Good Info on National Oilwell Varco

I have been doing some research on this stock for a while now and this article is a nice confirmation of what I have been finding.

A good time to re-evaluate the company's fundamentals will be the Oct.
24 third-quarter earnings report. Lehman Brothers analyst Jim Crandell says the
company tends to under promise and over deliver, which it again did when it
posted surprisingly strong orders and backlog last quarter. The backlog then
totaled $7.2 billion, up from $6.4 billion in the first quarter. New orders
received in the quarter hit $1.8 billion, up from $1.2 billion, reflecting
strong demand, especially for international offshore gear. Similar growth in the
third quarter and upbeat guidance could spur further stock gains.

They pretty much own the offshore oil rig market in consumables and logistics. That market is at 90% capacity and day rates are $180,000 for the deepest of offshore rigs. Servicing that market is very lucrative because many of these rigs are 20 years old or more. NOV is the company they come to to modernize and fix up those aging rigs.

They also sell these companies consumables and other things that they need for everyday functioning. With day rates through the roof you can bet that these rigs go 24/7 and downtime costs big money. So they have pricing power when it comes to the things that that these drillers need. The number I am watching closely is how much their backlog grows in this next quarter. If it keeps getting bigger and bigger you can easily gauge how much they will make in future quarters.

THQ Signs Deal with Nintendo

I guess Nintendo is thinking about doling out some of more of its intellectual property to third parties.

Video-game software publisher THQ Inc. said Wednesday it has signed a
license agreement with Nintendo last week that will allow it to continue to use
the Japanese company's intellectual property to develop and sell games for the
Wii console.

I'm hoping someone like THQ will bring out a Wii version of Kid Icarus with new graphics and maybe a three quarters view like Ratchet and Clank. I would be willing to buy a Wii just to play that game.

J. Michels Video Game Index 10/17/07

+$533.00 +1.17%

J. Michels Uranium Index 10/17/07

-$794.00 -1.45%

Skype Sends Ebay to a Loss

I guess they didn't do as much DD as you might have expected when they bought Skype in 2005.

Early this month, eBay announced it would take a $900 million
write-down in the value of Skype. That charge, for what accountants call
impairment, essentially acknowledged that eBay executives drastically overvalued the $2.6 billion Skype acquisition, completed in October 2005.

Who knew that people wouldn't take to Internet telephony as much as you would think. It seems like such a good innovation on paper. I blame how people use the technology though. It kind of falls into a niche between regular long distance and Internet chat.

Most people just call long distance with their regular long distance carriers or just use their cell phones. And if they want to talk to their relatives for free they can just use Yahoo Chat or something similar. So there really isn't a reason to use Skype since there is already a market for a pay service and a market for a free service as well.

Woman Documents LA Murders

Now this is a really good project that should be carried out by all major cities.

Leovy is the creator of The Homicide Report, a blogging project by
the Los Angeles Times in which she is attempting to record every homicide in
Los Angeles County over the course of a year. She has covered over 700 to
date.

I think Police Departments across the nation should put up a blog that has the names of various murder victums and other unsolved crimes. Maybe someone will remember seeing something and come forward as a witness or something. Here is a link to the LA Times site. This Leovy woman should be put in for some kind of reward.

J. Michels Video Game Index 10/15/07

+$176.00 +0.38%

J. Michels Uranium Index 10/15/07

-$745.99 -1.33%

Bacteria Causes Chocolate Cravings?

Now this is certainly a weird thing to know that bugs living in your stomach are chocoholics.

A small study links the type of bacteria living in people's digestive
system to a desire for chocolate. Everyone has a vast community of microbes in
their guts. But people who crave daily chocolate show signs of having different
colonies of bacteria than people who are immune to chocolate's
allure.

J. Michels Video Game Index Weekly Gain

+$620

J. Michels Uranium Index Weekly Gain

+$3669.98

J. Michels Video Game Index 10/12/07

+$63.00 +0.14%

J. Michels Uranium Index 10/12/07

+$511.00 +0.98%

Al Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize

I kind of agree with him winning the prize.

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change jointly won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts
to spread awareness of man-made climate change and to lay the foundations for
fighting it.

I would be willing to bet that quite a few people had no idea about global warming before Gore got out there and beat the drum. Even though some people disagree that it is even happening I happen to believe that fighting global warming is a national security issue. As long as we pay Iran for oil then we are going to fight wars in the Middle East. If we don't buy Iran's main product they won't be able to kill our troops/pursue nuclear weapons/destroy Israel. The added bonus is we slow down global warming, prevent the seas from rising 20 ft, or whatever scare tactics that the Global Warming lobby wants us to believe. The sooner we are off of Iranian and Venezuelan oil the safer and more secure our country will be.

Citigroup Management Shakeup

No they didn't fire Charles Prince but they did do a lot of other things. I think the reason why Citi has done so poorly compared to other money center banks is this:

Randy Barker, one of Citi's three heads of fixed income, will leave the
company, while Geoffrey Coley, another head of fixed income, will take other
responsibilities, Prince said. Paco Ybarra, also a head of fixed income, will
continue in his current role.

They had three different guys as the head of fixed income? How do they get anything done in that department? No wonder they had $5.9 billion in sub-prime backed writedowns in this last quarter. Maybe they all sat in the same office with three desks or something. In any case it must have been hard to do anything with any kind of speed if you needed three different guys to approve it.

Let's hope the next management move will be Charles Prince retiring or taking that golden parachute out of dodge. I'm no Prince Waleed bin Talal who is one of the largest Citigroup shareholders but I have owned Citigroup stock for years now and it would be great to see some real go-getter as CEO of that company.

EA Buys BioWare and Pandemic

For $620 million in cash and $155 million in equity they have acquired some pretty good franchises. BioWare has the Neverwinter Nights franchise as well as a fantasy MMORPG that they are developing. While Pandemic has Mercenaries and Destroy All Humans, and Star Wars Battlefront under their belt. The article hints at a little $4.9 million side deal for the former employee of the private-equity firm that owns BioWare/Pandemic who is now CEO at EA. That's a nice little chunk of change to make the deal.

VG Holding is owned by private-equity firm Elevation Partners, the
former employer of EA's CEO, John Riccitiello. In a subsequent 8-K filed
Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, EA revealed Riccitiello
continues to have a stake in Elevation and as a result of the studio sale could
reap a return "up to $4.9 million at the time of partnership distributions in
the future, if any."

J. Michels Video Game Index 10/11/07

-$315.00 -0.68%

J. Michels Uranium Index 10/11/07

+$412.98 +0.76%

Dems Alienate Turkey

In another boneheaded move by Congress Turkey has been branded as perpetrators of genocide 92 years after the fact. And the worst part is that it looks like the Turks are now going to invade Northern Iraq to destablize the region.

Erdogan's government will seek authorization for a military incursion
after a public holiday which ends on Sunday, senior ruling AK Party lawmaker
Sadullah Ergin said.

Ergin said the resolution could go to parliament, where the AK
Party has a big majority, after a cabinet meeting on Monday.

Good job Congress. Maybe they think winning political feel-good measures (the author if the bill is from a mostly Armenian district) is more important then keeping one of the few Muslim allies in the area. Even if the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against the Armenians we don't have to condemn them 92 years later on the floor of the Congress. Hardly a man is now alive that was even alive during that time. The Dems need to focus on the next genocide since they failed in Rawanda and seem to be failing in Darfur. Let's hope cooler heads prevail and they vote down this Bill when it goes to the entire House.

J. Michels Video Game Index 10/10/07

+$373.02 +0.81%