So seeing yesterday’s ad, one that cost $2.5 million to air during the third quarter of the Super Bowl was a shocker to almost everyone in the industry. First off, you can see the ad here:

Clever no doubt. Who could possibly tell a love story with such details in a 50 second span without even pronouncing a word. Google, that’s who. And the ad was generally seen as very positive by viewers at the time and even since then on sites such as Google’s own Youtube. But to me, the real question is why now? Why does Google feel like it now needs to spend money on marketing when it has done so well without it in years past? In his post, Mr. Schmidt defended the decision by saying that it had been incredibly popular in Youtube’s Google Search stories segment. But still, why now? Does Google really need more branding? Is it worried about Microsoft spending so much money on its own search engine Bing???

I’m uncertain but as Google clearly has lost some momentum in the past few months, it is possible that is simply trying to reinforce its very strong brand. In just a few seconds, it helps users remember what they love about Google and how it can help them in every phase of their life. I personally think it was money well spent and probably more about getting some positive attention rather than reacting to anything that has happened in the past few months (Bing, Nexus One, etc).  And if it is true that Google might come out with the top rated ad in this Super Bowl, then that once more shows off the genius behind the company as it was competing with many companies such as Budweiser, who run several ads every year.

I also think the recent direction of Apple into advertising and competing with Google will provide some diversification to the model. I had written about the impact of Apple’s Ipad on Amazon’s Kindle and the power shift from Amazon to Apple but what shocked me was seeing Amazon’s purchase of a company to advance its touch screen technology. Are these guys serious? They waited all of this time before considering Apple a serious enough threat? Kindles will still be sold and bring revenues to Amazon but I believe that putting too much energy into this battle with Apple will take away Amazon’s focus from what is its core; its sales and distribution network.

When taking a look at the P/E ratios of both companies, it is striking how expensive Amazon has become with Apple’s recent decline. It is trading at almost twice Apple’s ratios for the next two years as per Bloomberg estimates, something that makes little sense to me, especially when you consider how strong Apple’s core products continue to be.

	Price	Annual EPS	PE_RATIO	PE Current Year
AMZN	115.94	2.08	57.22	31.82
AAPL	192.05	9.22	18.75	16.40

In terms of traffic, the data is not as useful since Apple does not need nearly as much traffic given the average order size but still, you can see that traffic growth from Apple is slightly better than Amazon’s over the past 12 months (+17.25% for Apple vs +15.18% for Amazon). Again, maybe comparable but then why is Amazon trading at such a high P/E ratio?

Here are the stock charts for both companies:

Global Reach

I think that the Super Bowl’s real success is how it gets even non-fans to watch the game (the actual action lasts only 11 minutes according to a recent study). There is the spectacular half time show, the stars doing the national anthem but the incredible part is the commercials part. TV ads are an event in itself, something that is unmatched. Imagine being an advertiser. All year long you are running towards consumers trying to get them to see your ads. Then comes this 4 hour show where the audience is actually excited about seeing ads of their favourite brands. There are all kinds of theories about winning the Super Bowl ad game, but it seems clear that it is a unique opportunity for companies to get a good contact with their current and potential consumers. And it does not stop when the game ends. The best commercials will be seen by tens of millions of viewers after the Super Bowl on websites like Youtube. But the question of course is, are these ads worth it? They do cost millions of dollars to air.

Youtube could do more

I had written about this a while back but I think that Youtube certainly could generate a lot more money around the idea if it were one day able to create a similar type of event. There have been encouraging signs this year as Youtube has been more agressive in getting ad dollars related to the Super Bowl.

Imagine this, there are even studies that were done to see if there was a correlation between the Super Bowl winner and economic activity!

Betting also part of the Super Bowl

And finally, betting is a huge part of the game as well with fans betting on anything from the winner, to the winner of the coin toss or even how long Carrie Underwood’s (seen on the right) national anthem performance will be (over or under 1 minute and 42 seconds). Websites like Betfair will receive tens of millions of dollars of bets done around the world on every single detail that happens during the game.

And finally…foood!

Apart from perhaps Thanksgivings, the Super Bowl is one of the best days for grocery stores as clients come in to buy all kinds of healthy items such as chicken wings, beer, chips, soft drinks and more. Nothing like some great junk food in front of the Super Bowl right?

