Being our first time at an Oppo launch event, we were truly blown away by the efforts put into the quality show. And luckily, we can say the same for the phone itself. The Find 5 uses the same gorgeous five-inch 1080p screen as HTC's Droid DNA and Butterfly, but what really blew us away was the new phone's solid build quality -- a huge improvement from the older Finder we brought along, though the latter did achieve a 6.65mm thickness, whereas the new one comes in at 8.8mm thick. The Find 5's shape and feel also reminded us of Sony's Xperia S. It'll be about a month before Oppo pushes its new phone into various markets, so it'll be awhile before we get a review unit to test the various features. For now, enjoy our hands-on photos below.
Update: Check out our hands-on video after the break!
Earlier this fall, the?SEC?accused a well-known personal finance expert, Ray Lucia, of misleading investors and ordered him to stop making false claims.
My reaction to this was twofold: (1) I?m glad my column is obscure enough that the SEC?has no interest in me, and (2) this guy was advertising surefire investment gains based on a common fallacy promoted by lots of other smart people who should know better.
Maybe you believe in it, too. But you shouldn?t and here?s why:
The fallacy is that investing in the stock market is less risky over long periods than short periods. It?s not. It?s riskier.
This is not just my opinion; it?s a mathematical fact well known to academic finance experts and options traders, supported by historical evidence, and largely ignored by the public and financial advisors alike.
There?s a hole in the bucket
Ray Lucia?s investment strategy, used by his advisory practice and promoted on his radio show and in a series of bestselling books, is called Buckets of Money. It?s mostly aimed at people at or near retirement.
The concept is that you separate your retirement savings into three buckets for short-term, medium-term, and long-term (15+ years) spending needs.
The short-term bucket is invested in low-risk assets like short-term bonds, CDs, and savings accounts; the long-term bucket gets risky stuff like stocks and real estate.
(The medium-term bucket gets somewhat risky or more illiquid assets, like longer-term bonds and fixed annuities.)
The idea is that you withdraw your spending money from the first bucket and periodically replenish the first bucket from the second and the second bucket from the third.
If the market tanks, you can wait it out until it recovers, because you have bucket three hermetically sealed off from the rest of your money, and everyone knows the stock market always does well over long periods, like 15 years.
Now, to be clear, the?SEC?didn?t have any problem with the strategy itself; they accused Lucia of overstating how well it would have performed historically. But this ?buckets? idea, which is also promoted by lots of people other than Lucia, is fatally flawed.
It?s flawed because there?s no guarantee the investments in the third bucket will perform well over 15 years or any period of time, no matter how long.
Moshe Milevsky, author of?Are You a Stock or a Bond?,?analyzed?the bucket strategy in 2006, long before the?SEC?became interested in Lucia.
?If you are unlucky enough to earn a poor sequence of initial returns,? he wrote, ??bucketing? your retirement income is not a guaranteed bailout.?
?Great,? you may be saying. ?I won?t put my money in buckets. Sounds complicated, anyway.?
Sorry, but if you combine all your assets into the same bucket, you?re probably still making the same mistake.
The risky long run
There are a variety of ways to explain why stocks are risky in the long run, and John Norstad investigated plenty of them in his classic paper,?Risk and Time, which every investor should read (it?s free and it?s short).
The argument I find most persuasive is this: investors expect to earn more from stocks than from bonds because we demand a?risk premium?from stocks. If there were zero chance of making more money in stocks, no one would choose them over safer assets.
?Risk? is just another word for ?bad stuff might happen.? Bad stuff happens all the time in stock markets. Plenty of stock markets in the history of the world have gone to zero and stayed there, usually because of war.
In more normal times, we have panics, asset bubbles, financial crises, recessions, and flash crashes. Part of the reason we expect high returns from stocks is because we know these things can and do happen, and we demand to be compensated for dipping a toe into such a risky pool.
And the longer we stay in the market,?the more likely we are to experience a disaster.?Just like the longer you stand on a sketchy street corner, the more likely you are to be mugged.
Understanding this isn?t the same as being a stock market bear. Taking prudent risks is what investing is all about.
You can believe that stocks have higher expected returns and that the general trend of the market is up (I believe both); you can invest in stocks (I do); and you can also understand that stock investing is risky and you have no idea how much money you?ll end up with at the end of a long investing career.
