Entries Tagged 'investing' ↓

These things gotta happen every five years or so, ten years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood. –Clemenza, The Godfather

The recession is undoubtedly a very difficult time for America and the rest of the world. However, during this rough period, its important to realize that things will get better. Here are 7 areas and ideas that will emerge stronger when the economic crisis subsides:

Over the last year and a half, I worked as a convertible trader at Merrill Lynch. Last week, I was laid off as part of the headcount reduction initiative for the Bank of America merger. Rather than focus on the termination, I’d rather focus on three key ideas that I learned while employed: devotion to the cause, the value of personal connections, and the importance of constantly learning. Ultimately, these concepts will help me well into my professional career and ensure that the last year and a half was not wasted.

With money coming out of Wall Street and going into science and research, the time has never been better to go into the sciences. The TARP will severely limit Wall Street pay for the next several years while at the same time increasing funding for research and science-related careers.

As I write this, I’m sitting in Newark airport, waiting for our airplane to emerge from its holding pattern and land so that we can board and get on our way. We’re already 5 hours delayed (might be a new record for me), and its Christmas Eve, so at this point, I’m just glad there is some end in sight to the waiting.

As I’m sitting here, I’m thinking about my other options to Chicago if the flight were to be cancelled. Flight-wise, there isn’t much. A bus takes about 18 hours, so thats not really feasible. A train isn’t much better — it takes around 12 or so when you factor in all the stops. So really, its fly or nothing.

In Japan and parts of Europe, people have another viable option for quick and efficient medium-distance travel. The high-speed trains in these areas can travel 300km/hr (186mph), which would get me from NY to Chicago in under 4 hours. A flight is 2.5 hours in the air plus another 2 hours or so of security and delays, so 4 hours by train certainly gives air travel a run for its money. There are other advantages too — a train can take far more people at at time, so on really high-traffic routes (like NYC to Chicago), plenty of seats are available and they can [conceivably] be sold for a lower price. Weather isn’t nearly as much of a concern, and congestion during crowded times can be solved by simply adding more cars to the train, instead of trying to pack more planes into a finite amount of runway and airspace.

Energy efficiency is a huge upside as well. When oil was above $140/barrel, the airlines couldn’t raise fairs and cut costs enough to make money. Trains don’t have nearly the same voracious energy demands — to put it in perspective, a freight train move 1 ton of cargo 423 miles on 1 gallon of diesel fuel. Admittedly, there is a definite difference between a diesel freight train and a electric magnelev train, but the scope is similar. A story on inhabitant.com (linked below) says that these trains use 1/3 of the energy of planes and 1/5 of the energy of cars. The greenhouse gases that a network of trains would save is huge, and the benefits would go beyond just environmental.

Obviously the main concern with building such a system is the huge cost of creating such an infrastructure. The solution? Start small. California recently approved 800 miles of high-speed rail that will connect every major city in the state. How about a similar system for the east coast? Connect very high-traffic routes between DC, NY and Boston. These routes are heavily trafficked by business travelers, and airline routes such as the Delta Shuttle between New York and Boston are consistently among the most profitable routes in the industry. Replacing a 1hr plane ride subject to delays and security hassles with a 1.5 hour train ride that is essentially “hop on, hop off” will certainly be attractive to many or most of these travelers. Once these routes are established and profitable, build out capacity to other cities.

Air travel ultimately is an inefficient means of transportation for short distances. Allowing a plane to use an airport slot for a 500 mile trip is a very poor use of resources, and certainly something that could be improved upon. As the government looks for the best possible ways to productively spend money to stimulate the economy, rail improvements should be near the top of the list.

The following companies will be gone or significantly diminished in influence in the next 5 years:

1. XM/Sirius
2. Blockbuster
3. Microsoft

Lets go down the list and discuss why each of these is marked for death.

XM/Sirius
First on the chopping block is satellite radio. But wait, you say…GM is including satellite radio in all its cars! I know, I know…with GM’s market power (they probably should be on this list as well, but I suppose the optimist in me will hold off for now) it seems like satellite radio is bound to replace traditional terrestrial radio. It will…but then the good-old radio-from-towers-on-the-ground model will spring right back up, and knock the satellites right out of orbit [I couldn't resist the pun]

It won’t be AM/FM this time though…the thing that will kill XM/Sirius is ubiquitous broadband internet. XM/Sirius has maybe 200 channels tops, and to a given listener, 90% of those channels are garbage. Honestly, although it makes great advertising to be able to say you have a station devoted to Aborigine tribal music, I’m never going to listen to it on my way home. Thats the case for most of the junk on right now.

