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About 80% of Ballmer's money ($150 billion -former Microsoft CEO) is in Microsoft stock and 20% in index funds. He tried investing in stocks, Colgate Palmolive at advice of Jim Cramer a college buddy. Then tried diversifying. Tried money managers and found it difficult to find ones that outperform. So he dumped them all. His approach was shaped by Warren Buffet who says put it in S&P shaped index fund. He says-  Keep it Simple. Keep it Simple. We are financially blessed. What I seek says Ballmer is not to have anxiety, not to have to spend a lot of time, where we are blessed enough if we make 7%, the standard S&P return in the long run. He had luck listening to the right people and his loyalty to the company.  When Balmer left office as CEO in 2014 Microsoft market capitalization was $300 million. Ten years later it is $3 trillion with work on cloud computing and AI. Microsoft gained 29%  each year in that period including dividends, the S&P 13% with dividends, endowments 8%. As investor non-investor Ballmer now exceeds $150 billion and is No. 9. Most investments are in one trick ponies Google for example or in two trick ponies Apple, Amazon or Microsoft. One trick pony means they milk it, and milk it, and milk it. Three trick ponies not many you can find. ...

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On BBC: See key moments video of US Liberation Day, Rose Garden April 2, 2025. DJT describes decades of inaction by previous American presidents as the US and American workers, and factory towns were looted and pillaged of their factories by other nations. At one point he said the US lost 90,000 factories and it would be impossible to put 90,000 tacks on a map to show these lost factories from cheating by other trading nations including Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea. And use of third nations Mexico and Vietnam by China, and Mexico by Germany to ship into the US. All this stops on April 2, 2025. In this way the US which made 100% od the worlds computer chips lost an entire industry to Taiwan. It also lost its electronics industries. And its pharmaceutical industry, so that antibiotics if not imported would not be available to the people of the United States. It becomes a antional security issue when the shipbuilding industry is also gone where one shipbuilding plant in china makes more ships than all the plants in the USA. And nothing was done about this till today. DJT said there is a simple way to avoid these tariffs- make in the USA and there are no tariffs. Already Apple he says has committed to invest $500 billion in the US and Taiwan to build the largest semiconductor plant in the world in the USA. And total investments in the US now add up to $10 trillion, says DJT. ...

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Samsung increases its share of the global smartphone market to 33% for the first quarter of 2013, and Apple's share drops from 23% to 18%, according to Strategy Analytics. Samsung is targeting the low end of the smartphone market. Samsung's manufacturing capabilities give it an advantage in responding to market demand.

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About 29% of businesses support the iPhone, up from none in 2007 and 17% in 2009 according to Forrester Research. Even though 70% still support the Blackberry, the iPhone is getting the support of employees who ask for iPhones, even if that means they pay for all or part of it on their own. AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson, says about 40% of its iPhones are sold to companies or individuals with corporate discounts.

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Rauhala cites an email from Apple CEO, Tim Cook, saying updates he gets about performance in China every morning show strong growth for Apple's business for July and August. China's retail sales are up 10.4% for the first 7 months of 2015, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The services sector as a whole showed growth of 8.4% in the first half of 2015, and it now makes up 49.5% of GDP, according to government statistics. Overall economic growth is about 4-5%, as the 7% official figure is considered overstated. Zhao Longkai, the executive director of the Beijing Univerisity Guanghua School of Management, says the retail sector should not be affected that much because losses are largely limited to a small number of wealthy investors, though some ordinary retail investors are affected, with overall stock market participation quite low compared to the U.S. and Europe. This and other expert opinion points to a situation of slower growth and debt overhang from the last stimulus, but not a strong connection between the stock market and the economy. The government's credibilty is affected by the failed intervention in July and this time during the sharp declines on August 24-25 the government is letting the market finds its own level, believing it will be better for markets and let them stabilize. ...

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Microsoft shares were up 7% after the announcement about the departure of Steve Ballmer from the CEO position. Steve Ballmer became president in 1998 to run Microsoft's operations. He was a college buddy of Microsoft founder Bill Gates at Harvard. Ballmer graduated from Harvard with a degree in mathematics and economics and worked for 2 years at P&G before Gates persuaded him to join him at Microsoft. For decades the duo of Gates and Ballmer ran the company till Ballmer was made CEO in 2000. Ballmer completes three decades at Microsoft. During most of this period Ballmer focussed on protecting the existing franchise of Windows operating systems software and the Office suite sold on all PC's except Apple Macs. Missteps include Windows Vista, which was followed by the more successful Windows 7. Windows 8 has failed to make a significant dent in the market. A poor decision in retrospect to acquire Yahoo for about $44 billion did not happen, as Yahoo did not pursue discussions. The efforts in smartphones with Nokia and the Surface tablet have failed to produce results. Under Ballmer Microsoft only gradually shifted to cloud computing. The departure of Ballmer comes as a major reorganization was underway in 2013, and the company was shifting its strategy to become a provider of devices and services in place of its main role making software sales for PC's....

