Live Free or Die January 14, 2000February 15, 2017 Thank God it’s Friday. If all goes well, I am in a “foreign land” as you read this, and was out of touch yesterday, in case Amazon acquired Sears (damn — and Quickbrowse was so close to getting it!) or Canada invaded Maine (I repeat: it is the unexpected that moves markets, and would we really go to war over Maine? Sure, Portland or Ogonquit or Bangor or any part of Southern Maine or even Bahaba – but that stuff way up at the top?). So if something big happened, I don’t know about it. I am using this occasion to catch up on some odds and ends: FREE SHIRTS Lucy Tompkin: “Thanks for recommending the Paul Frederick site, and mentioning the Free Shirt promotion. I ordered one for my husband, (“Black Glen Plaid with Varsity Spread Collar and Button Cuffs in Egyptian Cotton Broadcloth – #960blk”), and it arrived just a few days later. The shirt is quite nice, comparable to those we buy at Nordstrom, and entirely satisfactory, especially for only $7.50 for shipping! What a deal! I will probably order from them again, based on the high quality of their merchandise.” The limit is one free shirt per customer, first-time customers only, but the promotion seems still to be going. FREE SNEAKERS Last month WebMD was giving away free sneakers. Feeling tip-top, I popped over to the site just long enough to enter my address and click – no credit card info required, no charge for shipping – and sure enough, last week a brand-new pair of seemingly $59-ish sneakers arrived. I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but I know it will ultimately be very profitable for someone to have sponsored this promotion. FREE MONEY Steven Coultas: “If you open an account with X.com, a new online bank, they put $20 free into your bank account. No costs, no minimums. I’ve just been trying this out, and it works quickly and easily. You can also transfer your $20 instantly into money market funds or mutual funds, all of which seem to be excellent deals. The bank is FDIC-insured. A review of the service is available from http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/ob/20000111.asp.” Well, I couldn’t resist, so I signed up. I think I may be $20 richer, and that by clicking Steven’s link, I may have made him $10 richer as well. I cannot vouch for this outfit in any way, although – not being a complete fool – I have imbedded my referral code in this link so that if you sign up for your free $20 I may be $10 richer as a result. You can see how this could quickly get out of hand, which may be why, when I went to transfer $1 to a friend, as a test, X.com told me I had $20 in its bank (the twenty it had given me) plus a $200 credit line – yet not enough money to cover the $1 transfer. And it also may be why, when I clicked to summon live on-line customer service, I didn’t get any. My guess is that they are just swamped with all this . . . and that people everywhere are sending $1 to friends, in order to get $10 referral fees back. (If your friend is not already an X.com account holder, he has to become one to collect the money you tried to transfer. If he doesn’t sign up, the money never leaves your account.) Time will tell, but if accounts can be opened automatically for $30 each – the $20 free to the account-opener and the $10 referral – that’s a lot less than miost banks pay to win new customers. It may be a while before I’d do any serious banking or investing on X.com. But hey: $20 is $20. (And, what – you never heard of Bahaba, Maine? Maybe you just don’t recognize the spelling. It’s pronounced: Bar Harbor.)
