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A prescient footnote

blog.oddhead.com

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Re: A prescient footnote

#13

Post by agbell »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #7
presidentender wrote: post #2

Suppose you've made such a prediction about a tech company. How do you act on it? You can buy stock, of course, but is there a more powerful action available?

Leverage and buy stock. The only thing that stops you from increasing the size of your bet is the risk of the downside. To some point, this is manageable, but after that point, it becomes pure insanity. YMMV. Shorting the competitors because you think a company is going to do very well is actually a bad idea -- it's entirely possible that Microsoft would have been able to open another very profitable market.

Buy Out of the money call options. lots of leverage for small premiums.

Re: A prescient footnote

#14

Post by isamuel »

stuff4ben wrote: post #9

Heh, I made the same prediction one year before Apple released the iPhone. http://stuff4ben.blogspot.com/ Oddly enough, it was the last post I made on my blog. Wish I could have capitalized on my foresight.

Your blog post reads more like a wish than a prediction. "I want my Apple iPod to make phone calls for me, play video's for me, play J2ME games for me, be WiFi enabled so it can login to my corporate network and check my email on Exchange, take 5MP pictures for me, allow me to IM people and surf the net, and play MP3's all in an iPod-like fit and finish. Why is this so hard?"

Re: A prescient footnote

#15

Post by alain94040 »

Very impressive. In 1994 (I think, I can't be sure of the date anymore), I wrote an article in MacWorld France where I said the combination of Apple's GUI with the Unix kernel had a promising future.

I didn't know it would take another 10 years...

Re: A prescient footnote

#16

Post by austiniteye »

Ha, this made me search the web for things PG said recently. I didn't find anything that specific although I wonder what he thinks of Google/Facebook or Android/iPhone standoffs

Come to think of it, I wonder what is going to happen to Microsoft? Something is obviously coming (they won't just fade into background), but what would it be?

People say that oh, don't worry Microsoft will become just like IBM, but I don't buy it. IBM does a lot of different things, and it did even more in the past but stopped. Microsoft, on the other hand, really does just one thing well: Windows/Office and, assuming those are going to fade away, what does it leave them with? That's why I believe there's going to be a major shift/transition in Microsoft business model.

Re: A prescient footnote

#18

Post by gjm11 »

tlholaday wrote: post #3
presidentender wrote: post #2

Suppose you've made such a prediction about a tech company. How do you act on it? You can buy stock, of course, but is there a more powerful action available?

Sell the stock of its competitors short.

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." -- John Maynard Keynes.

Re: A prescient footnote

#19

Post by stuff4ben »

isamuel wrote: post #14
stuff4ben wrote: post #9

Heh, I made the same prediction one year before Apple released the iPhone. http://stuff4ben.blogspot.com/ Oddly enough, it was the last post I made on my blog. Wish I could have capitalized on my foresight.

Your blog post reads more like a wish than a prediction. "I want my Apple iPod to make phone calls for me, play video's for me, play J2ME games for me, be WiFi enabled so it can login to my corporate network and check my email on Exchange, take 5MP pictures for me, allow me to IM people and surf the net, and play MP3's all in an iPod-like fit and finish. Why is this so hard?"

Read a little further: "Once Apple figures this out, their record iPod sales from 2005 will pale in comparison." and "I'd rather carry one sleek iPod-ish device that does everything for me."

You see wishes do come true!

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