So that’s it for now, I hope you will all be able to enjoy the game, best of luck to everyone, as long as you are rooting for the Indianapolis Colts!:)

Then, think of Yahoo Finance, which used to be the ultimate financial resource. It was a great property to generate advertising revenues and seemed far ahead of any competitors. But look at the website from a few years ago and you will hardly notice any improvements in today’s version. It is not much of a surprise to see that others such as Google and Marketwatch are stealing market share constantly.

Yahoo mail is another good example of a service that once was a leader with Microsoft’s Hotmail but has since been made to be the inferior product mainly by Google’s Gmail service.

What Yahoo used to be….

Yahoo was once a terrific web portal, a leader in all kinds of sectors on the internet. But then time went by and they did not adapt quickly enough. Now think of AOL. A decade ago, AOL was riding high as the leading internet service provider which helped generate traffic throughout its network. But after being merged in Time Warner, the company’s decline started and it never successfully moved on when it started losing those subscribers.

Now that AOL has became an independent company again, it has been busy selling off dead services and properties. Remember ICQ, the messenging service that was used by nearly the entire web? It had been bought by AOL to merge with its own messenger service to become a dominant force. Of course, who uses ICQ nowadays? But it is part of the pieces now being sold off by AOL.

Same for Yahoo?

Well Yahoo is still early on that path but it is going full speed trying to “catch up” on AOL. One of the early moves came yesterday when Yahoo confirmed it was selling “Hotjobs”, a once leading emplyment service to Monster.com, for 225$ millions. A few years ago, the value of HotJobs was much higher. But as the quality of the website did not improve to match competition, it lost users and revenues.

Yahoo does still have a few valuable properties, especially in its Asian operations, but also in Flickr, its social image network. But I would say the trend is still very clear, Yahoo is going down and is only a few years away from AOL, trying to get funding to somehow get momentum through fresh and popular content that would generate enough revenues to offset the other declining parts of the company.

What are your thoughts on Yahoo? I know I have been criticised for being negative on Yahoo but honestly I just don’t see how Yahoo can avoid becoming the next AOL.

And when buying a well located house or condo in Miami or Fort Lauderdale for 140-150K, how much lower do you think it can go? Just seems like there isn’t much downside to those prices, especially compared with a longer term price appreciation. If the prices simply went up 25-30% in the next 3-4 years, that would represent a very good investment as well as good diversification from the stock market.

Why not simply buy a house in Florida?

But of course, taking a plane to buy a place in those areas is a lot more complicated than most investors want to handle. There are a lot of logistics involved, legal and tax implications. So buying through a fund would seem like the ideal solution wouldn’t it? And of course, given my take on why ETF’s are superior to mutual funds, I will not be talking about real estate mutual funds but rather the main real estate ETF’s.

Here is a list of the main actively traded REIT’s (Real Estate Investment Trust)

Ticker	Name	Market Cap	Price	YTD return
REM	iShares FTSE NAREIT Mortgage Plus Capped Index Fund	49507312	14.78	0.475865
IFEU	iShares FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Developed Europe Index Fund	8580000	29.003	-1.013648
RWO	SPDR Dow Jones Global Real Estate ETF	102465000	31.530001	-1.867415
REZ	iShares FTSE NAREIT Residential Plus Capped Index Fund	37325000	30.35	-1.894235
IYR	iShares Dow Jones US Real Estate Index Fund	2496403968	44.950001	-2.112364
FRI	First Trust S&P REIT Index Fund	23075850	11.44	-2.389084
VNQ	Vanguard REIT ETF	4744589824	43.630001	-2.481003
RWR	SPDR Dow Jones REIT ETF	1011371008	47.919998	-2.62142
RTL	iShares FTSE NAREIT Retail Capped Index Fund	4044340	20.7703	-2.760771
FTY	iShares FTSE NAREIT Real Estate 50 Index Fund	26840000	26.98	-2.8448
IFGL	iShares FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Developed Real Estate ex-US Index Fund	313575008	28.02	-3.112032
PSR	PowerShares Active U.S. Real Estate Fund	10864020	36.213402	-3.223986
FFR	First Trust FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Developed Markets Real Estate Index Fund	23388060	29.429001	-3.574704
FIO	iShares FTSE NAREIT Industrial/Office Capped Index Fund	10242000	22.860001	-3.625627
IFNA	iShares FTSE EPRA/NAREIT North America Index Fund	6264020	31.769899	-4.307534
URE	ProShares Ultra Real Estate	586113600	6.58	-4.499274
IFAS	iShares FTSE EPRA/NAREIT Developed Asia Index Fund	19159000	27.555599	-4.717845