It Is SO Hard January 13, 2000February 15, 2017 Every so often I try to attack the piles that sit atop other piles, and discover something fun. Here’s a fax I’m yet to deal with that someone sent me on August 4th . . . 1993. It’s a copy of a Forbes article entitled Bearish on America (July 19, 1993). The large-type summary above the title reads: “Are you willing to invest a good part of your money in countries like India and China? If you’re not, says Barton Biggs, you will have to settle for a lousy return on your investments over the next half-dozen years at least.” The next half-dozen years . . . hmmm, well, that would bring us up approximately to the present. As Morgan Stanley’s chief investment officer, Biggs was recommending in July 1993 that clients cut their exposure to U.S. equities to just 18% of all their assets. His reasons? He thought the U.S. stock market had gotten way ahead of itself, with the Dow at 3500 He thought that opportunities were better abroad. And, finally, Forbes reported, “[he didn’t] take seriously the Administration’s assertion that its tax increases and so-called spending cuts will shrink the federal budget deficit by anything like the half-trillion dollars Clinton claims. Once the markets understand that the deficit is going to be staggeringly high, [they will all come tumbling down].” Nor was he alone in doubting the Clinton/Gore economic plan – not a single Republican voted for the budget. But in hindsight, the last half-dozen years have not been bad at all. A year later, James Davidson — a newsletter writer who is so much smarter than almost anyone else, and who is so much better plugged into the truth, and so disdainful of those who disagree with him — headlined the July 20, 1994, issue of Strategic Investment, his newsletter: “IT’S OVER.” “Strategic Investment has repeatedly warned that the dangers of deeper depression remain,” concluded the piece. ” . . . It was fun while it lasted, but anything that can’t go on forever will come to an end. The plunging bond market and plunging dollar tell us it is over.” Of course, it’s dangerous to laugh at these things. It’s just when you do that you’re the one who’s made to look silly with hindsight. (“The day after Tobias mocked Davidson’s long-wrong dire predictions, the stock market collapsed, deflating consumer confidence and leading to the worst recession in living memory. It was not until the summer of 2011 that a recovery really took hold, pulled out of despair by the Scandinavians, whose Nokia and Ericsson behemoths had become the engines of global growth.”) And I do worry about the stock market, or at least some parts of it. Yes, Yahoo is down from 500 to 360 in the last six trading days — a 28% drop. But is that the bottom? That could be as deep into the bargain basement as it will ever sink. But I will hold onto my reckless short a bit longer. (REPEAT: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.) Because according to the Market Cap Scale you can access from the menu bar at the top or bottom of this page, Yahoo is still valued at more than the New York Times Company, a powerful brand respected around the world. Plus Apple! (which is also a pretty hot, and solidly profitable, brand these days). Plus FedEx! (which will deliver many of the e-commerce Internet shipments). Plus General Motors! (which for all its problems did manage to earn a $6 billion profit last year and pay out about $1 billion in dividends, or about five times as much in dividends as Yahoo had in sales). Put YHOO on the left side of the scale (by clicking the “Add” button and following the instructions) . . . and put NYT, AAPL, FDX and GM on the right side (by clicking the check boxes to the left of their names) and . . . when you click “weigh,” the scale goes THUNK! As YHOO hits the ground, leaving the other four lightweights, combined, suspended in mid-air. My friend Joe Cherner is even more skeptical than I am. He writes: “Computer manufacturers are in the best position to be portal owners. Eventually, when you buy a computer, you will plug in the electrical cord and the phone cord. There will be a button on the keyboard marked Internet. When you press it, you will go to a portal (via free Internet access). The company that sells the computer will decide which portal you go to. Yahoo would be dead.” I’m not sure he’s right. I think Yahoo will find a way to prosper. But that doesn’t make it worth as much as Apple, the New York Times, FedEx and General Motors, combined. But I have digressed! Did you notice that? One minute I’m talking about Barton Biggs and the next I’m weighing stock symbols on a virtual scale. Soon I will be talking about hit TV dramas. I did have a point, and that point is this: It is SO hard to call the market. Barton Biggs is a very smart, wise man. He was so wrong. My friend Joe and I are not total idiots, but we have lost more than a dime or two with our laser-like intellects. So you? Should you beat yourself up for buying too early or selling too soon? No. Should you trade actively in order to beat the market? No. Active trading will eat you alive in transaction costs and taxes. Should you play this game at all? Well, not if you can’t afford the fun. For game-playing I recommend computer Scrabble. And on Wednesday nights at 9pm on NBC: “The West Wing.” Do not miss it. But for your money, I would eschew the Investment Casino, exciting though it certainly has been of late. I would put into stocks only money you truly won’t need to touch for many years. And that money, unless you have an exceptional talent for this, I would put into two or three no-load, low-expense, low-tax index funds. Especially for younger readers, the best approach is to invest $250 a month or $2,500 – whatever you can comfortably afford – and just keep doing it, through ups and downs, all your working life. The hard part is making the money, investing it methodically, and having the discipline not to “play” with it. Discipline is hard, but not as hard as beating the market.
