First Adopter

FA Trading Chat Room

firstadopter — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:11:38 +0000

Join us in our trading chat room. Traders will share ideas, breaking market moving news, commentary, insights, and earnings call data points in real-time.

Setup Instructions
1. Download the free Ventrilo chat client program here: Link
2. Install Ventrilo on your PC and launch the program
3. Click on the arrow way on the right of the “User Name” line
4. Click on “New”, type in your Twitter ID, and then press OK twice
5. Click on the arrow way on the right of “Server” line
6. Click on “New”, type in “FA Chat Room” and press OK

7. Enter “fa.clanvent.com” in the Hostname or IP box
8. Enter “6127” in the Port Number box and press OK

9. Click on the Connect button on the right hand side. Once connected, click on the Chat button on the right hand side
10. Enjoy the great community!

There is a limited number of spaces, so if the room is full try again later.

ventrilo Hosting by InstantVentrilo.com

NPD U.S. February 2010 Videogame Sales

firstadopter — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:27:46 +0000

Games $1.48 billion (-15%)
Hardware $534.2 million (-20%)
Software $736.7 million (-15%)
Accessories $206.1 million (-1%)

DS 613,200
Xbox 360 422,000
Wii 397,900
PlayStation 3 360,100
PSP 133,400
PlayStation 2 101,900

Title / Platform / Publisher / Release Date / Units sold
1. BioShock 2 / 360 / Take-Two / Feb-10 / 562,900
2. New Super Mario Bros. Wii / Wii / Nintendo / Nov-09 / 555,600
3. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 / 360 / Activision / Nov-09 / 314,300
4. Just Dance / Wii / Ubisoft / Nov-09 / 275,400
5. Wii Sports Resort with Wii Motion Plus / Wii / Nintendo / Jul-09 / 272,500
6. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 / PS3 / Activision / Nov-09 / 252,800
7. Mass Effect 2 / 360 / Electronic Arts / Jan-10 / 246,500
8. Dante’s Inferno: Divine Edition / PS3 / Electronic Arts / Feb-10 / 242,500
9. Dante’s Inferno / 360 / Electronic Arts / Feb-10 / 224,700
10. Heavy Rain / PS3 / Sony / Feb-10 / 219,300 /

Activision (ATVI) CEO Bobby Kotick DICE Speech Notes

firstadopter — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:35:24 +0000

-1990: 26 years old, paid $440,000 (all his money) to buy 25% of Mediagenic (Activision) bankrupt company. The company had rights to Joe Montana football, Myst, Infocom text games, Pitfall, River Raid, Kaboom, Mechwarrior
-first 2600 game was Kaboom, Pitball, River Raid, Activision hockey, Zork, Hitchhiker Guide’s to the Galaxy
-Bobby started a company in 1983 making Apple II software (game, word processor)
-was an EA developer for 4-5 years
-Mediagenic was making a word processor to compete with Microsoft
-he tried to acquire Commodore because of the Amiga (Amiga with CD player would be a great dedicated videogame system) with his best friend who had a hedge-fund and other wealthy investors. Tried for one year. Commodore CEO decided to compete with Sun Microsystems/workstations
-single dad with 3 daughters. I like to eat (addiction). Callouses from Defender. Play from time to time. If I was regularly playing games, I would not be able to stop
-marry personal interests with business opportunity in something you’re passionate about, very rare
-empowering people to do a great job. Make the resources available
-missed Maxis. Spent 1 day looking at SimCity 2000. Will Wright working a game called “Jefferson” (Sims), never went to look at it
-When buying Red Octane (Guitar Hero IP owner) and knew about Harmonix. Didn’t even go to Boston, it would of been better if they bought Harmonix
-mid-1990s Blizzard bought for $7 million. Bobby thought it was mind-boggling. 8-10 years later, Blizzard $700 million price with World of Warcraft in development. Merged when they were worth $7 billion
-Thinks the merger wouldn’t have worked earlier. It took them a lot of time to develop a culture that was respectful of the independent companies they worked with. Culture of partnership. Give resources and know when to stand back
-Only company he has seen, that has done this well to this point was Nintendo
-After 15 acquisitions, got to the place where they knew how to protect their culture. Creative inspired companies need to control their destiny. Fosters independent operation
-Jamdat was founded by people at Activision, sold to EA
-Pandemic was founded by people at Activision, sold to EA
-the really great products come from a team
-virtually all their studios are run by the original founders. Collaborative, driven, capable, ability to identify/recruit/retain other talented people, translate passion into products, people committed to excellence
-1983 he was 19 years old in his dorm room
-Zynga, Facebook games, there are some distribution platforms that allow for 2 guys in a dorm room
-first independent videogame competition, offer up to $500,000