It could be much less?or much more?than you expect.
Here?s another way to look at it: let?s say you jump into the stock market for one day, and it?s just not your day. You lose 6%?a really bad day for stocks.
To really lose some money, though, you have to stay in longer. As Norstad points out, during the worst three-year?period for stocks (1930-32), you would have lost 61%.
The market itself considers long-term investing risky. We know this by looking at options trades. (Feel free to skip ahead at this point if you really don?t want to read about options; I don?t blame you.)
You can ?insure? your portfolio by buying a long-term put option against the S&P 500, which gives you the right to sell your stock for a certain price (the ?strike price?) on a certain date.
If the market drops below the strike price, you can still sell without a loss; if the market is higher than the strike price, you sell at the market price for a profit.
Of course, you have to pay for the option, and the later the date on the option, the higher the price. Insuring against a market loss over a ten-year period costs?more?than insuring over a one-year period.
Why? Because stocks are risky in the long run.
Great, now what do I do?
Again, this is not an argument against investing in stocks. It?s an argument against the idea that stocks are a magical, long-term money factory. Even investors with long time horizons need a Plan B.
What happens if your stock investments don?t work out? What if they underperform your bonds over a 30-year period or longer? Would this ruin your retirement?
If so, you?re doing it wrong: you?re making a risky investment without thinking about what to do if the risk doesn?t pay off. No buckets and no amount of time can protect you from financial risk.
To paraphrase the computer from?War Games,?the only way to avoid stock market risk is to stay out of the market.
With bonds at record-low rates, that?s an unsavory proposition for most investors, including me. Fine. We just need to understand what kind of street corner we?re standing on.
Matthew Amster-Burton is a?personal finance columnist at Mint.com. Find him on Twitter?@Mint_Mamster.
The classic advice on communication is that it?s a two way street. In the workplace, that street is more like a spaghetti junction. With so much going on, there are many ways that workplace communication can break down. The first step in repairing it is identifying the problem. Are any of these issues affecting your company? It could be a sign that you have an issue with workplace communication.
Conflicting Goals and Objectives: When assignments are ambiguous, managers are failing to explain tasks properly, or employees aren?t communicating with each other, goals can end up moving in two different directions. This leads to a lack of shared purpose and a situation where the overall objectives of the company will not be met. Ensure mission statements and goals are clear, direct, and communicated with everyone.
Poor Time Management: Conflicting schedules, poor planning, work overload, late projects and missed deadlines, arriving late to meetings, delayed responses, and no respect for due dates. These are all signs that lack of communication is negatively impacting time management in your company. People are not able to properly manage their calendars and deadlines are missed.
Teamwork Doesn?t Exist: When departments or individuals are building silos, you?ll quickly find your company suffering from left-hand, right-hand blindness and a lack of teamwork. People who need to collaborate in order to do their jobs stop communicating, and you run the risk of employees developing ?us against them? attitudes. When teams suffer from poor chemistry and people aren?t willing or able to work together, tasks will not be completed and your business can quickly fall apart.
Low Morale and Lack of Enthusiasm: When communication fails, employees will do the bare minimum necessary to get by. Levels of innovation drop when there is no exchange of ideas and people quickly lose enthusiasm for their jobs when the successes aren?t regularly communicated. Which leads to low morale and little commitment to the success of the company.
Negative Attitudes: A lack of workplace communication leads to negative attitudes and unwillingness to listen. People who can?t communicate with each other become difficult and unwilling to cooperate or compromise. Negative attitudes will not only have an affect on the overall atmosphere within the company; they will also result in decreased productivity levels and poor customer service.
Measurable Financial Loss: If communication fails during a project it can result in failure of the project altogether. This can have serious consequences, ranging from actual financial loss, customers lost due to low levels of customer service, and increased levels of turnover. Customers and employees will leave your company when communication breaks down and they feel like they aren?t being heard.
If you recognise these issues within your organisation, read our article, Hey HR, Don?t Forget About Workplace Communication, for advice on getting your workplace communication back on the right road.
Are you interested in changing the flow of communication in your company as part of your performance management process? Download our white paper Great Management Guidelines to learn about maximizing feedback and boosting your organisational performance.