AOL Swallows Time January 12, 2000January 28, 2017 Some of you know I have an interest in Quickbrowse, which is getting better and cleaner and easier by the week. The latest version went up last night. Usership is growing. We are thinking of acquiring Sears.st interface went up last night. New users are beginning to sign on at an ever increasing rate. We are thinking of acquiring Disney. OK, so we are not yet public. Nor have we revenue. But we are not thinking about Disney or Viacom or NBC, whom other, more established new media companies covet. We do not propose to jostle Yahoo’s investment bankers with our own (once we retain some). But Sears is the sort of backwater old-economy company we just might be able to swallow and reenergize. We will even let current management run the combined company for a while, while we hire an ad sales staff and an accountant. Seriously: Hats off to Steve Case and crew. I use AOL all the time. I think AOL needed Time Warner more than Time Warner needed AOL – that Time’s shareholders are getting too small a slice of the proposed pie (we plan to be more generous with the shareholders of Sears) – but there’s no denying a good fit here. There’s also no denying the trend toward just a handful of global giants in most fields, which makes me nervous. A long time ago, I wrote an article called “The Day They Couldn’t Fill the Fortune 500,” for New York Magazine. Almost seems as if it’s coming true. Jim Fowler: “I would like to receive your daily column via email. Is this possible?” Just scroll down to the bottom of this page and click the gray-and-red Q-Page button. Another fine service of Quickbrowse-Sears. (Have your own family web page you’d like to enable others to receive by e-mail on a schedule of their choosing? Click the hyperlink just below the button. You can Q-Page your web page or fledgling web site easily and for free.)
Grow or Die? January 11, 2000February 15, 2017 Tom O’Connor: “I’m a student, heading to a career as an ad copywriter. I try to increase my MBA-type knowledge of how business works, and I don’t understand the grow-or-die concept as it applies to companies. Sure, it makes sense for publicly traded ones that have to satisfy analysts’ desire for earnings growth, but beyond that, why? If I’m turning a profit, why does it matter whether or not I’m growing?” If you’re not growing when the population is, I guess you’re sort of shrinking. And if you’re not growing, then you’re: taking all the profits out of the business instead of reinvesting them (in which case you’re probably not keeping up with the competition in terms of new equipment and/or better ways of doing things); or else . . . reinvesting your profits at zero return (which doesn’t bode terribly well, either). And if you’re not growing, it’s not too interesting or exciting for the sales team and management, so you’re not likely to attract or keep the young, bright go-getters – but your competition will. And those hungry go-getters will work hard and smart to win your customers over to the competition. All that said, I’m sure there’s a place for the charming little guest house that has its fiercely loyal repeat clientele; that never expands; that never raises its rates, except perhaps to match inflation; and that provides a lovely living for the people who run it. But, with exceptions, there’s certainly something to the maxim.
Free Stuff, Hunger, and Y2K January 10, 2000January 28, 2017 Three unrelated items: 1. Recently, I mentioned dealcatcher.com. Here are two more sites for free stuff and promo deals: thefreesite.com and deal-finder.com. 2. A week earlier, I was pointing out the good intentions but limitations of The Hunger Site. Here’s a good idea from Christopher Frizzelle: “If The Hunger Site puts a link to Amazon.com somewhere on its webpage, it can earn 5% of the total Amazon purchase that the customer made on account of the click-through. Chances are, the average Amazon shopper spends more than $10.00 at Amazon’s site — not to mention if any number of those shoppers know that a portion of their purchase is going toward battling third-world starvation — and $10.00 on this arrangement means two quarters instead of one nickel will go to hungry kids. That’s ten times more money for food.” So keep the banner ads and the nickels, but get Amazon shoppers into the habit of accessing Amazon through The Hunger Site. Smart, Christopher. (John: What do you think?) Alan Levit: “I’ve got a DSL connection and three computers. I didn’t read your first column on Hungersite, and now I guess I’m glad I didn’t. I’ve been merrily clicking along on two computers every morning, with my eight-year-old clicking on the third (Hungersite is bookmarked on all three). I never would have considered these nickels to be our family’s share of our just contribution to the poor, but our 15 cents a day, and everyone else’s, does seem to add up. I’ll happily keep clicking next year.” 3. Last March, Howard Ruff told his newsletter subscribers: “THE WORLD IS A BUBBLE AND Y2K IS A PIN.” Mmmmm . . . no. Rick Boyd: “Now that the big date has passed with remarkably few problems, I was wondering: What preparations did you make for Y2K difficulties?” Well, a while back, I bought a generator, but largely for thunderstorm and hurricane power outages. I also bought a ton of canned/bottled food and drink, Stern-o, candles, etc. – maybe $1,500 worth. But it was in bulk on sale, and will all or mostly come in handy. So all that was “lost” was the interest on the money for a few months, as I eat down my inventory. Finally, I had more cash on hand than I usually would. But, as with most people, my anxiety over this lessened markedly in recent months. It seems that a lot of people did their jobs well, and we owe them a round of applause. That said, it’s always good to be prepared for an emergency, especially the unadvertised, unexpected kind. We’re all better off, individually and as communities, if we have a couple of weeks’ essentials on hand, and a way to stay warm and see in the dark, just in case. Patient sitting on examining table, in gown, being given his doctor’s diagnosis: “Unfortunately,” says the doctor, “you have what we call ‘no insurance.’” — New Yorker cartoon, by Michael Maslin
