Category: News

There’s no such thing as stock market momentum, says Eugene Fama, the father of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis.

New York Times: Consider the yearly returns of the Dow Jones industrial average since 1896, the year the index was created. The Dow rose in 73 of those years. And in the year after each of those climbs, it rose 64 percent of the time. That’s statistically indistinguishable from the 65 percent frequency with which the Dow rose after years when the index fell.

These results suggest that the market’s performance in 2009 doesn’t increase the probability of a net gain in 2010. (The good news, of course, is that high frequency of yearly gains. That means you’re likely to make money if you buy and hold a broad portfolio of stocks over the long term.)

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See Also:

• Sorry, Folks: The Efficient Market Hypothesis Did Not Cause The Financial Crisis
• The Efficient Market Hypothesis Of Dating
• Stop Blaming Efficient Market Theory For The Crisis

In its recent look back on the first 10 years of the century, Time Magazine proclaimed the period to be “the decade from hell”. The editors made their case based on what they saw as the signature events of the past 10 years, notably the ravages of terrorism, failed wars, and a global financial crisis. Taken together, these factors produced an era that Time is convinced will be remembered as one of the low points in our history.

As the media hate to dwell on the negative, the commentary was rife with notes of optimism about pending recovery. It could hardly be accidental that in the very next issue, Fed Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was named “Man of the Year” for his supposedly Herculean efforts to keep the economy afloat as we departed the Naughty Aughties. Although Time takes pains to point out that the “Person of the Year” honor reflects impact rather than adulation, its profile of the chairman was triumphant.

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• Mission Not Accomplished: All We’ve Done Is Increase Our Debt Load
• Peter Schiff Gloats About How He’s Whipping Chris Dodd In The Polls
• Peter Schiff: I’ve Been Bullish On Gold Since It Was At $300

Thomas Hajek, managing director of Maserati Great Britain Ltd has had his responsibilities inside the company extended as he is now in charge of the brand in the following markets: Germany, Great Britain, France, Monaco, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. The change is effective since January 1, 2010.

Hajek joined the Fiat Group in 1988. Throughout his career, he has been in charge of sales and marketing departments for Alfa Romeo, Lacia and Fi… (read more)

Don’t keep looking forward to large luxury sedans with high-output V8 engines. According to AutoCar, one of the most popular large luxury sedans, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, will be offered with a plug-in hybrid variant in its next redesign. Mercedes-Benz also expects to roll out the plug-in technology across the rest of its lineup.

“It makes a lot of sense to bundle the high-price tech option to the sort of customers willing to pay for this sort of thing,” said Mercedes R&D boss Thomas Weber.

Insiders say that with the help of weight reduction and aerodynamic improvements, the next-generation plug-in S-Class sedan can return an estimated 67 mpg.

Weber says not to expect a pure electric-model but a model with a gasoline engine for extended range traveling. “It could be possible, but no,” he said. “Our customers expect a certain range and a level of comfort, safety and space; such things lead to a certain weight and that won’t mean a good [battery] range.”

At the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show, Mercedes-Benz showed its S500 Hybrid Concept, a plug-in hybrid version of the S-Class that was powered by a V6 gasoline powered engine mated to a lithium-ion battery pack with a storage capacity of more than 10 kWh. A full charge of the electric-motor allowed the sedan to travel 19 miles on battery power alone.

Mercedes-Benz Vision S500 HYBRID Concept:

– By: Kap Shah

Source: AutoCar

The music industry has been content with blaming everyone else for its lack of vision and has been issuing the same arguments over and over again without much proof on its part and without addressing the numerous critics. Many artists, even established ones, are starting to wake up to new opportunities and make the best of them, but there are those who see it differently. U2 frontman Bono is one of them and has stirred quite a few people with his op-ed in the New York Times, in which he goes after ISPs which, he believes, are getting rich at the expense of budding artists while doing nothing to stop the scourge of file sharing.

“A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business,” he writes.

It certainly paints a bleak picture for struggling artists whose hopes and dreams are being squashed by the greed of the Internet service providers. But while aspiring songwriters are forced into a life of mediocrity and delusion and reduced “to write jing… (read more)

Nokia’s (NOK) quest for relevance in the smartphone market will soon come to fruition, though perhaps not as quickly as the company’s shareholders would like. Nokia, which saw its smartphone market share slip to 35 percent from 41 percent in its latest quarter, will reverse that decline by 2011. In fact, according to Rick Simonson, head of the company’s mobile division, Nokia is already well on its way to recovery. “Yes, we have lost ground in the smartphone space over the past 18 months, but the decline has stopped and stablised in the second and third quarters of 2009,” Simonson told India’s Economic Times. “The New Year will see [our] recovery in smartphones with the introduction of Maemo and the stabilisation of the Symbian operating system, which by the way, continues to be the platform for the largest number of smartphones, globally.”

