MSFT and AAPL: a tale of two tickers

Who would have thought 10 years ago that Apple ($AAPL), then valued at an $8 billion market cap, would meet, then exceed Microsoft's ($MSFT) $200 billlion market cap by 2011?

We could say so many things about Apple's historic transformation from tech also-ran to re-emergent industry leader in that time. You could also write a book describing Microsoft's eroding dominance and its stagnating shareholder returns in the post-PC world.

Or we could just look at the chart above and know that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Nasdaq credit rating junked.

S&P cut Nasdaq's credit rating to junk status citing debt burdens and its questionable strategy to buy a controlling interest in the London Stock Exchange. Financial Times reported that the exchange's counterparty credit & bank loan rating were lowered fromm BBB- (lowest investment grade rating) to BB+. The change will increase Nasdaq's borrowing costs should it wish to pursue aquisition targets. For an earlier look at the exchange consolidation trend that brought about Nasdaq's push for a stake in the LSE, please see "Exchange fever" .

Jesse Livermore: How to Trade in Stocks (1940 Ed. E-book)

If you've been around markets for any length of time, you've probably heard of 20th century supertrader, Jesse Livermore . Today we're highlighting his rare 1940 work, How to Trade in Stocks (ebook, pdf). But first, a brief overview of Livermore's life and trading career (bio from Jesse Livermore's Wikipedia entry). "During his lifetime, Livermore gained and lost several multi-million dollar fortunes. Most notably, he was worth $3 million and $100 million after the 1907 and 1929 market crashes, respectively. He subsequently lost both fortunes. Apart from his success as a securities speculator, Livermore left traders a working philosophy for trading securities that emphasizes increasing the size of one's position as it goes in the right direction and cutting losses quickly. Ironically, Livermore sometimes did not follow his rules strictly. He claimed that lack of adherence to his own rules was the main reason for his losses after making his 1907 and...

Finance Trends 2019 Mid-Year Markets Review

Email subscribers of the Finance Trends Newsletter receive the first look at new articles and market updates, such as the following piece, sent out to our email list on Sunday (6/14). Hello and welcome, everyone! If you received our last email notice over the July 4th holiday, you'll know that this weekend's newsletter will serve as a mid-year market update and a follow-up to issue #29, " How to Reinvest in a Rising Market ". Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let's start the show... Finance Trends Newsletter: Our Mid-Year Market Review When we last spoke, back in February, the U.S. stock market was rallying off its December-January lows. As the S&P 500 and Nasdaq reclaimed their 200 day moving averages in February and March, it became increasingly apparent that a lot of retail investors (and perhaps some institutional investors) were left under-invested while watching this recovery move from the sidelines. The U.S. stock ...

Finance Trends Letter

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