I think a tricky thing is names like WMT, COST, TJX already have high p/e ratios.
You could usually try utilities or energy but those are also high due to AI buildout & Iran.
I think gold could make a come back since it's beating down a bit this year. Treasuries or just a reasonable hedge with puts against your holdings may be the best bet.
Of course none of this is financial advice & is just open discussion looking for thoughts.
They have original thoughts! It's just that those employees get squashed by other divisions or having to meet short term quarterly profits it seems.
There's also the whole giant trillion dollar company doesn't want to invest and let small ideas grow. They only focus on things that move the needle, which isn't much at the size.
Had Microsoft executed and invested, they could have made a come back imo in both search, mobile & hardware. Unfortunately major lack of leadership or they just don't want those areas.
I've found less friction in my experience. I prefer pair programming remotely over in person.
Pair Programming in person - one computer & one person looking over another's shoulder usually.
Pair Programming remotely - two computers & you can easily swap control of either's device or change who's sharing their screen.
The only thing working in an office wins on imo is building very close relationships with co-workers. I think physical presence is a human thing that cannot be beat. You can still build great relationships remotely but they're not the same. From the point of view of a company, remote relationships might be good enough or even better as they can prevent people becoming "to close" and ending up on the news at a concert together.
If you can get people to sit down and think through topics, many of the right and left people are often very aligned.
Unfortunately to many people just take headlines and memes from terrible sources as to how they should think without putting any thought into it. Both sides are also vilified against each other.
I would expect this to become one of those things in the near future.
You need to apply it to staff as well and also the judicial branch and all of their staff. Then to all of their family as well.
The way I understand insider trading is usually prosecuted is you find out who made the bet & then you have to track down their communications to see if they got tipped off.
Google famously just did this with their Captcha service. Had lots of people signing up for a more complicated version on Google Cloud that they didn't need to do.
They had great devices before iOS/Android and then again after. That Lumia phone was awesome. They had one of the best cameras. Their live tiles they had on the phone & desktop OS were really good. Even Windows 8 had a cool CRM app in its infancy that tried to link all your social media & email accounts together.
They killed all of that even with multiple chances to win people over. It seemed they wanted to win the new markets in less than a year.
For as much flack as Google gets for short lived awesome products, Microsoft is right up there. Which is why when they've announced new things like Blazor, MAUI, etc., no one expects them to live long enough to trust their apps on.
I also strongly question their enterprise MOAT when most kids are growing up on Apple & Google devices the past decade. Microsoft seems to lack long term strategy.
Has it always been a case of incentives with Microsoft?
Builders - let's build awesome stuff with great experience.
Execs - need to meet next earnings reports goals. Let's sneak a few features to help M$FT stock price at expense to our users.
Product suffers... Execs then allow builders to make the products better. Then execs step in again because they need some quick wins. Visual Studio and .NET really seemed to exemplify this a few years ago as Code was eating into Visual Studio's user base.
I for one hope ending quarterly earnings reduces patterns like this in companies.
In my experience, it's really hard to get someone good who can do a plumbing job, or electrical job, then patch the drywall & match the texture well. You need to search for a "Handyman" service for this & often you're getting a jack of all trades, expert at none. If they really are amazing, they're booked solid & no one will ever recommend them to you as they're already hard to get an appointment with.
For a lot of specialists like drywall, the really good people seem to never want to deal with small jobs. They get paid better & it's easier to do large jobs.
I can't remember the names. Best bet if you don't want to listen is to just get summaries or transcriptions of the episodes you can an LMM questions on.
The info on his podcasts isn't telling you who to short. It's more who has gone under & general knowledge.
He's one of the "Big Short" guys but more importantly he has great guests on. Everyone is trying to teach & inform, not sell.
He's been calling this risk out for over a year, especially once the White House started trying to allow retirement accounts access to private credit. For a lot of people that was the big alert, even before Jamie Dimon said he saw "cockroaches".
Highly recommend using JetBrains Rider instead if you want the best IDE experience. It's not a Microsoft product & is used by a large percentage of .NET devs.
Part of me agrees with this & says we have been doing IFTTT thing for 20 years.
Other part of me is arguing that old annoying Dropbox/Box Hacker News scenario where all us tech people aren't impressed but this makes it easier for non-tech people.
Tiny tinfoil security part of me is cowering in fear.
Strong agreement with this. The whimsical, fantasy, fun, light hearted things are great until a large enough group of people take them as a serious life motto & then try to push it on everyone else.
I recommend John Boehner's book. He complimented Obama often, stated he & his team were far more ready than McCain to work with Bush on the economy. They were smoking buddies.
Maybe some Microsoft Devs can publish a book about all the secret regedit hacks they use to make it function for themselves. I think Dave Plummer or another Msft vet mentioned you can remove hibernate & get 25GB back on your hard drive.
Nadella had it easy when he took over. Stock soared before he did anything. The only improvements seemed to be made by others using the CEO change to try & push a few better agendas.
Acquired podcast had Ballmer on this past year. Gives interesting take of how he was never a true CEO, always had Gates still running things.
I imagine Microsoft probably has about 5-10 CEOs running it right now. Nadella is just the face. Amy, Brad & Kathleen for sure. Would not be surprised if Bill still has a lot of say. Guthrie probably doesn't have enough say.
You could usually try utilities or energy but those are also high due to AI buildout & Iran.
I think gold could make a come back since it's beating down a bit this year. Treasuries or just a reasonable hedge with puts against your holdings may be the best bet.
Of course none of this is financial advice & is just open discussion looking for thoughts.