Knock, Knock. Yahoo’s There? "Boo." Boo who? Boo-hoo for you if you bought Yahoo at $500 a share January 7, 2000February 15, 2017 **LUXURY CONDO FOR RENT** Some damn fool needs a long-term tenant for an unfurnished 3-bedroom, 4-bath, nearly-3000-square-foot condo with large terraces overlooking Miami’s Biscayne Bay. Good security, tennis, pool; adjacent marina. On the wrong side of the Bay (the Miami side, not the Miami Beach side) so it’s (relatively) cheap: $2,500 a month. Fifteen minutes to the airport, downtown, and South Beach. Click here for photos and more info. (It’s the tall brown tower. The floor-plan shown is for one of the smaller apartments.) Me-mail me if you’re interested. Brian A.: “You wrote: ‘Right now [with the stock at $475], Yahoo is valued at significantly more than Ford and General Motors, combined.’ This is probably more a matter of low investor expectations of Ford and General Motors than excessive expectations of Yahoo.” Really? You don’t see any problem with Yahoo earning $10 billion-a-year after taxes in a few years? That’s a third more than General Electric made this past year, and General Electric is one of the most profitable companies in the world. It’s nearly half again as much as Exxon/Mobil earned last year, and Exxon/Mobil is not a small or unprofitsable enterprise. A surprising number of Internet users buy drive cars and buy gas. Yet $10 billion in after-tax earnings is what it would take for Yahoo to be selling at “12 or 13 times earnings,” at its recent $475 a share price. (Since last week’s column, Yahoo is down 100 points, but it’s still valued at more than twice General Motors — and could easily bounce back up another 100 points or another 1000 points – why not? At least that seems to be the attitude of some of today’s more optimistic investors.) The math could hardly be simpler: At nearly $475 a share, and more than 263 million shares outstanding, the company was valued at $125 billion (today, a paltry $96 billion). And $125 billion is 12 or 13 times $10 billion. So with a market capitalization of $125 billion and earnings of $10 billion, the company would be valued at 12 or 13 times its earnings. Now, you may say, “12 or 13 times earnings – for a hot growth stock like Yahoo? Are you crazy?” But I would submit that once it’s earning $10 billion a year after tax, it would be so large it might not be such a hot growth stock. And in any event, in the meantime, there’s the small matter of getting from its current after-tax earnings — $16 million in the last 9 months — up to $10 billion. It’s possible, of course, but how many companies today earn $10 billion a year in profit after tax? It’s really not an easy thing to do. Even Microsoft, with its near-monopoly on operating systems and office-suite software around the world hasn’t reported earnings quite that high. I am a fan of both Yahoo and Microsoft, but there’s a difference. Though I use Yahoo every day, I’ve never paid them a dime and don’t plan to. Nor do I pay attention to any of the banner ads. They’re a lot easier to ignore than TV commercials. And if they ever did become hard to ignore, I’d just stop using Yahoo. I use Microsoft products every day, too. (And, currently, at least, could not possibly stop.) The difference is that, between the licensing fees built into the cost of my computers plus the software I’ve purchased directly, I’ve paid Microsoft lots of money. And they’ve got hundreds of millions of customers. And still they are only now barely getting into the $10 billion-a-year profit range. What if Pokemon or Harry Potter puts up a portal, and half Yahoo’s visitors start using that? So give me a break. Yes, if everything goes right, as it may, these terrific folks at Yahoo (and they are terrific) may one day, conceivably, build a company worth as much as Ford. Or even Ford plus General Motors plus Dow Jones plus the New York Times Company plus a billion or two in spare change,. That’s how Yahoo was valued for a moment on January 4, when the market-makers temporarily bumped it up to 500-1/8 in order to activate the stop-loss orders that short-sellers had entered at 500. (Or so a cynic might surmise.) It is conceivable. But why would anyone possibly pay that much for it today? Or even anywhere even vaguely close? I saw Lou Dobbs on the “Today Show,” and I like Lou Dobbs, but he was giving really dumb advice, if you ask me. He was asked whether someone with $2,500 should go into the market at these prices (it was actually January 4, I think, that he was on the show) — and whether they should go into the high-flying tech stocks — and he said yes (no!) but that they should get professional advice because this is not a field that is easy for the amateur to dope out. Well, I ask you: What kind of professional advice is a client with $2,500 going to get? And what will it cost him? If it costs even just $100, that’s 4% right there. And what will that advice be worth? A great many professionals had “buy” recommendations on Yahoo when it was selling for more than Ford, GM, Dow Jones and the New York Times Company combined. So this is all really a little silly, even though the Internet itself is very real, and my cell phone is magic, and Yahoo is terrific, and the future is so exciting I sometimes want to burst. For now, I’ll stay short a little Yahoo, a little Amazon, and long the kinds of stocks nobody with any sense of fashion could possibly want. Monday: Free Stuff, Hunger, and Y2K.