Today is the day I finally found the time to rebuild the Take Action List Building report and turn it into a live and interactive ebook the first of it?s kind. Normally ebooks are set up and rebranded via a PDF file. But well to me that was a bit old fashion so instead I am trying a brand new web based version in which I will be adding videos and other interactive content right into the report. Now what?s really cool about this is each member has their own url for the report. If you bought rebranding rights you will be able to rebrand the entire report with your own links and share it to anyone who has internet access.
What is Take Action List Building?
Take action list building is my own personal views on email list building which I feel is essential to building ?a strong business online and off. Every major company out there has an email list and entices you with discount offers, rewards or information for being part of that list. It?s a quick and?efficient?way for them to get in touch with you and turn you into a repeat buyer. The views presented within this report are years of my own?experience?on how to?effectively?build and also manage an email list. Yes, it does cost a bit of money to create a list however if done correctly within your first few days/weeks you should already have enough subscribers to cover your auto responder costs and start profiting.
Head on over and grab up your free copy today or pick up rebranding rights to the report. Share it with your friends and like it on Facebook. Click here to sign up
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Former Yahoo and Microsoft executive Blake Irving has been named CEO of controversial web hosting company Go Daddy.
Most recently, Irving led products for Yahoo. He left in April, when Scott Thompson was CEO. Thompson fired 2,000 people, many of whom worked in Irving's division.?
Go Daddy was a private, controversial company for a long time. Its former CEO videotaped himself killing an elephant. It supported SOPA, the bill that everyone on the Internet hated. And then there's those Super Bowl ads featuring Danica Patrick and top heavy ladies.
Go Daddy advertising!
That's probably changing now. Not just because of Irving. Go Daddy was sold for $2 billion to an investment group last year. That investment group will either want to take Go Daddy public or sell it for more than $2 billion to someone else.
We're scheduled to talk to Irving about his new role, which seems like a big departure from running products at Yahoo. We'll have more on that later.
In the meanwhile, here's the release:
GO DADDY APPOINTS BLAKE IRVING AS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Technology Veteran Brings Product Development Focus to Go Daddy ? SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Dec. 11, 2012) ? Go Daddy, the world?s largest provider of Web hosting, domain name registrations and new SSL Certificates, today announced Blake Irving, formerly a long time Microsoft executive and Chief Product Officer of Yahoo! Incorporated (?Yahoo?), will assume the role of Chief Executive Officer (?CEO?), effective January 7, 2013.? Irving will succeed Scott Wagner, a Member of KKR who has been serving as interim CEO since July. ? ?Go Daddy, the industry leader of Web hosting solutions for small and medium businesses, is poised for a promising future,? said Go Daddy Executive Chairman and Founder Bob Parsons. ?Blake Irving's deep technology experience and his history of developing new cutting-edge products and leading large global teams make him an enormously compelling choice to drive Go Daddy to the next level of its domestic and global growth.? Go Daddy has made great strides with Scott Wagner as CEO, and we look forward to building on that in the future.? ? Go Daddy has recently been expanding its market-leading products to support its nearly 11 million customers, mostly small business customers both domestically and internationally.? This summer, Go Daddy acquired Outright.com, a cloud-based financial management application and the company also formed a partnership with DudaMobile to launch mobile Website Builder, a service that automates the integration of Web and mobile sites to save businesses time and expand their customer reach. ? ?I?m honored for the opportunity to lead such a talented team and to be a part of such an innovative company,? Blake Irving said. ?Go Daddy is and will continue to be the hub where businesses can come to life, grow and prosper. We strive to be the global resource that fuels success for countless entrepreneurs and innovators around the world. As a long time Go Daddy customer, I have seen firsthand an organization that is committed to its customers 24 hours a day and seven days a week and yet there still remains much more we can do to enhance the customer experience. This is a fantastic opportunity, and I can?t wait to hit the ground running in January.? ? "Go Daddy is fortunate to have Blake Irving join the team for the next chapter in his long time career as an innovator," said Scott Wagner, Go Daddy's Interim CEO. "I?m thrilled for Blake and I am thrilled for Go Daddy. We have good momentum on product and our international growth and having someone with Blake?s talent and character lead the company will only accelerate it.? ? About Blake Irving Blake Irving has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of Go Daddy, effective January 7, 2013, and will also join the Go Daddy Board of Directors. ? Irving most recently served as Chief Product Officer at Yahoo! Incorporated, where he developed and rolled out the unified product vision and strategy ? growing the company to nearly one billion active PC and mobile users.? Prior to Yahoo, he spent 15 years at Microsoft, serving in various senior roles, most recently as Corporate Vice President of the Windows Live Platform.? While at Microsoft, Irving was responsible for creating and leading a global development and operations organization of more than 4,000 employees in the creation and operation of Microsoft?s global online services, launching several new products, including MSN Messenger and growing Hotmail from 7 million to 290 million users. ? Mr. Irving currently serves on the Board of GolfLogix, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based mobile Web company.? He has also served as a professor at Pepperdine University.? He is a graduate of San Diego State and received an MBA degree from Pepperdine University. ? ? To find out more about how to get online easily and affordably, visit www.GoDaddy.com.
