A little historical perspective: With two trading days left this year, the Dow's down 6.7% in 2001 while the Nasdaq's off 20.6%. Both indices fell last year and they have not declined in unison for two straight years since 1974.
It's been a tough year, though the decline in value of our portfolios has probably been the least difficult part of it, as is evident in the recurring images of Osama bin Laden on the tube. Yesterday and today the news networks have played portions of the latest from the Osama video library, with pundits trying to determine if he looks sick and if he's still alive or not. Osama bin Laden, terrorist or TV star? You make the call.
We'll just gladly close the door on 2001 as it comes to an end. The Motley Fool 50 treaded lightly into positive territory today. It is down about 13% for the year.
In today's Motley Fool Take:
Yahoo! Wins HotJobs
Short of a broadside, Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) has won online jobs site HotJobs (Nasdaq: HOTJ). The Internet portal beat out competing suitor TMP Worldwide (Nasdaq: TMPW), owner of number one online career destination Monster.com, which declined to best Yahoo!'s $436 million cash and stock ante.
In June, TMP Worldwide offered $460 million in stock for competitor HotJobs. With TMP stock off 30% since then, the offer is now worth only $341 million. TMP's Chairman and CEO Andrew J. McKelvey explained in a prepared statement, "While a combination with HotJobs is attractive to us, we do not see a financial or strategic rationale for modifying our bid for the company... we are very comfortable with our prospects. We look forward to competing with HotJobs in this dynamic and growing marketplace."
And Yahoo! and HotJobs will have a tough fight. In June, Mike Trigg wrote in TMF Select that "Monster.com dominates the online career sites sector in nearly every metric, including total resumes, time spent per visit, and unique visitors... the company has a market share of 38%, versus HotJobs.com and Headhunter.net with market shares of 10% and 6%, respectively." (Tribune Co.'s (NYSE: TRB) CareerBuilder completed its purchase of Headhunter.net in November.) That power has only increased since then, along with TMP Worldwide's profits, free cash flow, acquisitions of competitors, and deals with big guns like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT).
Yahoo! will use $218 million, or 22% of its $981 million in cash and short-term investments, as part of its effort to decrease dependence on shrinking advertising revenue. No word on how the merger will affect its deal with Headhunter.net to be Yahoo!'s exclusive job listings provider. For its part, HotJobs will fork over a $15 million termination fee and up to $2 million in expenses to TMP Worldwide.
TMP Worldwide shares climbed as much as 6% today on the news, while HotJobs stock was off slightly around mid-day to $10.36, a whisker below Yahoo!'s $10.50 a share purchase price.
The New Wave of Plastic Perks
Airline miles are such a passe perk. Now you can get credit cards that are tied to your paycheck, stomach, local schools and the stock market, according to news reports on Cardweb.com.
The e-Duction MasterCard enables employees to "e-Duct" their purchases from future paychecks, and spread out their payments from two to six months, interest-free. The card offers a credit line based on your salary -- up to 2.5% of your annual gross salary -- and the account is linked directly to your paycheck. Visa has a version, too, but its is a pre-paid debit card that is set up by your employer. Red flags: Watch out for annual membership fees. Also, if you're terminated or leave your job, the balance will be deducted in one lump sum, and will be subject to those surly interest charges.
The Stockback MasterCard from Chase is a reward card that offers shares instead of cash back. When you make a purchase with participating merchants, you get up to 12% back, which you can funnel into the no-load Stockback Mutual Fund (Ticker Symbol: STBKX). Red flags: Only purchases at participating merchants are eligible for the stockback rewards. Oh, and The Stockback Mutual Fund is managed by Merrill Lynch.
Tired of cutting off the box lids of your Honey Nut Cheerios? General Mills's Box Tops for Education program has teamed with First USA to offer VISA cards that generate moolah for schools. The card donates 1% of all qualifying purchases to the enrolled school of choice. There is no annual fee (yay!), but a maximum of $10,000 may be generated for any one school per year from this program (bummer!). Red flags: Only certain products have rewards tied to them; your local schools may not participate in the program.
The new no-annual-fee Citibank Upromise MasterCard is linked to a college savings program. Cardholders receive 1% of their eligible purchases as college contributions into their Upromise account, with the option of investing the contributions in a 529 college savings program. Cardmembers can also enlist spendaholic relatives and friends in the program.
Finally, if you'd like to eat yourself into debt, Dinnerguest Company has a prepaid VISA gift card that can be used wherever VISA is accepted -- it doesn't have to be a restaurant. Red flags: Like most gift certificates, there's an expiration date. So use it or lose it.
The beef-jerky industry will produce 600,000 tons of beef jerky.
-- Just one of Esquire's 43 Reasons to be Optimistic About 2002
Lord Is King of the Screen
The holidays are an important period not only for retailers, but for the movie studios as well. As it stands, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is lording it over everyone else, raking in $66.1 million last weekend for AOL Time Warner (NYSE: AOL). AOL has another holiday hit sitting in the second spot, Ocean's 11, which took in $21.4 million at the box office.
Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Paramount Pictures hit third and fourth place over the weekend with Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius and Vanilla Sky, while former number one Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone came in fifth for AOL Time Warner.
Official figures aren't yet in for Christmas Day, but CBS MarketWatch is giving a close decision to Lord of the Rings over Ali. Sony's (NYSE: SNE) biography of Muhammad Ali was released just in time for Christmas, and reportedly drew a thumb's up from the champ himself.
Many of us at Fool HQ would recommend a film that drew in only $6,175 over the weekend, the re-release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, from Rainbow Films. Twenty-six years after the original release, John Cleese and his gang seem even funnier than ever. The new movie has a cleaned up negative and sound track, and even a scene or two not included in the original.
Shameless Plug Department: Industry Focus AND Motley Fool Select
By now, you've probably heard all about Industry Focus 2002. Who hasn't? You know, it's the 18 stock ideas, 16 industry yearly extravaganza we're so excited about. Well, just in time for winter, we've bundled Industry Focus with a one year subscription of The Motley Fool Select, our monthly marvel of stock ideas. Check out this special deal and save big.
Online retailing pacesetter Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) said today that its order volume for the holiday season was up 23% over last year. For the period between Nov. 9 and Dec. 21, over 37.9 million items were ordered from the five global Amazon sites. Among the best-selling items were 450,000 Harry Potter books and products, and 150,000 Shrek videotapes and DVDs. In its press release, the company said that these order numbers should not be used as a "predictor or indicator of revenue or other financial information relating to Amazon.com."
International food giant Nestle has agreed to pay $641 million to General Mills (NYSE: GIS) to acquire the 50% ownership stake of Ice Cream Partners USA that it doesn't already own. The deal gives Nestle 99-year licensing rights to the Haagen-Dazs brand of ice cream and frozen dessert products in the U.S. General Mills will continue to own the Haagen-Daz brand rights for international markets.
And Finally...
Today on Fool.com: Is Harley healthy? A Fool takes a look at the motorcycle giant's latest numbers.... Whitney Tilson sizes up his year -- and the stocks he took a close look at.... Jeff Fischer walks through the details and taxes of the Drip Portfolio's first sell.
Contributors:
Brian Bauer, Bob Bobala, Robert Brokamp, Jeff Fischer, Tom Jacobs, Bill Mann, Selena Maranjian, Rex Moore, Dayana Yochim
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