Deals and Meals January 6, 2000February 15, 2017 The Internet teems with deals. Dealcatcher.com alerts you to many of them. Like this one: “If you switch to Qwest fiber-optic long distance,” reports Dealcatcher, “they will send you a $100 check (a real check, not just credit).” You get 5.9-cent-per-minute long distance, anytime; no monthly fee; your name removed from all major telemarketing lists; and a $25 coupon for taking an online tour of the service. “A hundred dollars buys a lot of 39-cent cheeseburgers,” concludes Alan Light, who kindly sent me this link. That was a reference, of course, to yesterday’s column, about McDonald’s, which elicited a skillet of responses. Someone named Harold wrote: “Hey, you missed out on the Senior drinks at Mickey Ds for 25 cents!” Wow. A quarter for a sarsaparilla? This deal may not be available in your area, but it’s certainly worth admitting your age to find out. Paul Langley: “Our dog Perry, a Border Collie, who just turned 13 and refuses to eat dog food as of last fall, well knows the McDonald’s cheap burger secret. Every Sunday he goes to the drive-in window and gets six cheeseburgers (they’re 49 cents here in Boston) and has two a day until he returns on Wednesday to get eight regular burgers (they’re 39 cents here) which last until Sunday when the cycle repeats. Sometimes he lets his dads buy extra so they can have some too. There is one flaw to your otherwise excellent plan and that is that at the McDonald’s we go to they limit the quantity to 10 per customer.” Not when I bought my 20, they didn’t. But if there is such a rule, this may be its genesis: Jesse Lunin-Pack: “Your story reminds me of my days running the kitchen at a sleepaway camp (my first brush with responsibility, age 21). The local McDonalds advertised 25-cent hamburgers, and I ordered 1000 of them. We cooked up some fries and fed the whole camp for less than it would have cost us to cook all the food ourselves, and the kids LOVED it. The next time they did it, the McDonalds added some fine print to their offer — limit of 10 per customer!” Toby Gottfried: “39 cents? You forget the $10,000 for the coronary bypass operation.” (Splurge, several of you suggested, and eat non-meat Boca Burgers instead.) Rick Mayhew: “Taco Bell has 39 cent tacos on Wednesday (soft) and Sunday (crunchy). My wife and I have a meal for $1.67 (tax included). We drink tap water. The funny thing is, we like it. If it were a hardship then they wouldn’t taste nearly as good!” I just find that dog so annoying. Isn’t he in the Taco Bell ads? R. J. Kirsch: “[In the spirit of] Cooking Like a Guy™, have you read Cooking Without A Kitchen: The Coffeemaker Cookbook, by Peter Mazonson?” No, but it’s clearly my kind of book. Amazon says “Unique utilization of the appliance. Basket is used to steam food and carafe to heat items.” Fun, quick, healthy and little clean up. My kinda cuisine. Are you all aware, incidentally, that you can poach a salmon in your dishwasher? It’s true!
