girlfriend. Good for her. Still, I would be a little afraid of that bedroom scene.An investigation has begun into whether Paris Hilton received special treatment while incarcerated. Well, duh. Then again she did have that mental/medical problem that miraculously disappeared once she was released. Maybe they mean "special" in the short-bus sense (if you get my drift).Lindsay Lohan has reportedly started carrying around Machiavelli's The Prince. Great...that means she is learning how to become the ruler
Cramer featured Charter Communications (CHTR) as an avoid. He thinks they are overvalued and he said the $1.1 Billion market cap is misleading because they have a $20 Billion enterprise value if you add in the debt.
Cramer said that he gave them a recap plan in the past and they have too much debt to survive. It was over $4.00 then. He said the scoffed at him, but now look how bad it got.
He said if they were smart they would even declare bankruptcy and start over. Cramer won't touch Charter with a 10 foot pole, and he even brought out a ten foot pole to show you. He says don't be lured by the cheap priced stock.
Cramer thinks you need to buy Comcast (CMCSA) instead of Charter Communications (CHTR).
CHTR closed up 0.8% at $2.58 today, but fell to $2.49 after his feature.
Jon C. Ogg
There is a lot of talk now that Apple's growth may be in jeapordy now that there are 60 million iPods and companies like Microsoft and Cingular are entering the portable music device and download business. The solution: sell more Macs. The sales of Apple's computer did move up in the last quarter to 1.6 million. It is an impressive move, off of a small base.
If Apple wants to get a lot more PC share, it has the same problem that iPod competitors have. Someone else has the market, and they will fight to the death to keep their place.
In this case, the someones are HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Toshiba, and Sony.
Dell and HP each have about 16% of the global market according to Gartner. Dell still has 31% of the US market and HP stands at 22%.
Apple has successfully defended its iPod franchise, so far. With the Mac making some strides, Dell, HP, and the other market leaders will add features and probably cut prices.
Apple, a PC share leader? If wishes were horses, all the beggars would ride.
Pfizer announced that its experimental drug for lowering cholesterol also raises blood pressure. The clogged arteries may not kill customers, but the high blood pressure may.
Prudential put out a note on the problem saying that does not think "it will effect the overall risk versus benefit of the drug in the long run."
Goldman Sachs had a different take: "The concerns about blood pressure risk with torcetrapib will be reinforced by these data, however preliminary the data are."
The market seemed to side with Goldman, as Pfizer's shares dropped from a price of $27.22 on Monday to an intraday low of $26.44 yesterday.
The problem that Pfizer has with torcetrapib reflects a much larger concern in the market. As patents on the large money makers at Big Pharma expire, moving some share to generic drug makers, the larger companies must come up with new, patented products.
IMS Health, a research firm, says that $23 billion worth of drugs will go "off patent" this year based on the annual sale
Investors might assume that when a company's chief competitor folds its tent, the market share in the industry would move from the vanquished to the victor. Not so with Boeing. At least not yet.
Boeing has not received any major orders for its new jumbo plane, the 747-8, despite a slew of problems with the Airbus 380, its new super-jumbo product.
A number of Airbus customers, lead by Emirate Airlines, has expressed severe doubts about whether they will stick with the Airbus 380, but where are the orders for the competing Boeing product?
Boeing is faced with some measure of doubt about whether it can take advantage of this situation, or, if Airbus can hold customers, even with a late delivery schedule.
Oddly enough, Boeing is beginning to beat Airbus in the market. for slightly smaller intercontinental aircraft. It has broken a key account in South America, TAM of Brazil, by selling it the new 777. Previously, the airline bought from Airbus. The 777 and new Boeing Dreamliner have had
Stocks: (XOM)(CVX)(COP)
The US Government surrendered without lifting a finger. Its case that Chevron underpaid for use of federal land to pump gas in the Gulf of Mexico was dropped. Oil and gas companies are mandated to pay part of their sales for product brought out of land owned by the government. But, the calculations are fuzzy.
Big oil stands to add to its profits if the feds don't push for a higher rate of royalty. What's it worth? Perhaps several hundred million dollars.
