After getting Kelly's permission via IM, I just bought GOOG at 393 and AAPL at 104. Yes - I ignored my own advice and used more of my student loan to finance the (laughably small) transactions. Why?
GOOG
- Advertising budgets will shrink during a recession, but direct marketing budgets should remain strong. Companies still have to acquire customers - even if they're treading water - right? (I think I read that somewhere...or maybe I just made it up.) PPC advertising is much closer to direct marketing than advertising and should remain relatively strong (compared to other advertising categories) during a downturn. The ROI is a cinch to calculate and - more importantly - the service works, thus the case for AdWords should remain a no-brainer.
- My recent liberation from MS Office to Google Docs has been a complete success. I've opened Excel only a few times over the past month - and each time was to work in a very complex financial model. Otherwise, I've worked exclusively with Docs. The formatting isn't as slick as it could be and I can't do page numbers - both of which are fixable problems for Google, by the way - but the content is exactly the same and my work-flow is much cleaner. The way I see it - businesses are going to look for ways to cut corners, MS Office is expensive, Google Docs is free/cheap, most people don't build buyout models every day, and I'll turn a profit with my piddly Google investment.
AAPL
- This one isn't as clear cut for me - instead it is more a depedent argument based on my Google hypothesis. As companies/individuals move to Google (or the web in general) for their productivity applications, platform becomes much less of an issue, thus more people will be comfortable switching to Macs.
- Unlike iPods, iPhones aren't a luxury purchase. They offer true productivity advantages and stand to change computing game going forward...that is if they haven't already. They might not sell like hotcakes this Christmas, but they're still going to a hot ticket item and should find their way into the enterprise sooner rather than later.
- The Jerry Seinfeld and "I'm a PC" commercials are horrible.
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2 posts in one day. Wondering why I haven't been doing this more often of late...
GOOG
- Advertising budgets will shrink during a recession, but direct marketing budgets should remain strong. Companies still have to acquire customers - even if they're treading water - right? (I think I read that somewhere...or maybe I just made it up.) PPC advertising is much closer to direct marketing than advertising and should remain relatively strong (compared to other advertising categories) during a downturn. The ROI is a cinch to calculate and - more importantly - the service works, thus the case for AdWords should remain a no-brainer.
- My recent liberation from MS Office to Google Docs has been a complete success. I've opened Excel only a few times over the past month - and each time was to work in a very complex financial model. Otherwise, I've worked exclusively with Docs. The formatting isn't as slick as it could be and I can't do page numbers - both of which are fixable problems for Google, by the way - but the content is exactly the same and my work-flow is much cleaner. The way I see it - businesses are going to look for ways to cut corners, MS Office is expensive, Google Docs is free/cheap, most people don't build buyout models every day, and I'll turn a profit with my piddly Google investment.
AAPL
- This one isn't as clear cut for me - instead it is more a depedent argument based on my Google hypothesis. As companies/individuals move to Google (or the web in general) for their productivity applications, platform becomes much less of an issue, thus more people will be comfortable switching to Macs.
- Unlike iPods, iPhones aren't a luxury purchase. They offer true productivity advantages and stand to change computing game going forward...that is if they haven't already. They might not sell like hotcakes this Christmas, but they're still going to a hot ticket item and should find their way into the enterprise sooner rather than later.
- The Jerry Seinfeld and "I'm a PC" commercials are horrible.
--
2 posts in one day. Wondering why I haven't been doing this more often of late...