Of course, to really drive that recovery, Nokia needs a supersmartphone that can compete with the likes of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry–and its latest efforts on that front –the N97, for example–haven’t quite been up to snuff. Well, just you wait. “By 2011, our efforts will start producing results, as we will be at par with Apple and RIM in smartphones,” said Simonson. “Not only we draw level with them, we will also win the war because, in addition to e-mail, we will be adding content, chat, music, entertainment and several other features, which will soon become very critical for success of any company in this space.”

Hey, if you’re going to dream, dream big, right?

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The MG story seemed to be heading into a good direction as the Chinese owner showed the first pictures of the new model. But fans of the British carmaker have to deal with more trouble, as Will Riley, the man who promised to revive MG-X Power, has serious legal difficulties.

The man who was supposed to employ 200 workers after spending more than 3 million pounds on his vision to maker 200 mph supercars has to deal with three lawsuits, says birminghampost.net. First, Riley has to f… (read more)

Filed under: Motorsports, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Earnings/Financials, Ferrari, Renault

Melbourne, Australia newspaper The Age has a story on the break-even point for automakers in Formula One. The numbers are based on research done by Formula Money, a company devoted to detailing the financial goings-on in F1 – however, they don’t make much sense at first glance. According to The Age, F1’s manufacturer-backed teams “Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Renault and Toyota spent €608 million ($970 million) on Formula One racing” last year. To recoup that total investment they needed to sell at least 25,000 cars, combined, at an average price of $38,800.

The questions arise when it is claimed that Ferrari “makes €275,000 ($393,643 U.S.) per car sold, and so only needs to sell 153 vehicles to break even on its €42 million ($60 million U.S.) investment in F1.” We can hardly believe Ferrari spent just $60M on F1 last year; if so, that would have left the other four teams to spend an average of $227.5M apiece based on a total spend of $970M.

According to F1 Fanatic’s team budget numbers for 2008, Ferrari spent $414.9 million, and going by F1 Network’s numbers for 2009, Ferrari spent $365 million last year. We don’t know where the truth is among the numbers in The Age’s report. What we do know, however, is that no matter what the real numbers are, they never added up for BMW, Renault or Toyota.

[Source: The Age]

Report: ‘09 F1 participants needed to sell more than 25,000 cars to break even on investment originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 09:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Safety

Plenty of our commenters have had something to say about people driving while using their cellphones, and now it looks like the issue has gotten so big it’s not being left to legislators to decide where it goes. A group called Focus Driven has been created to increase public awareness of the dangers of driving and using cell phones, and to support the victims of accidents blamed on distracted driving.

The group hasn’t announced any legislative goals for the moment – the stated focus being to get the word out about the harm that distracted driving is doing. The group does, however, have a Facebook page with 514 members at the time of writing, and if the following gets big enough – and we can’t imagine it won’t – it’s going to want to do something with that muscle. Coming so closely after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began its Distraction.gov site, it appears we may have our first groundswell issue of the teens.

[Source: Focus Driven via Inside Line]

New MADD-style group advocates for cell-free motoring originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 08:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Best Buy‘s computer optimization service costs $40 and promises to double the speed of your computer. They push it hard, so hard that you’re often forced to get it against your wishes. The trouble? It makes computers slower.

If you’ve ever bought a computer from Best Buy, you’ve doubtlessly been pitched an optimization. And you may have even been forced to buy a model already “optimized” against your wishes, as they have a practice of opening up a sizable percentage of laptops, performing the service, then sealing them back up. Want to buy this advertised laptop? Oops, only pre-optimized models are left! That’ll be $40 over the advertised price, please.

That would be a slimy enough practice if the service was actually beneficial, but a new Consumerist investigation shows that the “service” is actually damaging, slowing down new computers by an average of 32%.

What exactly are they doing to these computers to warrant a $40, then?

Upon comparing the optimized changes, the first noticeable change was a cleaner desktop. Most of the removed shortcuts were for trials, promotions and software added by the manufacture. The programs themselves were still installed and available for later access. Updates had been downloaded on all three models, but differences in the factory default setup can affect how the system is optimized. On one laptop, for example, because Windows Defender was deactivated by default, its definitions had not been updated.