But, it is a small gift. With falling oil prices, it will not make up from the likely drop in profits at Big Oil. Inventories are still rising. The fears that Saudi production could be hurt by terrorists is receding. And, OPEC's plan to cut production seems to have no teeth.
Ah, for a little, tiny war. Not one in which anyone gets hurt, mind you. Or, a little coup d'etat. Just something to grab the headlines for a day or two.
Of course, higher oil prices are not the only reason that Big Oil has had larger pr
Stocks: (MCD)(SBUX)(YUM)
New York City is thinking of setting a ban for restaurants that sell foods with trans-fats and Kentucky Fried Chicken is not going to sell food containing the stuff.
That opens the door to the question about what the really big food and beverage chains will do about the "bad health" issue of trans-fats and what it will cost them to fix Trans-fats are unsaturated fats that can clog your arteries, and perhaps are killing consumers left and right.
McDonald's and Starbucks, with their donuts, cookies, and hamburgers are apparently stuffed with trans-fats. It poses two problems for the huge chains. First, there is a cost to replacing menu items with new foods. Trans-fat foods have a longer shelf life. They are cheaper than products made with content like butter. They also require less refrigeration. If you have a business with thousands of outlets, changing a lot of the "eats" over to a healthier fare could be damned expensive.
The other problem is the to
Stocks: (GS)(BAC)(JPM)(C)
It looks like Goldman Sachs wants to be your banker, at least if you are in the private equity business. It the recent private equity purchase of Texas Genco, Goldman put up $2.5 billion in loans to the buyout firms involved.
Goldman rank 7th in "top arrangers of high risk corporate loans" for the first three quarters of 2006. That was well below JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Citi. But, with Citi's problems in its retail business, it does not need another headache.
Citi's corporate and investment banking revenues are already under pressure. And, the company's stock performance has hurt the market's belief that management can turn the big bank into an earnings machine.
The contrast in stock prices tells a lot of the story. Over the last six months, Citi's stock is flat. Goldman's is up almost 20%.
Ouch.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at douglasamcintyre@247wallst.com. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.
Unless Coca-Cola (KO) manages a corporate blunder in the next few hours, it will be KO that has won the investor taste test challenge over Pepsi (PEP) for the month of October.
KO closed September 29 at $44.68, and was at $46.75 on last look. KO is up from an adjusted closing price at the close of 2005 after dividend of $39.46 and nominally closing at $40.31.
PEP closed September 29 at $65.26, and was down $0.33 on the day at $63.20 on last look. PEP is up from an adjusted closing price at the close of 2005 after dividend of $58.26 and nominally closing at $59.08.
Both companies did fairly well on earnings this month.
Two weeks ago KO posted $0.62 EPS vs $0.59 est. and revenues $6.45 Billion instead of almost $6.2 Billion. It even showed a 5% increase in its case volumes. After earnings Merrill Lynch added KO to its Focus One List. Ko also announced price hikes for its orange drinks because of rising orange juice prices.
Almost 3 weeks ago PEP also beat earnings with $0.88 EPS and Reve
Hertz, one of the largest auto and equipment rental companies, has finally set its IPO terms. We have known this deal was coming, it just boiled down to WHEN and WHAT terms. Now we know the WHAT with some 88.235 million shares being set at a range of $16 to $18 per share. The offering looks to be some $1.41 Billion on the low-end, and almost $1.6 Billion raised if the deal prices at the high-end. The original filing was given only a $1 Billion nominal amount, but it isn't clear if that was just for filing calculations or if there was a bump on preliminary demand. The total offering will be $1.8 Billion if all over-allotment shares are taken. The WHEN should be in the coming weeks.Hertz is going to trade (this time) under the ticker "HTZ" on the NYSE. The lead underwriters are Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, J.P.Morgan and Lehman Brothers; and co-managers are set as Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, UBS, and Wachovia.Hertz has a long and somewhat humorous history of being pub
