Wed Oct 13 2010
Currencies
The high Swiss Franc means a meal at MCD in Switzerland is now $15.50 with no refills! I doubt the Europeans will care fo that continuing. The French are protesting the hike in the retirement age from 60 to 62. Germany suggested that Greece could sell a few islands, guess not, an idea for one island resort employing 50,000 fell through. The Greek bureaucracy is such that no one knows who owns what.
Dot.coms Again
We all recall that the dot.com for sale on the net idea did not work, but wait, what about
diaper.com and soap.com. Seems they are succeeding with SKUs Stock Keeping Units that are also for sale on the site. Check out the site, this started in a garage and now has big warehouses.
Toyota Tundra
Well only 79,385 TUndras were sold in 2009 Nissan Titans dropped to 19,042. This is a far cry from Toyota's original goal of 325, 000, the factory capacity here in San Antonio. What went wrong?
Well it tuns out Chevy Ford Dodge guys own an RV, a shotgunj and a riding mower. Tundra guys ride bicycles and read Runners World and probably like quiche. GM sold 825,000 Ford sold 724,478 and even Dodge 339,448.
Good thing Toyota brought the Tacoma here. I think the lesson is that one should not stray from the original idea, Toyota was all about economy cars, that can mean an economy pickup but beyond that is a stretch.
Meredith Whitney
In the same vein, Mert was the darling of Wall sT in 2007 predicting a bank crisis. And so she left Oppneheimer and started her own firm. This of course like the Tundra pickup is a completely different business, managing and forecasting. So far about 2/3 of her picks have fared worse than market indexes. Again, stick wtih what you know.
Professor Elam 
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