Cooking Like a Guy™ Recipe #2: Cheapburgers January 5, 2000February 15, 2017 CHEAPBURGERS I don’t want you planning any big dinner parties around this until you verify it for your own community, but McDonald’s — Mickey D’s, as gourmets know it around the world — seems to be giving away the store. I walked in Sunday night, the guest of a guy who cooks like a guy, and confronted the usual brightly backlit billboard of enticing $2 and $3 choices. Nowhere on the board did it reveal the secret my friend claimed to know (he told me he had seen it revealed in a massive TV ad campaign): that on Sundays, cheeseburgers are 39 cents at McDonald’s. “No way,” I had told my friend, much as a muggle might regard the prospect of an all-owl postal service. (I read Harry Potter over New Year’s.) “Way,” he insisted. “Watch this.” And before you knew it, we had all feasted royally . . . his treat . . . and I had forked over $8.40 (with tax) for an additional 20 cheeseburgers “to go.” Therefore: Buy cheapburgers. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have bought 50 or 100. Freeze. Not the ones you plan to eat in the next few days, but the rest. That’s it. When you’re hungry, just microwave for a minute. I had one just now for breakfast. Outstanding. (Charles was beyond horrified.) Hint: To moisten even more delectably before microwaving — and to increase the nutritional content of your meal — lift the top bun after 40 seconds and add a glop of ketchup. (Ketchup is both a fruit and a vegetable.) Then microwave a final 20 seconds. I don’t usually like to complicate my recipes with an extra step, but in this case, it’s worth it. Note: Requires no cookware or utensils of any kind, either for cooking or dining. The cheeseburgers come individually wrapped, suitable for microwaving. Clean-up, upon completion of the meal, consists of scrunching the wrapper into a ball and rebounding it off the wall into the trash. (Scrunch with all ketchup and grease on the inside, so as not to mark the wall.) Want to save even more money? Wednesdays, plain hamburgers are 29 cents. Thirsty? Quaff, naturally, with an ice cold bottle of Honest Tea. Money no object? Mondays, chicken McNuggets are 79 cents. Go wild. Vegetarian? Well, truthfully, I think we’ll be hearing more and about animal rights, and finding it less and less preposterous. I’m not a big carnivore. But 39 cents? My taste for a bargain overcame my greener, healthier self.
Yahoo! January 4, 2000April 22, 2012 This is really getting exciting. Yahoo was up $42 yesterday, to $475 a share – its market cap is now $125 billion. If it quadruples again this year and next, it will be the first $2 trillion company. (So far, the world’s highest market cap goes to Microsoft, at around $600 billion.) Yahoo earned a solid 25 cents a share in the most recent 12 months, so who says earnings are the kiss of death for an Internet company? Needless to say, paying $475 for an annual earnings stream of, most recently, 25 cents, seems high. Would you give me $475 if I promised to give you 25 cents a year? Would you liquidate all your assets and give me $475,000 if I promised to give you $250 a year? But it’s not the 25 cents that has people excited. Obviously. First Union analyst Carolyn Luther Trabuco rates the stock a strong buy at $475 – it’s cheap here! – because, according to CBS/Marketwatch, she thinks it should hit $600 in the next 12 months. What has her excited is her expectation that revenues for this past quarter will come in at $190 million. And she has upped her earnings-per-share forecast by a full penny, to 16 cents for the quarter just ended from the 15 cents she had previously anticipated. Multiply those quarterly sales and earnings expectations by four, and you have the company now selling for 164 times annual sales and 742 times annual earnings. But of course the point is that Yahoo sales and earnings will keep growing. Otherwise, why would you pay $475 for a claim on 16 cents in quarterly earnings? You could get $8 a quarter right now from a federally-insured bank certificate of deposit. (For those slow at math: $8 is a larger amount of money than 16 cents.) Seriously. Let’s say you earn $20 an hour after tax. In about 25 hours, you would earn enough to buy one share of Yahoo. You could take $475, after tax, in cash, for your hard work. Or you could choose, instead, your claim on an expected 16 cents in Yahoo quarterly earnings. (Not that you would actually get the earnings, in spendable cash. But theoretically they would be yours.) Which do you want in return for all that work? An immediate $475 in cash, or a likely 16 cents this quarter and maybe 30 cents next quarter and – who knows? – maybe lots, lots more one day? Right now, Yahoo is valued at significantly more than Ford and General Motors, combined. Toss in Dow Jones (which owns, among other things, the Wall Street Journal) . . . and Yahoo is still considered the greater prize. Only when you toss in the New York Times Company, too, does the market consider the two baskets – Basket A, containing Yahoo, and Basket B, containing Ford, GM, Dow Jones and the New York Times Company – about equal in value. Carolyn Luther Trabuco thinks this is ridiculous. Within a year, she thinks, Yahoo will have added another 26% in market value, leaving Basket B in the dirt. And the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised.