Fasten your seatbelt

According to Tom Lee, JP Morgan US Equities Chief Strategist, the S&P 500 will reach 1350 by year-end.  Roughly speaking that's a rise of 1500 points in the DJIA!!!!  In one month!!!!!  :-)

JC Penney to become JC Gold???

By Bill Ackman

I have had the opportunity to spend time with Ron Johnson over the last nine months as he finished his career at Apple and began planning for his leadership role at JCP. Based on this experience and my assessment of his talents, creativity, and relevant expertise, I expect to look back on the decision by the company to hire Ron, and our role in identifying and recruiting him, as one of the most significant contributions that we have ever made to any company over the life of our firm.

One of the benefits of hiring a superstar CEO is the quality of the talent he can recruit. Ron recently hired Michael Francis to be President of JCP, a former colleague and a 22- year veteran of Target who was likely to be Target’s next CEO. Michael is considered by many in the retail community to be the best marketer in the business. For the last 10 years, Michael ran Target’s marketing and arranged deals with high-end designers who developed lower-cost lines for Target–the company’s recent Missoni deal is such an example–and drove the brand’s reputation as a high quality, high-fashion discount retailer.

Last week, Ron announced that Michael Kramer, CEO of the Kellwood Company, a private-equity-backed manufacturer and marketer of apparel and soft goods, would become COO of JCP. Before Kellwood, Michael was Executive VP and CFO of Abercrombie & Fitch. Prior to Abercrombie, Michael worked with Ron at Apple as the CFO of Apple Retail.

Daniel Walker recently was hired as Chief Talent Officer. Dan began his career at Federated Department Stores and later joined the GAP under Mickey Drexler where he worked to recruit talent during the GAP’s period of rapid growth and profitability. Afterwards, he was hired by Steve Jobs to serve in a similar capacity recruiting the talent that launched the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple and App stores. Dan is the best in his business and we expect he will make an enormous contribution to the transformation of JCP.

JCP will not be transformed overnight, although you should expect to see new marketing and merchandise presentation as well as organizational, structural, and cost control changes over the next year with the bulk of product changes beginning in 2013.

We expect our investment in JCP to be a long-term holding for the funds, and we have high expectations. We don’t buy 26% stakes and join boards of directors unless we believe an investment has enormous potential.

What it takes

By Michael Silver, Yahoo Sports

"Even the quarterbacks playing at the highest level right now – hell, especially Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady and Drew Brees – try to improve their mechanics, cognition and timing on a constant basis."

Yet another reason to buy Apple :-)

From Marketwatch.com:

In Silicon Valley, one still frequently hears the hackneyed phrase, “eating your own dog food,” which refers to the fact that a company uses its own technology.

Reuters

Unfortunately for Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ , its executive chairman Ray Lane didn’t get the memo. A recent Reuters story on Lane, who is also a managing partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, showed a photo of him at home in Atherton, Calif. There’s an unbranded laptop to his right. But the icon that shines brightly is on the laptop in front of him — an Apple Inc. AAPL MacBook.
Oops!

Can an Apple a day reinvigorate?

By KAREN TALLEY And TESS STYNES

J.C. Penney Co.'s new chief executive, Ronald Johnson, said Monday that he is out to "re-imagine" the department store, using current operations as his starting point.

In his first public comments since becoming Penney's CEO on Nov. 1, Mr. Johnson said he plans to foster an environment in which employees "think differently and work creatively" to turn the chain, which reported a loss for the fiscal third quarter, into a major innovative force.

"I get more excited every day about the potential of J.C. Penney," the former retail chief of Apple Inc. told analysts on a conference call.

Mr. Johnson said that in meetings with employees, he tells them, "I'm here to transform."

"I shared with them that as America's first store, it is time to assert leadership, reclaim our birthright and become America's favorite store," he added.

Mr. Johnson also said Michael Kramer, chief executive at Kellwood Co., a fashion-brand designer, will join Penney as chief operating officer on Dec. 5. Daniel Walker is heading Penney's human-resources department as chief talent officer, a title he held at Apple.

Mr. Johnson declined to discuss strategy, saying he would provide a much fuller view of his vision at an analyst meeting Penney plans to hold in New York in January.

For the third-quarter ended Oct. 29, J.C. Penney swung to a loss, amid higher restructuring and management-transition charges. The company also said it expects a lackluster holiday season, compared with its peers. "While our more affluent customers continued to respond well to [J.C. Penney's] attractions, the moderate customer continues to have limited discretionary spending capability, and that was apparent during the quarter," said Executive Chairman Myron E. "Mike" Ullman, who stepped down this month as CEO.
In early afternoon trading Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, Penney shares were down 1.3% at $33.48.