Tom Demark Session: Traders Expo New York

firstadopter — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:32 +0000

2/15/10 Session Notes

-introduced by Larry Williams, friend of Demark and a commodity trader for 40 years
-clients of Demark include Soros, Steve Cohen (special advisor), Fitch Bros., Cooperman, Tudor (executive VP), Steinhardt, John Burbank (Passport Capital)
-website: www.demark.com
-he likes to buy into weakness and sell into strength, opposite of the trend followers in 1970s
-61.8% and 38.2% are key fib numbers
-markets top not because of what smart buyers are doing, but absence of sellers
-He spent $2 million just to get accurate data. Was involved with a fund in 1970s which went from $200M to $6B
-believes you can’t trade as a hobby, must make it a full-time profession to compete against the likes of Steve Cohen
-Regards Steve Cohen as the best ever. Worked with him the last 14 years. He is consumed 24 hour/7 days a week by the markets
-good breakouts tend to happen after down closes the day before as the buying power wasn’t used up
-Demark spent most of the session bragging how well the 9/13 indicator number has worked over dozens of examples

After session conversations
-Best book: Demark Indicator (Blue cover)
-they will come out with a retail chart product in the coming months on demark.com. Currently only CQG and Bloomberg are licensed. The Metastock stuff is illegal
-there are programmers who programmed their own indicators using Demark formulas on top of E-Signal and Tradestation. (Anyone do this for ThinkorSwim? Please contact me)

Apolo Anton Ohno (Olympic Gold Medalist) on Doing your Best

firstadopter — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:58:16 +0000

“Before every day you go to sleep. Ask yourself one thing. Did you do every single thing you could today to make sure you did your best? It’s hard to answer yes, every single day. I don’t like to look at it in terms of me out-working the competition. I like to look at it as me conquering myself. Me being able to face my own fears and distractions and weaknesses and say that I over-came them.”

NPD U.S. January 2010 Videogame Sales

firstadopter — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:26:10 +0000

US VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY - JANUARY 2010
Hardware: $353.7 million (-21%)
Software: $597.9 million (-12%)
Accessories: $217 million (2%)
Total Games: $1.17 billion (-13%)

TOP-SELLING HARDWARE - JANUARY 2010
Wii: 465,800
Nintendo DS: 422,200
Xbox 360: 332,800
PlayStation 3: 276,900
PSP: 100,100
PlayStation 2: 41,600

TOP-SELLING SOFTWARE SKUs - JANUARY 2010
Title / Platform / Publisher / Units**
1 New Super Mario Bros. Wii / Wii / Nintendo / 656,700
2 Mass Effect 2 / X360 / Electronic Arts / 572,100
3 Wii Fit Plus w/ Balance Board / Wii / Nintendo / 555,700
4 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 / X360 / Activision / 326,700
5 Mario Kart Wii w/Wheel / Wii / Nintendo / 310,900
6 Wii Sports Resort w/Wii MotionPlus / Wii / Nintendo / 297,600
7 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 / PS3 / Activision / 259,000
8 Army of Two: The 40th Day / X360 / Electronic Arts / 246,500
9 Just Dance / Wii / Ubisoft / 191,900
10 Darksiders / X360 / THQ / 171,200