Stocks: (AMD)(INTC)(ATI)(NVE)AMD is close to closing it purchase of graphics chip company ATI Technologies. The No. 2 x86 company is already making plans. By 2009, the joint firm plans to make chips that combine AMD processing power with ATI graphics features. The chips will be relatively inexpensive, perhaps 50% less than current models made for PCs.The move marks another shot in the ever-excalating war between AMD and Intel. Intel is out with its new Core 2 Duo chip which many reviews claim is faster that the current generation from AMD. Intel is also introducing a four core chip for servers. AMD has been taking server share from Intel for a couple of years, and now has over 20% of that market.PC makers are hungry for less expensive chips. Margins at companies like Dell are squeezed each time they move prices down to take share from rivals like Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo. Of course, each of these companies is compelled to reviews it prices as well.A chip from AMD that allows PC manuf
New global audience statistics from comScore show the Microsoft still has an edge in total unique visitors to its web sites each month based on September 2006 figures. But, that may not last long.Worldwide, the web had 726.7 million visitors in the age group over 15. Microsoft sites had 505.5 million unique visitors, followed by Yahoo! Sites at 480.6 million and Google Sites at 457.5 million. But, new Google acquisition YouTube has 81 million, a jump of 12% from the previous month. Google may be in the lead when October worldwide numbers hit.It is somewhat stunning how far other major companies lag. The Time Warner Network had 2187.8 million in September, less than half of what the leaders boast. Fox, which includes MySpace, sits at 117.8 million.The new numbers do point out one important thing, especially for Microsoft and Yahoo!. While Google dominates many things on the internet, it does not dominate everything.If MSN and Yahoo! can build features that allow them to be more competit
Cramer touted his Google (GOOG) call with it essentially up $35 after-hours. Cramer even raised his price target on GOOG from $500 to $560, based on $14 per share in forward earnings and a 40Earnings Multiple. He even came out wearing GOOG in black marker on his forehead and had a Google heart tattoo drawn on his arm.
GOOG holders and employees have to wonder if they love Cramer as much as they should.
Jon C. Ogg
Stocks: (AMD)(INTC)
Part of Intel's earnings reports was the news that its price war with AMD seemed to be over.
The problem with the statement is that Intel also said it was gaining back share from AMD, especially in the high end server markets where AMD had made considerable in-roads.
But, what if someone forgot to tell AMD.
AMD has gained share from Intel, especially in the server market In August, AMD even said that it would eventually have 40% of the market for server chips. It has just north of 20% now.
And, Intel's new Core 2 Duo has been well reviewed and may be beginning to beat back the advances made by AMD.
AMD may not have a lot of options to keep its market share growing. It is much smaller than Intel and if it does not protect its gains, Intel's new chipset may set AMD's growth back several years.
The market has become skeptical about whether AMD's gains are permanent. Its shares have dropped nearly 20% over the last six months while Intel's are up about 10%.
The Wall Street Journal listed 54 companies that are currently at risk for being delisted from the Nasdaq Stock Market due to late SEC filings caused by options backdating issues. Apple is on that list. Three companies have already been kicked out and it is anyone's guess how many more may be.
The problem is not just one for the companies. Nasdaq charges large listing fees, so if a large number of companies get pushed to the pink sheets or bulletin board, the exchange could face falling revenue. It is, potentially, a conflict of interest for Nasdaq. The exchange can allow companies a grace period while they appeal their delisting notices, but the appeal process cannot go on forever or the Nasdaq will lose its moral authority to act in the best interests of shareholders.
Apple's problems are particularly vexing. It is on of the most prominent companies on Nasdaq. But, almost every week there are new revelations in the Apple options probe. At first the company indicated that the proble
Chrysler is having trouble selling its cars. Its bloated inventory is not shrinking as fast as management would like, and the company may be facing a rough fourth quarter. The company has already signalled it will lose $1.5 billion in Q3.
What is left unsaid is whether the same problem faces GM and Ford. Why not? Should they be immune from the same issues that face Chrysler?
While sales of the big three were about flat in September, Toyota's sales rose 25%. Share is still moving to the big Japanese car company as it tries to pass GM to become the top auto company in the world.
Things in Detroit may be worse than the September numbers show, but October reports are just around the corner.
Banc of America Securities raised Salesforce.com from "neutral" to "buy" last week. In December, B of A initiated the stock at "neutral".
Trouble is that in December the stock was trading around $32. It is now at $41. So, why not a "buy" rating late last year?
Maybe investors could have made some money.