Penney projected per-share earnings of $1.05 to $1.15 for the current quarter, with same-store sales flat to slightly higher. It also expects total sales will be 2.5 to 3 percentage points below same-store sales levels, owing to its exit from the catalog business.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters recently forecast profit of $1.14 for the current quarter and a revenue decline of 2% to $5.62 billion.

For its third quarter, Penney posted a loss of $143 million, or 67 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $44 million, or 19 cents a share. Excluding restructuring and management-transition charges, the company had earnings of 11 cents a share in the quarter just ended. Last month, Penney cut its guidance to earnings of 10 cents to 15 cents, excluding the higher restructuring expenses.  When also excluding pension costs, the company's per-share earnings fell to 18 cents from 34 cents a year earlier.

Gross margin, a gauge of profitability for products sold, fell to 37.4% from 39% amid lower sales and a higher level of promotions. The retailer sees gross margin falling "modestly" in the current period.
The company recently reported that total sales fell 4.8% to $4 billion mostly reflecting its exit from its catalog and catalog outlet businesses as same-store sales declined 1.6%.

Penney has been in heated competition with rivals Macy's Inc. and Kohl's Corp. Macy's started off the third-quarter reporting season for major retailers last Wednesday, posting strong earnings on continued momentum from its sales strategy that focuses on local tastes. Kohl's followed on Thursday, also posting strong profits, with a boost from its focus on exclusive and brand names.

(we'll check back in January)

Keeping up with the times

Krzyzewski adapts to become the best

By Pat Forde, Yahoo! Sports 
When Army beat Lehigh 56-29 in November 1975, nobody knew it would lead to this.

Mike Krzyzewski was only 27 years old then, a rookie head coach nobody was talking about or paying attention to. The first season would end 11-14, not exactly auguring greatness.

But 36 years and 901 victories after beating Lehigh, Coach K will become the winningest coach in college basketball history this week. Victory No. 903 may happen Tuesday night in the Champions Classic against Michigan State in Madison Square Garden. If not, it will happen Friday against Davidson in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

And from there, Krzyzewski will proceed to put the record out of reach.
Unless something unforeseen happens – and after watching the unceremonious end for another iconic college coach last week in State College, take nothing for granted anymore – he will keep coaching until he has more than 1,000 victories.

Records like these are always testaments to longevity. But in K’s case, it’s also a testament to adaptability. That he has thrived over time in a sport that has massively evolved is an object lesson in flexible thinking.
Krzyzewski’s first 10 years as a college head coach came before the 3-point shot was put into nationwide implementation. The advent of the 3 was a demarcation for some coaches who wouldn’t embrace it or defend it – Louisville’s Denny Crum went to six Final Fours from 1971-86, none thereafter. Coach K adapted, and most of his teams in the past 25 years have used the 3 with deadly efficiency.

His second national championship came in 1992 against Michigan’s Fab Five team – a group that would help permanently alter the mindset of when players were ready to leave college for the NBA. Krzyzewski loves his seniors to an almost maudlin degree – but when the landscape shifted and elite programs had to recruit short-term collegians who would never see a senior day, K made the transition and kept winning.
He’s always recruited players who actually liked being in college – guys such as Shane Battier and Jay Williams and J.J. Redick, who would stay in school longer – but Krzyzewski knew he had to take some studs who would only be in Durham a year or two. It worked.

As dominant big men have become increasingly more rare commodities in college hoops – nobody wants to be a low-post center, and the best of the few who do stick around college for about 15 minutes – Krzyzewski put his offensive emphasis on skill. He’d always had frontcourt players who could shoot (from Mark Alarie to Danny Ferry to Christian Laettner to Battier), but K spread the floor and opened his offense even more to players who could drive, pass and shoot.

At a time when a collegiate emperor-coach seemed like the last guy who should coach the United States in the Olympics, Krzyzewski took on the no-reward job. If America won the gold medal in 2008 in Beijing, it was due to the players putting aside their egos and playing together. If America somehow lost, everyone would point at the coach who screwed up a sure thing with overpowering talent.

Onetime mentor Bob Knight, whose record he will break this week, won an Olympic gold medal in 1984 – but that was a different time. The players were still collegians, not multimillionaires as concerned about maximizing their own brand as representing their country. A guy who built a program based on floor burns and taking charges was going to tell Kobe Bryant and LeBron James what to do?

Krzyzewski adapted his coaching style. Learned what would work with pros and what would not. He won the gold medal, and the respect of the players in the process.

And in 2010, with a team that probably didn’t rank among his 10 most talented at Duke, Krzyzewski recognized the Blue Devils’ offensive limitations and made them a bunch of defensive zealots. A program that has always been offensively pretty got defensively gritty, grinding out low-scoring victories on the way to K’s fourth national title.


You have to admire a guy who can win it all with LeBron and with Brian Zoubek. (Hey, who else has won it all with LeBron?)