You will notice that about half of those ETF’s are Ishares ETF’s. Even given Ishares’ #1 position in the ETF market, I’m still very surprised to see how many ETF’s it has. However, Vanguard’s only REIT ETF (VNQ) is by far the biggest and is actually bigger in size than all Ishares ETF’s together! It tracks the MSCI REIT Index and would be my first choice when looking for a real estate ETF apart perhaps for someone looking for a more regional exposure to Europe or Asia.

What are your thoughts on real estate in general? And do you have any real estate in your portfolio or only through your own properties?

It all changed in China….

It’s unclear yet how things will end in China but the major announcement that Google would no longer respect the Chinese governments filtering policies with respects to its search engine seemed to change many things for the powerful search engine:

-The most direct consequence of course is that Google might exit the Chinese market and lose important potential revenue & profits

-The launch of the “Google Phone”, Nexus one has not lived up to the high expectations so far

-Because of the unclear strategy of Nexus one, the future of Android is not as bright for many analysts and many speculate that Google could soon be threatened by a Bing-Apple alliance for wireless devices

-In the past few days, Google has been rumored to have run advertising acquisition Doubleclick to the ground

I’m a buyer more than ever

Personally, I do not see all of these elements as being that critical. The only signifiant event in my opinion has been the annoucement regarding China but even that is far from done as Google continues to negotiate with the Chinese authorities.

I don’t think anyone expected Google to move into the cell phone industry and become a force right away so Nexus One’s progress should not be judged weeks after its release. Just the same, Android should be judged based on its progress, not based on its current market share.

As for the recent critics that discuss Google’s dealing of Doubleclick, I find them laughable personally. Doubleclick had some attractive aspects, mostly surrounding its targetting technology and its ad display business. But the company was already on a slide when it was purchased and far from a leader in the field. So I don’t worry about it too much

So yes, I am still very comfortable with my position on Google but also with my pick for Google as one of the top stock picks in 2010. Is the momentum currently hurting both positions? Absolutely, but I’m far from worried at this point.

What about you? Buying or selling Google at this point?

That being said, the Itab is superior to the Kindle because of its look, its many uses and because of the power network that Apple built through its Iphone/Ipod line. In my last column I got a comment which I interpreted as meaning that the Kindle was not that important to Amazon, it was about much more than books. Yes, it is. But I did dig into the financial statements released Wednesday night when Amazon released Q4 results. The “media” division which includes (books, music and films, physical and electronic) still represents over half of the revenues of the company, I would call that signiicant.

But what struck me even more was the page of highlights that the company published. The first five points were actually about the Kindle! Still think it does not matter? Their answer to the Ipad is that “Readers deserve a dedicated device” – CFO Tom Szkutak. I’m not sure on what planet he lives but if Amazon intends to stick to a one use device, it will lose the battle. How many of you have a cell phone only for phone calls? Smartphones are part of a big tendancy that shows no signs of slowing down! So yes, the Kindle will quickly lose its huge lead to the Ipad and yes it does matter a great deal! You can read an interesting article on the Washington Post giving reasons why the Ipad will put the Kindle out of business.

That being said, Amazon has so much growth in other divisions that it is a very difficult stock to go short on! I already rolled the dice a bit going short on Baidu(BIDU) so don’t count on me to go short AMZN anytime soon! Amazon’s eletronics and other merchandise segment should take over the media division in terms of revenus in the next quarter and that has not shown signs of slowing down for now in part thanks to acquisitions such as Zappos.

Ultimate example today

Today, Amazon’s stock lost 6.6% in a day where almost everything went up. Why? Because it ended up conceeding to publisher Macmillan, who wanted to set its own prices. In the past, Amazon has had control over those prices but that is now changing. Publishers can now turn to Amazon and threaten the company to pull out its publication as those would still be available for other readers such as the Ipad. A few months ago, that situation did not exist as Amazon had power over the book publishers.

So, any thoughts on the future of Amazon? Would you be a buyer of the stock?

