A Fool Looks Back

By Rick Aristotle Munarriz | More Articles
August 13, 2011 | Comments (1)

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Why does everybody have such an itchy trigger finger these days?

Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU ) killed its microblogging Baidu Shuoba site this week, just a year after it launched the initially successful clone of SINA Weibo.
Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ ) rolls out the first tablet built on its proprietary webOS platform, and this week it slashes its price by as much as 20%.
At least Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT ) waited eight years before realizing that it wanted to stop selling MP3s, but even that decision seems rushed. Legal music downloads are more popular than ever, and the last thing Wal-Mart needs is for digitally savvy customers to be flocking to rival websites.

We live in hasty times, but can't we sometimes wait a little longer before making a vital decision?

The market obviously disagrees with me. The Dow lost, gained, lost, and gained at least 400 points in each of the first four trading days this week.

Patience, Corporate America. Patience, fellow investors.

Briefly in the news
And now let's take a quick look at some of the other stories that shaped our week.

All of the major U.S. banks closed below book value on Wednesday. Is this a screaming value, or are gun-shy investors no longer trusting book value as a metric with the banking giants?
Youku.com (Nasdaq: YOKU ) posted better-than-expected results, but China's leading video-streaming website is still losing money.
Shares of SodaStream (Nasdaq: SODA ) were crushed like an aluminum can after the water carbonator posted strong second-quarter financials but failed to raise its guidance. Investors get nervous about near-term performance when a beat isn't accompanies by a rosier forecast.
Activision Blizzard (Nasdaq: ATVI ) is teaming up with GameStop (NYSE: GME ) for a creative promotion. Gamers who pre-order Activision's upcoming Prototype 2 this month will be able to enter a contest where the winner will be turned into a character in the game. Tron incarnate?

Until next week, I remain,

Rick Munarriz

The Steve Jobs Betrayal
You may already know that in the final year of his life, Jobs revealed a stunning betrayal — and told his biographer, "I will spend my last dying breath... and every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank to right this wrong." What was it that made Jobs so irate — and why could it make a few in-the-know investors some major profits over the coming months and years?

Enter your email address below to find out what made Jobs so enraged!

The Motley Fool owns shares of Activision Blizzard, GameStop, and Wal-Mart and has written calls on Activision Blizzard. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Wal-Mart, Activision Blizzard, SodaStream, SINA, and Baidu; writing covered calls on GameStop; creating a diagonal call position on Wal-Mart; and creating a synthetic long position in Activision Blizzard. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz recommends windshield wiper fluid when trying to look back. He owns no shares in any of the stocks in this story and is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

Report this Comment On August 13, 2011, at 9:57 AM, David369 wrote:

It's no wonder that an average person can't get rich in the stock market. I don't think it is a lack of patience, I think it is ear trouble..nothing between them. SODA only slighty dropped during the sky falling Fri and Mon. Then they come out with an exceptional quarterly rpt that even beat analyst estimates and STILL the stock dropped. Up their guidance? Heck, what do people want? The guidance was already fantastic! Ok, so the herd mentality took their money out of SODA...where are they going to put it? Gold?, under the bed?, what opportunity for significant growth in the near future looks as good as SODA's report?
Of course, I'm glad it dropped since I decided it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. I just wonder at the mentality of the masses sometimes. Are they going to sell everytime a stock they hold does not have a perfect report? Think about it, it had to be a hell of a bunch of people bailing out of SODA (or maybe one really big shareholder) to change the price that much. Even if it was "computer generated" by stop losses kicking in creating a domino effect down, the initial quantity of shares sold had to be huge to start the effect.
Yeah, it's ear trouble.

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