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Most people remain totally oblivious to the fact that they snore. Most people who snore don?t even know about their problem, until a friend or sleeping partner informs them. Some people are embarrassed by their snoring, but it can also be a sign that there are other problems. The piece that follows is full of guidance about dealing with snoring.
In order to minimize snoring, keep a normal, healthy body weight. Body weight may not always exacerbate snoring; however, if there is extra fat within the neck area, your airways could be constricted and this does lead to snoring. If your snoring gets worse after gaining a few pounds, losing them may help.
If you are prone to snoring, adjust your meal schedule. Consume a small dinner in the early evening. Don?t eat rich or fatty foods, including dairy, as they can increase the mucus in your nose and throat. Drink a cup of tea with a little honey before going to bed, as this will relax your throat.
You can fight back against your snoring issues through specially-targeted exercises. Studies have shown that a few simple exercises will help to build your throat muscles, stopping your airway from collapsing as you sleep. Talk to your doctor about making these exercises a part of your daily routine.
You may have luck using essential oils to reduce your snoring. Oils like eucalyptus and peppermint can help open up clogged nasal passages. They allow you to breathe more easily, which helps to alleviate any snoring issues. Try them out when you get a little congested in the future.
Consuming a smaller meal at dinnertime may lead to a reduction in snoring. Large meals that are eaten too close to sleep fill the stomach. This can cause the diaphragm to rise and put pressure near the throat. This can cause breathing problems that contribute to snoring. Snoring is often caused by reduced airflow through a narrow throat.
Below are some tips you can use to help you or a family memeber quit snoring. Sleeping on your back can contribute heavily to snoring issues, so try this easy idea to encourage better sleeping habits. You can simply tape or sew ping-pong balls to the inside of the back of your sleeping garments. This encourages you to sleep on your side.
Visit your obstetrician, if you snore while pregnant. While it is very common for pregnant women to snore during their pregnancies, you should learn about how this problem can affect your baby and its oxygen levels. Therefore, it is important to visit your physician as soon as snoring occurs to rule out any issues that may harm your unborn child.
For serious treatment for your snoring problems, you can inquire about mandibular advancement appliances with your doctor or dentist. These devices are positioned in your mouth snuggly against your upper teeth and lower teeth. As their name indicates, these appliances move the jaw forward a little and can help reduce snoring.
Many times just changing the position that you sleep in can eliminate snoring. Sleeping on your back is the worst position if you want to stop snoring. What happens is, your tissue and muscles in your throat fall because they?re relaxed. Sleeping on your side will prevent this from happening, and can bring a quieter and more restful night of sleep.
Do not eat a lot before bed. If your stomach is filled with excess food, it will push on your diaphragm. This has the unfortunate effect of constricting your airway, which leads to snoring. You should them eat several hours prior to bed.
Check medications that could cause snoring, if you snore. Many prescription medications can cause mucosal membranes to become dried-out, which then leads to swelling and impeded airflow. Other types of medication will sedate you to the point that your throat muscles give out, allowing your airway to collapse completely.
Most people who snore are unaware that they do, until someone tells them. It may be embarrassing finding out you snore, and it could also be a sign of internal issues. If you are a snorer, use this advice to control it as quickly as possible.
The classic advice on communication is that it?s a two way street. In the workplace, that street is more like a spaghetti junction. With so much going on, there are many ways that workplace communication can break down. The first step in repairing it is identifying the problem. Are any of these issues affecting your company? It could be a sign that you have an issue with workplace communication.