Ticker	Name	RETURN YTD	DVD YIELD	PRICE	EX-DVD DATE
FTR	Frontier Communications Corp	(2.56)	13.14	7.61	3/3/2010
WIN	Windstream Corp	(6.19)	9.70	10.31	3/29/2010
CTL	CenturyTel Inc	(6.08)	8.23	34.01	3/8/2010
Q	Qwest Communications	-	7.60	4.21	2/17/2010
PBI	Pitney Bowes Inc	(8.08)	6.88	20.92	2/17/2010
MO	Altria Group Inc	1.17	6.85	19.86	3/12/2010
RAI	Reynolds American Inc	0.43	6.77	53.2	3/3/2010
T	AT&T Inc	(8.15)	6.62	25.36	4/7/2010
POM	Pepco Holdings Inc	(2.55)	6.58	16.42	3/8/2010
TEG	Integrys Energy Group Inc	(0.33)	6.50	41.85	2/24/2010
HCP	HCP Inc	(7.17)	6.49	28.35	2/4/2010
VZ	Verizon Communications Inc	(9.88)	6.46	29.42	4/7/2010
NI	NiSource Inc	(5.87)	6.46	14.25	4/28/2010
PGN	Progress Energy Inc	(3.48)	6.36	38.97	4/6/2010
HCN	Health Care REIT Inc	(2.98)	6.33	43	2/4/2010
AEE	Ameren Corp	(8.59)	6.03	25.55	3/8/2010
CINF	Cincinnati Financial Corp	0.57	5.99	26.39	3/17/2010
PNW	Pinnacle West Capital Corp	(0.65)	5.86	35.82	4/28/2010
DUK	Duke Energy Corp	(3.95)	5.81	16.53	2/10/2010
LEG	Leggett & Platt Inc	(10.49)	5.70	18.26	3/10/2010
CNP	CenterPoint Energy Inc	(3.86)	5.59	13.95	2/11/2010
LLY	Eli Lilly & Co	(1.43)	5.57	35.2	2/10/2010
SO	Southern Co	(2.65)	5.47	32	4/29/2010
ED	Consolidated Edison Inc	(3.72)	5.44	43.74	2/12/2010
LO	Lorillard Inc	(5.65)	5.28	75.7	2/26/2010
SCG	SCANA Corp	(5.49)	5.28	35.61	3/8/2010
MCHP	Microchip Technology Inc	(11.18)	5.27	25.81	2/9/2010
BMY	Bristol-Myers Squibb Co	(3.52)	5.25	24.36	3/31/2010
RRD	RR Donnelley & Sons Co	(9.93)	5.25	19.82	4/14/2010
TE	TECO Energy Inc	(4.01)	5.14	15.57	2/17/2010

And a new one starting this month as we take a look at the highest yielding dividend ETF’s:

Ticker	Name	RETURN YTD	DVD YIELD	PRICE
JNK	SPDR BARCLAYS CAPITAL HIGH	0.41	12.13	38.88
PPH	PHARMACEUTICAL HOLDRS TRUST	0.25	11.66	65.61
DRW	WISDOMTREE INTL REAL ES FD	(4.62)	10.06	25.23
HYG	ISHARES IBOXX H/Y CORP BOND	(1.33)	9.66	86.23
PHB	POWERSHARES H/Y CORP BD PORT	(0.91)	8.75	17.69
PGF	POWERSHARES FIN PFD PORTFOLI	1.47	8.59	16.42
IFNA	ISHARES FTSE EPRA/NAREIT NOR	(6.81)	8.43	31.31
GCE	CLAYMORE CEF GS CONNECT ETN	(3.29)	8.29	15.618
REM	ISHARES FTSE NAREIT MORTGAGE	(0.61)	8.19	14.6148
PGX	POWERSHARES PREFERRED PORT	0.73	7.92	13.5
PFF	ISHARES S&P PREF STK INDX FN	1.31	7.79	37.06
IFEU	ISHARES FTSE EPRA/NAREIT DEV	(2.32)	7.39	28
PCY	POWERSHARES EM MAR SOV DE PT	(0.05)	6.45	25.28
FFR	FT FTSE EPRA/NAREIT REAL EST	(4.52)	6.27	28.85
TTH	TELECOM HOLDRS TRUST	(7.99)	6.19	23.2
GRI	COHEN & STEERS GLOBAL REALTY	(4.58)	5.69	29.62
EMB	ISHARES JP MORGAN EM BOND FD	(0.28)	5.66	101.23
HYD	MARKET VECTORS HI YLD MUNI	1.45	5.63	30.815
WPS	ISHARES S&P DLVP EX-US PRPTY	(4.29)	5.47	29.0501
PQBW	POWERSHARES NASDAQ-100 BUYWR	(6.13)	5.46	20.5101
CVY	CLAYMORE/ZACKS MULTI-ASSET	(1.17)	5.43	17.54
LQD	ISHARES IBOXX INV GR CORP BD	0.60	5.43	105.45
DEW	WISDOMTREE GLOBAL EQUITY INC	(5.37)	5.26	38.46
BLV	VANGUARD LONG-TERM BOND ETF	1.21	5.16	77.68
DBU	WISDOMTREE INTL UTL SECTOR F	(4.76)	5.15	21.16