Some optimization changes seemed intended to make the laptop easier to use, such as adding the status bar to the file explorer, or displaying the file menu bar in Internet Explorer. Including a link to the Downloads folder in the Start menu, for example, can save you a few clicks. Security settings were adjusted to allow for automatic Windows updates, and in Internet Explorer, privacy settings were eased up to allow websites you visit to save info you provide on your PC.

Yes, Best Buy is charging $40 to delete shortcuts from your desktop. They don’t delete the actual bloatware, just the shortcuts that let you know what bloatware is there. And they download updates for you. Good lord.

Oh, and did I mention that after one of the optimizations, the Geek Squad forgot to put the power cable back in the box? Oops!

Why is Best Buy being so crazy aggressive about rip-off services like optimization? Well, it’s no secret that they make almost all of their money off of accessories like HDMI cables, extended warranties and services like this. Most of the products they sell have razor-thin margins, meaning they’ll make three times as much profit selling you a Monster Cable than an LED LCD TV. And services like optimizations? Almost pure profit.

But that doesn’t make such anti-consumer behavior acceptable. Pre-optimizing new laptops is a downright scummy behavior, and completely contradicts their claims that it’s a mere choice and not something customers are forced into. If Best Buy is going to continue to push these expensive services, they need to make sure that it’s always a choice for customers. They also need to make clear that it, you know, actually does something useful. [Consumerist]

The 18th World Hydrogen Energy Conference 2010 will take place from 16 to 21 May 2010 in Essen under the auspices of the International Association for Hydrogen Energy (IAHE) and will be organised by the EnergyAgency.NRW, supported by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The objective of the 18th WHEC2010 is to provide a comprehensive platform for scientific information exchange and to promote hydrogen as a clean energy carrier as well as fuel cells as clean energy converters. The conference attempts to proclaim new technologies, foster strategic discussions and help develop pathways to introduce hydrogen technology into the energy economy.

Decision makers in politics, industry, research, and finance will be addressed in dedicated strategic sessions of the first conference day. Besides, contributions from international experts will focus on the role and path of hydrogen in the energy economy.

More Information about the Conference and the Registration here

Americans Ring in the New Year with a Movie at Home

Redbox, the fully-automated DVD rental provider located at the nation’s leading grocery, mass, drug and convenience stores, rented more than two million DVDs on New Year’s Eve surpassing the Company’s previous one day rental record by more than one-hundred-seventy-thousand rentals.

“District 9,” “G-Force,” “Paranormal Activity” and “Julie & Julia” were among the night’s top rentals. With more than 19,000 locations nationwide, consumers have embraced the convenience, fun and value of redbox.

“With many Americans celebrating New Year’s Eve at home and many more resolving to save money in 2010, redbox proved a great way to do both,” said Gary Cohen, senior vice president, marketing and customer experience.

“Renting a record-breaking two million DVDs in a single night, redbox looks forward to continuing to provide consumers with incredible value and convenience in the New Year.”

In 2009, redbox surpassed 350 million rentals nationwide.

Redbox makes DVD renting easy, affordable and fun. Located at select McDonald’s restaurants, leading grocery and convenience stores, and Walmart and Walgreens locations in select markets, each fully automated redbox kiosk holds 630 DVDs, representing up to 200 of the newest releases.

Consumers simply use a touch screen to select their favorite movies, swipe a valid credit or debit card and go.

Customers can keep the DVD for as long as they’d like for one low nightly rate, and return it to any one of redbox’s more than 19,000 locations nationwide.

For added convenience, customers can reserve a DVD online at redbox.com or via an iPhone and pick it up at the redbox location of their choice.

About Redbox

Redbox Automated Retail, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Coinstar, Inc., offers new release DVD rentals through its network of conveniently located, self-service kiosks.

Redbox has rented more than 500 million DVDs and is available at more than 19,000 locations nationwide, including select McDonald’s restaurants, leading grocery and convenience stores, and Walmart and Walgreens locations in select markets.

For more information, visit redbox.com.

Filed under: Motorsports, Videos, Volkswagen

Remember that drag racing, 700-horsepower Saab 99 with the Audi Quattro chassis swap? Well here’s the MkI Volkswagen Polo version of that car, by AME Racing. The Wild Wild East German tuning house thoroughly reworked the motor, getting 1,032 horsepower and 701 pound-feet out of the 1.9-liter lump. Yes, a giant turbo is involved. Redline is a sky-high 9,500 rpm. Going from standstill to 60 miles per hour takes 2.3 seconds. That’s less time than it took you to read that sentence.

