Eric Jackson
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- We've all heard that within a year or so we're going to be paying for stuff in stores with our phones instead of our wallets, using near field communication (NFC) technology.
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Sphere: Related ContentBy Eric Jackson This type of scrutiny means that fund managers are even more under the gun to perform and simply cannot have even a couple of bad days. Otherwise, they risk getting a bunch of angry phone calls or, worse, redemption notices. Therefore, many hedge-fund managers have an especially itchy trigger finger these days. If the broader macro environment hits a rough patch, due to Libyan bombings, protests in Bahrain or uncertainty in Japan, it's "sell now and ask questions later." That said, certain stocks are among the bigger hedge funds' more popular holdings. Goldman Sachs updates a regular list of the top holdings of hedge funds. They include MasterCard (MA - commentary -Trade Now), Visa (V - commentary - Trade Now), Qualcomm (QCOM - commentary - Trade Now) and Wal-Mart (WMT - commentary - Trade Now). But perhaps no other stock is as loved these days by hedge funds (and other investors) as Apple (AAPL -commentary - Trade Now). More and more, you hear new hedge fund managers throwing their weight behind the name. A few months ago, David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital made the case for it. Value investor Lee Cooperman owns it in his Omega Advisors fund. John Burbank of Passport Capital owns it [*** This post is an excerpt of the full article, available by clicking here to go to RealMoney.com. Note: subscription required. ***]
RealMoney Contributor
3/24/2011 12:15 PM EDT
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One of the funniest semi-regular segments on Jim Cramer's "Mad Money" show is the one he calls "Hedge Funds Gone Wild." He brings it out every time there has been an indiscriminate market selloff, and he's trying to preach to the longer-horizon investor to ignore the volatile movements of certain stocks caused by these short-term hedge funds.
In our 24-7 world where we judge our CEOs on a quarter-by-quarter basis, it's not surprising that we give our money managers an even harder time. Hedge funds have to report their monthly numbers to their investors, and in recent years, many of the larger funds have to provide more regular updates than that. It's quite common to hear about funds providing weekly updates, and I've even heard of some funds providing some of their bigger investors with daily updates.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- With China predicted to overtake the U.S. as the largest market for credit card companies by 2020, contributor Eric Jackson details how companies like Mastercard are trying to capitalize on China and whether investors should buy in.
Contributor Eric Jackson says Apple (AAPL) has its eye on getting into the mobile payments market thanks to Near Field Communication technology. They could be a major threat tobig credit card companies and EBAY's PayPal unit.
I agree with Jim Cramer's comment earlier about EBAY. A big financial institution should buy this company, in order to get the PayPal crown jewel.
EBAY's been such a mish-mash for so long with all these various web companies flung together. They could and should be sold off. The Skype business unit could be quickly sold back to the original founders by a financial company that didn't care about getting back the $1.7B in value which is sitting on EBAY's books. MSFT, GOOG, and YHOO would be interested in the web assets. Ticketmaster (TKTM) should look at Stubhub.
I went back to the EBAY March analysts' day replay this morning and it's really compelling when you start to look at PayPal. Donahoe said it's the most misunderstood part of EBAY and he's right (and he's responsible for that). PayPal does have the chance to be the only dominant payment player in the online merchant space going forward. No credit risk, multiple relationships with financial institutions and merchants. It would be a compelling asset for any large player like a V, MA, or AXP.
Originally published in RealMoney.com on 4/23/2009 2:22 PM EDT Sphere: Related ContentChrista Quarles, the Thomas Weisel Partners analyst who covers eBay (EBAY), had a throwaway line about yesterday's earnings from the auction and payment company: "We like to joke that they are changing the ticker symbol to PYPL."
She's referring to the large and growing part of PayPal within the eBay empire. Even as eBay's core auction or marketplace business saw revenue drop 18% in the last quarter to $1.22 billion, the PayPal division grew revenue 11% to $643 million.
At the recent analysts' day a few weeks back, eBay CEO John Donahoe and PayPal President Scott Thompson both clearly spelled out how the PayPal group was poised to dominate the world of online payments for years to come: Think the online equivalent of Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA).
Donahoe even went so far to say, the "opportunity at PayPal is bigger than the opportunity at marketplace."
Today, Visa trades at a forward P/E of 18 times, Mastercard is at 13 times and eBay is at 10 times. eBay has roughly the same market cap as Mastercard. I'm not a fan of quick fixes, but there's a compelling argument to make for changing eBay's name to PayPal with a PYPL ticker.
It doesn't make sense to do this today perhaps, but it will soon. PayPal is the core to an eBay turnaround in the next couple years.
Originally published in RealMoney.com on 4/23/2009 12:09 PM EDT Sphere: Related Content