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Spotify acquires podcasting firms to broaden its appeal and acquire nonmusic content including listening time on radio. Spotify thinks it can bring to nonmusic content podcasts what it has done for music by bringing better curation, customization and recommendation, while developing tools and collecting data for podcasters. Talk enhances the experience of listening to music, says Spotify CEO Daniel EK.  Spotify aims to take some of the two hours people listen to radio globally and make money off of it. Ek says video is a bout $1 trillion market, and music plus radio $100 billion, but he questions whether our eyes are worth 10 times as much as our ears." Adding more monetization opportunities is key. Spotify says it has seen that podcasts command an engaged audience- people who see podcasts spend twice as much time using the service, and tend to stream more live music. They are less likely to cancel subscriptions.  Spotify has 206 million users and 96 million subscribers. Average revenue per user is 4.89 euros as many of Spotify's users come in through family plans and in international markets with lower pricing power. ...

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Sorkin looks at the period when Carly Fiorina was an executive at Lucent Technologies. He cites Donald Trump's comment in the presidential debate about Fiorina's time at Lucent, that "it was not a good picture." Questions relate to how Lucent at the time used financing of customers to buy its products to improve results. Vendor financed transactions and sales were an issue raised in Fortune magazine during Fiorina's unsuccessful 2010 Senate campaign. Several books on Fiorina also raise this issue. In one of the books by Peter Burrows, Prof. Khurana at Harvard points out that the creative accounting and ample credit offered to customers had a lot to do with Lucent's results, and Fiorina's appointment as HP CEO would not have happened had this been known. Lucent's later downfall came with layoffs of 50,000 employees in 2001.

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WSJ reports that Tech companies spent heavily in 2022 to block legislation in the US. Congress. This means the US Justice Department had to step in with the Executive Branch determined to dismantle the edifice of anti competitive behavior that Google, Apple and other companies have built. States are also stepping in with the US Justice Department. Attorney General Merrick Garland seeks nothing less than to breakup Google as is clear from his statement on January 25 announcing the US Justice Department lawsuit. 

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An excerpt from the hearings on the major questions doctrine and separation of powers with Congress. JUSTICE ROBERTS: Sometime ago you dismissed the applicability of the major questions doctrine, and I -- I want -- want you to explain that a little bit more. I mean, it seems that it might be directly applicable. You have a claimed source in IEEPA that had never before been used to justify tariffs. No one has argued that it does until this -- this particular case. Congress uses tariffs in other provisions but -- but not here. And yet -- and correct me on this if I'm not right about it -- the justification is being used for a power to impose tariffs on any product from any country for -- in any amount for any length of time. That seems like -- I'm not suggesting it's not there, but it does seem like that's major authority, and the basis for the claim seems to be a misfit. So why doesn't it apply again? GENERAL SAUER: Well, we agree that it's a major power, but it's in the context of a statute that is explicitly conferring major powers, that the point of the statute is to confer major powers to address major questions, which are emergencies. So it would be unusual... And another excerpt from the hearings on fentanyl- JUSTICE KAGAN: And, in fact, you know, we've had cases recently which deals with the President's emergency powers, and it turns out we're in emergencies everything all the time about, like, half the world. GENERAL SAUER: Well, this particular emergency is particularly existential, as Executive Order 14257 says, and, of course, no one disputes the existential nature of the fentanyl crisis, which, you know, we had an agreement last week to create progress on, which illustrates the effectiveness of the tariffs tool (this refers to the agrement with China last week by Nov 1 that cuts the 20% tariff from 20% to 10% if China completely cuts off flow of fentanyl from inside its borders.)  Clearly some in the US have not grasped the existential nature of the fentanyl crisis, a crisis of proportions so great that it would be an existential crisis for any nation. A concentration of the world's manufacturing in one nation with a trade surplus of $1 trillion with the world is also an emergency that extends into the existential sphere. ...

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Lucie Castets, candidate for prime minister of the largest parliamentary group in the National Assembly of France, the NFP,  is interviewed in The Guardian. Kim Willsher interviews Lucie Castets at a cafe in the Marais district of Paris.  Castets says- “France is a rich country but people are getting increasingly poor, they don’t know if there’s going to be a teacher in front of their kids, they don’t know how long they’re going to wait in casualty if they break a leg, they don’t know how much their salary will be in a year. Who can accept that? Well apparently, Emmanuel Macron accepts that, but I think it’s unacceptable.” A government is needed in France for a budget to be passed by January 2025. A caretaker government of Macron's party cannot do this following its poor showing in the recent election. Macron refuses to let NFP form a government with outside support saying he was doing this for "institutional stability." Macron wants to see cuts of $25 billion. The NFP wants to spend $150 billion for the government to meet the needs of the people. It would like the US, recover most or all of this $150 billion from higher taxes for the ultra rich, and billionaires which would not affect 95% of the French people.  Castets says- Castets rejects the ideas this would be “impossible to apply or finance” and cost jobs. “We will finance each measure with new revenue, unlike the government. The accusation of economic irresponsibility irritates me because that’s not what we’re proposing at all. The NFP’s programme was heavily attacked on this aspect, so it’s important to say that these measures will only affect the ultra-rich. We want to correct flagrant tax injustices, with billionaires paying a lower percentage of tax than the middle classes.”   ...