We’ll let the car do the rest of it’s talking. Follow the jump to see the vid and watch a Polo do things that can only be described as “ridiculous.”

[Source: Motor Trend]

Continue reading Video: Mk1 Volkswagen Polo by AME Racing does the quarter in 9.38

Video: Mk1 Volkswagen Polo by AME Racing does the quarter in 9.38 originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re still playing Madden NFL 09 (maybe you found it somewhere for $5.00?), you’ll soon be without online play. Most versions of Madden 09 will soon have their servers shut down, along with those of several other Electronic Arts games.

The move is part of EA’s annual effort to consolidate its online sports lineup. Madden 09 is the most notable name on a list that also includes NHL 08, Facebreaker, and Fight Night Round 3.

“You may continue to play the games online up until these dates, but certain community programs may begin to close down prior to the shutdown dates,” EA wrote on their official website

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Flurry Analytics has been real busy this holiday season. They recently merged with Pinch Media to create the biggest (in terms of user base) mobile analytics platform on the market. Today, Flurry is announcing a partnership with comScore, Inc. to provide mobile analytics for comScore clientele. This will provide Flurry with a fresh new revenue stream and comScore with the ability to stay relevant with their analytics offerings to existing clientele.

Essentially, comScore, inc. has a large sales force and existing relationships with big brands that pay comScore to provide them with analytics. These analytics come primarily through panel data, in which comScore uses a sampling of users as a way to determine web traffic and usage data. By selling Flurry’s SDK to clients, comScore can remain relevant by providing mobile analytics on top of their existing web analytics package.

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(Editor’s note: “Ask the Attorney” is a new VentureBeat feature allowing start-up owners to get answers to their legal questions. Submit yours in the comments below and look for answers in the coming weeks. Author Scott Edward Walker is the founder and CEO of Walker Corporate Law Group, PLLC, a boutique corporate law firm specializing in the representation of entrepreneurs.)

Question:  My two friends and I are launching a new venture, and we have agreed to split the stock ownership equally.  The problem is that I’m not sure how committed they both are.  What happens if one of them leaves in a few months?  Does he still get to keep all of his stock?

Answer: That’s a good question – and a common issue among founders.  I strongly suggest that you create what’s called a “vesting schedule” upon the company’s incorporation, which would require stock ownership to vest over time.  It’s customary to impose reasonable vesting restrictions on founders’ stock because it has generally been issued not only for the founders’ services and/or property (e.g., software) relating to the conception of the venture, but also for their continuing commitment and efforts.

As your question implies, it would be inherently unfair for one of the founders to quit the venture after a few months (or weeks), but still be permitted to keep all of his or her stock.

The most common founder schedule vests an equal percentage of stock (25 percent) every year for four years on a monthly basis.  Sometimes, however, it may be appropriate to impose a one-year “cliff” (i.e., the founders would not get their first 25 percent unless they have remained with the company for 12 months) – particularly where the founders don’t know each other or don’t have a history of working together.

Another possibility is to vest a portion of the stock “up front” (i.e., one or more founders would receive a certain percentage immediately) – usually as a result of their contributions to the venture prior to the issuance of the stock or date of incorporation.  Vesting restrictions are addressed in a restricted stock purchase agreement, which each founder would be required to sign and which would grant the company the right to repurchase any unvested shares (at the initial purchase price) at the time of the founder’s departure.

In addition, investors in connection with the first professional (“Series A”) round of financing will usually require a vesting schedule.  Accordingly, it would be prudent for the founders to impose a reasonable one of these upon incorporation for a second reason: If a reasonable schedule has already been established prior to negotiations with the investors, it’s more likely the investors will simply keep it in place.

If the founders haven’t established a vesting schedule or a large percentage of the founders’ stock has already vested (due to either the lapse of time or the unreasonableness of the schedule), the investors will impose their own vesting schedule –in effect forcing the founders to “earn” stock they think they already own.

This may be a difficult pill for the founders to swallow, but from the investors’ perspective, this is a significant issue – i.e., they believe they are paying for the founders’ long-term commitment and “sweat” – and thus one that they will rarely give-up.

Finally, there are often issues relating to the acceleration of vesting that need to be addressed among the founders, including (1) what happens if the company is sold and (2) what happens if a founder is terminated “without cause.”

