Tell It To Al

Boeing may not have extinguished the issue of burning batteries in it’s 787 Dreamliners, but it’s sure keeping it’s investors cool.

Stock of Boeing closed Friday just a little bit about $75, just a few pegs below it’s $52-week high of about $78.

Meantime, it’s future is stranded on the tarmac. No one can quite yet tell how long it will take Boeing to prove to aviation regulators around the globe that it’s Dreamliners are safe after a couple of incidents involving smoking batteries.

This isn’t going to be like changing the battery in a car. The entire plane was designed around lithium-ion batteries that are both light-weight and quick-charging. Using a more traditional cell will likely involved a long and costly redesign of the plane.

Given the unknowns, it’s amazing how muted the market reaction was to the news.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal. And click here to watch me talk about it with Matt Flener of Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9News.

Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com

Stock of multilevel marketing company Herbalife Ltd. is still recovering after a well-known hedge fund manager trashed it as a “pyramid scheme” at a New York investor conference last month.

William Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management presented a 340-page slide show, claiming the company is more about recruiting people to sell its wares, than the wares themselves.

Companies that recruit people to recruit people, and sell products to all their friends, have been around for ages. They’re always so full of that self-improvement schlock and power-of-positive thinking banter that you know they are trying to appeal to the downtrodden.

In the case of Herbalife, it’s a wonder so few people who get involved stop to wonder how they’ll ever compete with the three million others selling Herbalife stuff or with Wal-Mart, selling similar products for much less.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.  Click here for links to Mr. Ackman’s data and slideshow on Herbalife. And click here to read the thoughts of another hedge fund manager, Robert Chapman, who invested in Herbalife after Mr. Ackman’s attack on the company.

Also, click here for an investors’ perspective on what the Federal Trade Commission does about pyramid schemes: Next to nothing.

Have you had experience with Herbalife? Tell me your story.

Microsoft may have been the first company to envision the tablet computer, but it’s just now coming out with the Surface.

How did this market leader become the market follower of just about every consumer computing trend over the past 12 years?

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

Also, would love to hear your thoughts on the new Surface if you’ve check it out over the weekend.

Private equity firms have flipped Sealy mattress several times over the past five years – sometimes bagging huge profits for themselves, but never really creating jobs or growth.

All the criticisms of private equity – that they take companies, loan them up with debt, and pass them on to the next buyer – come to life in the story of Sealy.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

It doesn’t take a wide vocabulary to win in Words With Frends.

The game is won with well placed two-letter words – or at least two-letter combinations that the game’s creators think are words.

Like, ZA. Or HM.

I offer some choice words for Zynga.

Despite the popularity of its games, including Words With Friends, it’s stock has taken an amazing plunge.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch. And write me back with your favorite two- and three-letter words from this game.

If you were reincarnated as a dog, it would be difficult to find a better owner than PetSmart CEO Bob Moran.

Mr. Moran runs a company with 1,250 giant pet stores, and the value of his stock has nearly tripled throughout the financial crisis and the sluggish recovery that has followed.

His dog, Tatum Shea, has lived the canine version of a Dickens tale. Born with a birth defect, abandoned, and then rescued by Mr. Moran’s wife to become part of the family.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

Struggling bookseller Barnes & Noble narrowed its losses thanks to the erotic bestseller “50 Shades of I’m An Aging Pervert,” I mean, “50 Shades of Grey.”

Click here to read more on Barnes & Noble’s financial results.

I had no idea that someone could write down every sick thought he ever had and turn it into an industry. Sales are up at bookstores, and adult novelty shops as well, thanks to this literary genre being popularly dubbed “Mommy Porn.”

It’s not that I’m repulsed. I’m just wondering if I made a mistake working for family newspapers for so many years, where they train you not to write this stuff.

I’d always thought one of the first signs that we were truly in an economic recovery would be a drop in sales at McDonald’s.

Mickey D’s  has been boomed through this long spate of high unemployment and low income growth, serving as America’s food bank. But last week it posted a surprising decline in same-store sales.

Does this mean consumers are feeling richer and ditching the value menu in favor or pricier fare? Or is this a sign and increasing number of people don’t even have money for McDonald’s anymore?

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

I suspect Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy’s remarks about “the biblical definition of marriage” would not have resonated they way they have were this not an election year.

Having met Mr. Cathy, I think he’s doing what he thinks is the right thing. The problem with quoting the Bible to support a political cause is that the Bible can be quoted to support just about any idea, including slavery and emancipation from slavery. Both the North and the South used the Bible to bolster their positions  in the Civil War.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

We’ve long purchased  most of our oil from foreign countries, and now it looks like we’re going to be getting our solar panels from China.

Heavily subsidized Chinese solar panel makers have been dumping solar panels on the global market below cost, swiftly running U.S. manufacturers out of business.

Colorado venture capitalist John Hill, however, says that is only part of the story for the bankruptcy filing of Loveland, Colo.-based Abound Solar. Hill says the company he helped found was done in by election-year politics, and the perception that Abound was just “another Solyndra.”

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.