Do you have any thoughts on this list?

Is the market doomed in 2010 because of a poor January @ MarketWatch
Options Strategy: Protective Put @ TheFinancialBlogger
S&P500 pullback 2nd biggest since March09 @ Vixandmore
The old question: work or stay home? @ GatherLittlebyLittle
China leading global race towards clean energy @ NY Times
Rethinking the Latte factor @ MillionDollarJourney
Best performing stocks of 2009 in the S&P500 @ BuyMyStockPicks
Obama State of the Union 2010 @ FourPillars
Central banks getting ready for next gold move? @ ZeroHedge

We are not even a month into 2010 and already looking at what has and has not been working so far in 2010. We have been asked about oil stocks and ETF’s and at the start of the year we did a brief intro into the best alternatives. Then, earlier this week we looked into the best performing oil stocks so far in 2010.  I received a few emails from readers who wanted the same information for oil ETF’s. Here it is! First off, to kick things off, here are the main oil related ETF’s as well as their YTD (year to date) returns, price, if they are leveraged or not and finally their expense ratio.

Ticker	Name	YTD RETURN	PX_LAST	LEVERAGED?	EXPENSE_RATIO
SCO	PROSHRE U/S DJ-AIG CRUDE OIL	16.85	15.91	Y	0.95
DTO	POWERSHARES DB OIL 2X SHORT	15.889	77.26	Y	0.75
DNO	UNITED STATES SHORT OIL FUND	8.223	47.4	Y	0.96
DUG	PROSHARES ULTRASHORT OIL & G	3.14	13.44	Y	0.95
OIH	OIL SERVICES HOLDRS TRUST	3.003	119.74	N	0
DDG	PROSHARES SHORT OIL & GAS	2.176	52.83	Y	0.95
XES	SPDR OIL & GAS EQUIP & SERV	2.072	28.52	N	0.35
IEZ	ISHARES DJ US OIL EQUIP & SV	1.836	42.88	N	0.47
XOP	SPDR S&P OIL & GAS EXPLORATI	-0.874	40.44	N	0.35
PXJ	POWERSHARES DYN OIL & GAS SV	-0.943	16.44	N	0.61
IEO	ISHARES DJ US OIL & GAS EXPL	-1.519	52.84	N	0.48
DIG	PROSHARES ULTRA OIL & GAS	-4.46	32.28	Y	0.95
USL	UNITED STATES 12 MONTH OIL	-7.464	37.44	N	0.6
DBO	POWERSHARES DB OIL FUND	-7.827	25.42	N	0.75
OLO	POWERSHARES DB CRUDE OIL LNG	-7.88	12.4	N	0.75
USO	UNITED STATES OIL FUND LP	-8.147	36.16	N	0.45
OIL	IPATH GOLDMAN SACHS CRUDE	-8.192	23.8	N	0.75
UHN	UNITED STATES HEATING OIL LP	-9.634	25.03	N	0.69
UCO	PROSHRE ULT DJ-AIG CRUDE OIL	-15.852	10.7	Y	0.95

As with most such graphs, it is not a surprise to have leveraged ETF’s with the top returns. Now if I had done this table just a few days ago, I think the results would have been very different but the truth is that Crude Oil has taken quite a hit in the past week (as have many other commodities and assets) which has meant that the top picks so far have been those that return the inverse of crude oil.

Take a look at SCO from Pro-Shares which returns -200% of the return of crude oil.

Personally, I would be very surprised to see this trend continue but I guess everything is possible given the uncertainty in the world. What are your top picks among this list???