Disclaimer: This “Ask the Attorney” post discusses general legal issues, but it does not constitute legal advice in any respect.  No reader should act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information presented herein without seeking the advice of counsel in the relevant jurisdiction.  The author and his firm expressly disclaim all liability in respect of any actions taken or not taken based on any contents of this post.

Photo by vaXzine via Flickr

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It’s the end of the decade. And like some people, you might be thinking about New Year’s (or Decade’s) resolutions. But instead of hitting the gym more, you could consider volunteering your time for a cause or organization. If you’re not sure where to start, there are a number of startups using technology to connect volunteers with organizations who need their time and energy.

For those who have not volunteered in the past and are looking to get more educated before giving your time, check out VolunteerMatch. The San Francisco based company holds monthly one-hour “How to be a great volunteer” webinars that a free and easy to register. Topics covered include: training and screening tools non-profits use, how to evaluate if an organization is a good fit for you, potential stumbling blocks volunteers might encounter and how to overcome any obstacles that you may face along the way. The next webinar is scheduled for Jan. 14, 2010. If you’re interested, you can register here.

If you’re looking for an easy and customizable way to search for volunteer opportunities in your area then check out iParticipate, which was started by members of the entertainment industry to promote volunteering. The site offers a clean user interface that makes finding a volunteer opportunity in your area quick and easy. After searching in the Boston area for “animal” volunteer opportunities, it generated a list of 100 possibilities – everything from shelter caretaker to fostering animals. For those looking to get more specific, the list can be filtered by cause, distance or post date. iParticipate also integrates with Google Maps and plots search results.

Many volunteer opportunities require time commitments every week. For those looking for a more relaxed volunteer opportunity, then Extraordinaries has created an innovative mobile or web browsing volunteering system. The company allows people on the go to complete tasks using their cellphones for organizations or causes by committing just a few spare minutes a day. One task available is sponsored by KaBOOM! who is looking for volunteers to help them map playground locations in an effort to determine which need to be rebuilt. By simply taking a photo of a playground and uploading to the Extraordinaries site, the task is complete for that volunteer. The company also gives organizations and causes a simple way to create tasks leveraging either a maps or photo format, such as the one described above.

Another mobile opportunity to volunteer can be found at Give Work, an iPhone application developed by Samasource and Crowdflower – both helping to bring key resources to refugees via the internet. The app is similar to the Extraordinaries concept and asks users to volunteer a few minutes of their time to help refugees by using their mobile phones. Users ares asked to complete onscreen tasks that could include tagging a map or tracing a road. The refugees are training to complete these same tasks, so by volunteering you generate money to continue training and the campaign, which is an effort to help refugees in Dadaab, Kenya – the world’s largest refugee site.

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The UK seeks to install 3,500 offhsore turbines over the next decade

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to kick start this week an ambitious £100 billion ($162 billion) development of the British seabed to install massive offshore wind farms.

The wind farms could, at least on paper, provide power to most of Britain’s households.

The Crown Estate, an independent body that owns most of the seabed around the UK shores, will announce this week, which consortia will get to develop the nine project zones, mostly in the North Sea, that will house these power plants.

The project is the most ambitious of its kind in the world, says the Guardian.

The biggest development is the Dogger Bank, an area about 100 kilometers (160 miles) off the north east Scottish coast, with a capacity of 10 gigawatts and is estimated to cost more than £30 billion to develop.

The UK, taking a queue from Denmark, is betting big on its offshore to green its generation portfolio. Near London on the Thames estuary Denmark’s DONG Energy, E.ON UK, the British unit of German utility E.ON and Masdar, the Abu Dhabi clean tech investment group, are developing the 613 megawatts London Array project.

The UK’s offshore ambitions face some obvious hurdles. One is cost. It cost on average $5.0 million per megawatt of capacity to develop an offshore wind farm.

Also, as we wrote here last summer, the UK lacks the cleantech supply chain to support such massive undertaking. Although the British government’s strong support could change that and convince key sector companies to open up plants.

Photo Credit: GridServer.com

The automobile parts and service arm of Chrysler Group, Mopar, has just released details on a new performance and appearance package for the Challenger, that aims to further enhance the muscular look of the car, the company says in a statement.

"Our mission at Mopar is to add value to all of our brands," said Pietro Gorlier, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mopar Service, Parts and Customer Care, Chrysler Group LLC. "Our ‘Moparized’ Dodge Challenger is a great… (read more)