John Doerr 11/25/09 Stanford Business School Presentation Notes

firstadopter — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:15:53 +0000

-view themselves as company builders than financiers
-3 generations of partners
-Al Gore is “a nerd, a techie”, gives great investment insight, not a door-opener for them
-475 investments in 33 years, $100B annual revenue, 400K jobs, 173 IPOs, 166 M&As, $500B+ market cap
-mercenary vs. missionary culture, both work, but he prefers the latter
-3 sectors: digital/IT, life sciences, and greentech
-renewable sources only 6% of U.S energy, most of it wind
-almost 1/2 of U.S. energy is wasted in heat, inefficient engine, or transmission lines
-top 30 greentech companies, only 4 are American. 1 battery, 1 wind, 2 solar
-Zynga is the fastest growing company he has ever seen
-3000 business plans came in for the iFund
-iTunes on 150M desktops
-iPhone is outselling iPod in its 2.5 year launch period by a factor of 12
-Appstore is outselling iTunes in its 2.5 year launch period by factor of 20
-super verticals: advertising, commerce, real-time content creation, communication, and location based services

Career Advice
-prioritize learning. opportunity to learn and grow vs. compensation
-development strong foundation of experiences: commercial, financial, sales, management
-learning great management processes from the best: Amazon, Cisco, Intel, GE, Google
-there will come a time where you swing for the fences, where you own and run your own business

You will be judged on your
-ability to listen actively, think critically
-and above all, communicate: speaking on your feet, debating the merits of issues, whether large or small groups
-art of confronting problems, not people
-don’t forego learning how to recruit, to sell, to hire and fire, inspire, manage, develop, and motivate with tough love
-extra points for humor, very powerful social and business weapon

Ideas are easy, execution is everything, teams win
-takes a team to win
-the ways you as leaders are going to inspire teams, is by your ability to think and speak on your feet and rally others to go after that cause

-always network. develop and sustain personal, lifelong networks. face-to-face
-network one person 10 minutes a day
-integrity is a binary state
-great books: Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure, Monk and the Riddle, Good to Great, Banker to the Poor, World is Flat, Hot Flat and Crowded, An Inconvenient Truth, Our Choice

-very long on solar, looking at solar-thermal, wind, geo-thermal
-you want diversity of ideas and perspectives. 1/3 of their partners are not Caucasians

Winning traits in entrepreneurs
-huge idea and can motivate a large group of people to pursue it
-great judgement above and beyond their experience
-great leaders, inspire others to the mission/vision
-always learning, attempt to do the impossible

-any individual partner can veto an investment
-work in teams than other venture firms
-multiple partners are involved in every single venture
-returns have been lousy since 2000. overall a loser. VC industry needs to shrink
-priority at Kleiner. help entrepreneurs build really successful significant companies who are going to make a difference

-Android is second dominant platform. 10-20M devices end of 2009. open source OS. fragmentation of the eco-system by hardware OEMs, different keyboard/hardware
-30-35% of book sales are through the Kindle, when digital version is available

-Kleiner values: 1. family first 2. partners 3. portfolio (CEOs, the clients, serve them every day) 4. new ventures 5. public/community service

Video #6 - Trade Reviews VG PALM FSLR YGE JASO

firstadopter — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:05:20 +0000

Please let me know what you think in the comments below. Click here for a larger screen version of the video.

Video #5 - Trade Reviews Intel (INTC)

firstadopter — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:03:15 +0000

Please let me know what you think in the comments below. Click here for a larger screen version of the video.

Intel (INTC) December 2009 Q4 Earnings Notes

firstadopter — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:25:48 +0000

Press Release
-revenue $10.6B (10.17B est) up 28% y/y, gross margin 65% (62.2% est), EPS 55c (30c est)

Guidance
-Q1 revenue $9.7B (9.35B est), gross margin 61% (58.8% est)
-FY2010 gross margin 61%

Conference Call
-broad based strength across all products and regions
-servers had a very strong quarter
-will refresh entire server line in next 3 months, 32nm Xeon multi-processor
-highest gross margin in its history

Q&A
-Q4 had a rich mix. 2010 will have more normal one with ramp of 32nm mainstream products
-assuming normal seasonal year, double digit growth with a modest recovery in PCs
-Q2 is typically seasonally down and gross margin is down q/q
-Q4 ASP accounted for 2 points of gross margin increase. Q1 should be 1/2 point down q/q due to ASP
-Q1 will have higher CPU ramp costs due to first 32nm wafers, this will come down later in the year. Mix will be a little less rich
-pricing should come down some in the second half

Net-net
-great beat and raise quarter
-analysts wanted more in terms of ASP and gross margin guidance for 2010