That adaptability has led to a seemingly endless run at the top of the sport. The span from Krzyzewski’s first national title (1991) to his most recent (2010) is the longest in college basketball history. The span from his first Final Four (1986) to his most recent (2010) is the third-longest on the books, behind only Dean Smith (1967-97) and Eddie Sutton (1978-2004).

John Wooden’s 10 national titles will never be equaled – but it was a concentrated era of dominance, from 1964-75. Then Wooden retired.

Adolph Rupp is the only other coach to have won four or more national titles – but they came in a relatively condensed time frame as well, from 1948-58. Rupp had some very good teams thereafter, but no titles.
I believe there will be a fifth national championship for Mike Krzyzewski before he retires. Maybe a sixth, too.

I believe that because he’s the best basketball coach ever when it comes to staying current. It’s been a long road from beating Lehigh in 1975 to now, but Coach K seems to have plenty of tread left on his tires. The record will not just be broken, but put out of reach.

Pacquiao definitely did not win the fight!

Did the judges see the same fight?  Even Pac-man is a crook!

Facebook or Fakebook

Great Article:

By NED POTTER | ABC News – Mon, Nov 7, 2011

We may "friend" more people on Facebook, but we have fewer real friends -- the kind who would help us out in tough times, listen sympathetically no matter what, lend us money or give us a place to stay if we needed it, keep a secret if we shared one.

That's the conclusion made by Matthew Brashears, a Cornell University sociologist who surveyed more than 2,000 adults from a national database and found that from 1985 to 2010, the number of truly close friends people cited has dropped -- even though we're socializing as much as ever.

On average, participants listed 2.03 close friends in Brashears' survey. That number was down from about three in a 1985 study.

"These are the people you think of as your real confidants, your go-to people if you need something," Brashears said.

Brashears asked people online from a database called TESS -- Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences -- to list the names of people with whom they had discussed "important matters" over the previous six months. He reports the results in a forthcoming issue of the journal Social Networks.

Forty-eight percent of participants listed one close friend when asked, 18 percent listed two and 29 percent listed more. A little more than 4 percent didn't list anyone.

What's going on? Brashears said his survey can't tell us conclusively, but his guess is that while we meet just as many people as we used to, we categorize them differently.

Does that mean we're more isolated in these times when we seem to meet more people online than in person? (How many of your Facebook "friends" are really friends of yours?) Defying some of the stereotypes of the digital age, social scientists say Facebook may actually be healthy for us. Keith Hampton at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania wrote a report for the Pew Research Center in which he found that "Internet users in general, but Facebook users even more so, have more close relationships than other people."

"Facebook users get more overall social support, and in particular they report more emotional support and companionship than other people," wrote Hampton in a blog post. "And, it is not a trivial amount of support. Compared to other things that matter for support -- like being married or living with a partner -- it really matters. Frequent Facebook use is equivalent to about half the boost in support you get from being married."

But online contact and personal contact are different. While Hampton reports we know more people because of Facebook and similar sites, Brashears reports there are fewer whom we choose to trust with our most intimate worries.

"We're not becoming asocial," said Brashears, "but these people give us social support, and they give us advice."

A case of being too full of himself

Hue Jackson, coach of the Raiders:

"We're going to create something that's great," Jackson said in July. "I'm not interested in being good. I'm interested in being great."  10/17

While others retreated from any definitive call on whether Carson Palmer would be behind center on Sunday, Raiders coach Hue Jackson continued to have fun with the game of NFL cat and mouse.
"I know who the starting quarterback is," he told the media gathering with a wink after Friday's practice in Alameda.  10/21


Coach Hue Jackson wanted to set the record straight about the signing of free-agent wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh.  Houshmandzadeh is a Raider because Jackson, and not quarterback Carson Palmer, made it so. He said he wanted Houshmandzadeh in July but was overruled by owner Al Davis.
"Carson Palmer had nothing to do with this," Jackson said Wednesday. "I tried to get T.J. during training camp."  11/02


Only a few days ago, right after Jason Campbell's serious injury, Jackson acquired Carson Palmer and bragged that it was the "greatest trade in football."  Then Jackson spent all week teasing with the possibility of Palmer starting this game over semi-incumbent Kyle Boller. 10/23

"I've (Hue Jackson talking) sat at this man's (reference to Al Davis) knee for two years and I've been involved in that draft," he said. "I've helped shape this team over the last couple of years, as far as draft picks are concerned on this football team. So, I know what they look like, run like, act like, sound like ... the whole nine yards. Now, it's just a matter of making sure that all the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted as we move forward." 10/10

"We're chasing a championship," coach Hue Jackson said with Palmer flanked beside him at an introductory news conference Tuesday afternoon. "I'm very excited about this football team and where it has a chance to go." 10/18

"This is a new beginning for this football team," Jackson said. "We don't care if they're ugly, we don't care if they're pretty. We just don't care. Our No. 1 purpose when we play is to win. 10/09