Stock Update


First off .. thank you for your e-mails regarding our stock index.
Secondly, I think we've got a list .. it's been (unofficially, so far) expanded to 50 local companies .. all have to be headquartered in teh Bay Area .. lots of different industries represented.

Here's the chance to let me know if I've missed something .. and here's what we have so far:


1. Adobe
2. AMD
3. Affymetrix
4. Agilent
5. Altera
6. Apple
7. Applied Materials
8. Autodesk
9. California Water
10. Chevron
11. Cisco
12. Dolby Labs
13. eBay
14. Electronic Arts
15. Franklin Resources
16. Gap
17. Genentech
18. Gilead Sciences
19. Google
20. Gymboree
21. Hewlett Packard
22. Intel
23. Intuit
24. Intuitive Surgical
25. Juniper Networks
26. KLA Tencor
27. McAfee
28. National Semiconductor
29. Netflix
30. Network Appliance
31. Nvidia
32. Oracle
33. Palm
34. Peets Coffee
35. Ross Stores
36. Silicon Valley Bank
37. Safeway
38. SanDisk
39. Seagate
40. Sun Microsystems
41. Symantec
42. TiVo
43. Trimble
44. Varian Medical
45. Verisign
46. WebEx
47. Wells Fargo Bank
48. Williams-Sonoma
49. Xilinx
50. Yahoo

Wanna Pick Some Stocks?


As I write this, the number of companies under investigation for possibly tinkering with their stock option grants heads towards the triple digits. The Middle East is nervously clinging to a cease-fire, and gas prices are eating deeply into our wallets. It's a nervous time for any long-term investor, and therefore possibly an awkward time to ask you, the reader and viewer, to help us pick some stocks.

But I'm going to anyway.

That's because I'm trying to come up with a stock index that represents Bay Area business. Technology, to be sure, will be a large part of the index. You figure we need some chip companies, biotech, internet, gear makers, that sort of thing. But we should also add companies showing off what else we have to offer: retail, healthcare, finance .. in other words, a diverse basket of stocks to represent the diverse business climate in which we live and work.

As far as how many companies in our index .. I'm thinking 30 .. it's an easy number to remember, and it can easily be contrasted with the Dow 30 (we'll also contrast it with the Nasdaq, which has a ton of companies). As to what we call it? Well, we're NBC11 .. it's probably going to be 30 companies .. I may need your help there, too. I'll take suggestions.

So there you have it .. time to go stock-picking.

Please let me know what you like at scott.budman@nbc.com

I'll keep you posted as we set the whole thing up.

Privacy Problems
It's rare in life, and in business, to be exactly right about something. But recently, we saw exactly what privacy advocates have been talking about. And fearing. And warning us about. To the letter. A giant search engine. Private data. Open to anybody who wants a peek.

When America Online gave its search engine data to the academic world, it may have seemed, to some, like a good idea. And, for research purposes, perhaps it was. But when it came to privacy concerns, it was a disaster waiting to happen. AOL retracted the information, but it got out. Way way out. All of the search queries made by more than 600,000 AOL users is free to you and me. You can find it, ironically, on your favorite search engine.

And, if you think about it, it didn't really take a "perfect storm" of events to make it happen. The fact is, the 'net is so wide open these days, it was only a matter of (a very little) time before the data was copied, uploaded, and passed around. If you haven't seen it, I don't know that I'd recommend it. It's personal, goofy, sometimes creepy, and really, the kind of stuff (well, mostly) that you or I might search for. But how did AOL not know that this would happen? This is, after all, the company that brought a gazillion people online .. didn't they think about how quickly things move online? It boggles the mind. And, if you're one of the 600,000 plus, it likely infuriates you.

Where does this go from here? I spoke to lawyers who watch privacy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in SF .. they predict lawsuits. It's sad, really. You sign up with an ISP, and search on your own time on your own computer .. and probably expect a little privacy. Will this erode trust in Google, Yahoo, and MSN? What do you think? Let me know at scott.budman@nbc.com
I'm curious to know what you think...and if privacy of this sort is a thing of the past.

Apple Bites Back


I've written about stock option backdating in this blog recently, and from the looks of it, will probably be writing more about it in the near future. One of the companies caught up in the web of options problems is Apple Computer.

For Apple investors, this is especially disturbing news. This sort of problem is supposed to happen to other companies .. sort of like how computer viruses are only supposed to hit Windows machines, not Macs. Well, turns out the Mac maker may not be immune to financial problems.

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage to kick off the week-long World Wide Developer Conference his company throws each year, it seemed to me that he had two jobs: One, dazzle the four thousand developers in the crowd who wanted to see all the cool new stuff they'd have to work with, and two, assure investors that although it may take a little time, his company would make sure they didn't have to worry too much about the company they chose to take ownership of.

He certainly came through on the first. Apple not only wheeled out a new Mac Pro computer (with Intel inside) that should make all home and business users salivate with power, but also, with the help of capable assistants, rolled through ten updates to Apple's newest Operating System.

Among the software updates for OS X, something called "Time Machine," a way to automatically back up all of your data. This "Machine" will then, if prompted, go back in time to actually find lost photos, e-mail, and other files. Amazing. Truly the latest step in making computing idiot-proof.

But there are still Apple investors out there who probably wish they had a time machine. They could go back to a time before any black clouds floated over Apple's finances, and perhaps pull the trigger and sell Apple stock at its all-time high of $86 a share (it closed today at $67), knowing they'd probably save some nail-biting in the process.

It's here, I think, that Steve Jobs could have thrown them a bone. Not a lot, mind you .. I know there are lots of legal issues here, and after all, the day was for technology, not finance. But there were undoubtedly some investors in the audience, and they own the company. They deserve to know what's going on. They deserve to be told their patience will be rewarded.