Broadband to your car brings internet radio to your car. Already I can get Pandora on my phone, which gives me a personalized station based on a few recommendations I make. Imagine if you can just go on the internet at home, make a few recommendations, drag and drop a few stations into the bucket, and have 50 stations that you actually like on your dial instead of 190 that you have to scroll through to get to the 10 you care about? Want to learn spanish? Stream a learn spanish podcast right to your car. Want to hear classic jazz? Add that station to your car. Don’t like the current song? Hit ‘next’ on your receiver to skip the song as well as send a downvote to the server so you don’t hear songs like that again. Those that take the time to create a sweet deck of channels could then share that deck with others, so that if you don’t want to spend the time mixing and matching your own music, you could find someone that has already created a set of stations that looks appealing and just use theirs. Maybe some arrangement could even be made to share ad revenue with the most popular of the virtual DJs.

Blockbuster
The idea of going to a video store is rapidly becoming as antiquated as going to a CD store like Virgin or Sam Goody to buy music. The advantage, in theory, to a place like Blockbuster over Netflix is the ability to browse a physical selection and have the ability to explore the titles and potentially come across something that looks interesting that you didn’t think of. In theory that is. I was at Blockbuster today — we made one trip around the store, didn’t see anything we liked, and asked for a list of most-popular movies. Once you go down this road, the “physical selection” argument is all but gone — if you’re reading down a list at the counter anyways, why not just see a list online, which is probably personalized for you anyways? I whipped out the iPhone as we were reading this, and found a great list on Amazon — The 25 Best Movies Ever Made which was particularly good because its focused on a lot of newer movies instead of the oldies like Casablanca which are great in theory but in reality not something that I’d likely watch.

Anyways, back to what is really going to kill Blockbuster — streaming Netflix. Just recently, Netflix and TiVo added the ability to stream to set-top devices like the Roku Netflix Player and the TiVo. Combine this with movie rentals on iTunes Store, and you have a lethal combination that all-but-eliminates Blockbuster from the equation. Why go to the store when you can get personalized recommendations right from your browser, download them or stream them over your high-speed connection, and watch them right in your living room?

DVDs are going the way of CDs. Blockbuster is going under, and Netflix is the one pushing them there (as they have been doing since the start, when all they were was a DVD-by-mail company).

Microsoft
Vista was a flop. Can Microsoft survive another, especially with Apple gaining market share and Linux for Mom on the horizon?

I truly believe that the operating system is becoming irrelevant, especially as a revenue model. There was a time (circa early 2000s) when I considered myself a devoted Windows user. That was all I knew, and thats where all of the cool apps were. When computers were first getting mainstream, a good knowledge of how to use Windows was essential, since Windows was the basic springboard for all of your applications, so anything you wanted to do began with figuring out how to make Windows do it.

Fast forward to 2008… at this point, I don’t have a primary operating system. A favorite? Of course — I love Linux because I like to tinker and I like the flexibility that it provides me. Right now I’m sitting at home writing this post from a Windows laptop, but it could just as easily be the Macbook sitting in the bag in the next room. I’m a computer geek…but heres the kicker — although I’m equally comfortable with any of the 3 major OSes, so is the most inexperienced user out there. Why? Open up Firefox on Linux, OSX or Windows, and its the same. Gmail is there, as are their websites. So whats the difference if there is a start bar, a dock, or anything else.

This key theme is what will eventually drive Microsoft out of business. Why pay $200 for an operating system on your new PC when you can just get a basic box that runs Firefox for $200 total? What does it matter what the icon is when you first press the button? The reason I suspect that most people never got around to upgrading to Vista is that XP was working just fine in the internet department. Windows 98 was instable and crashed frequently, so XP solved that problem. But people don’t “use” the OS anymore, they use the browser. With a stable platform to run a stable browser, what impetus is there to get the latest and greatest operating system?