MagicJack’s 18% Weekly Drop

MagicJack’s 18% Weekly Drop Unjustified to CEO: Israel Overnight By Sridhar Natarajan - Oct 14, 2012 4:26 AM GMT+0530

MagicJack VocalTec Ltd. (CALL)’s 18 percent drop last week, the biggest decline on the benchmark index of Israeli stocks in New York, is unjustified given the company will post the highest quarterly revenue in two years, according to Chief Executive Officer Daniel Borislow.

The Israeli company, whose founders invented the technology used for making phone calls over the Internet, slumped 5.7 percent to $20.11 on Oct. 12, the lowest level since July. The decline capped the fourth weekly drop for MagicJack, which is due to report third-quarter earnings on Oct. 19. The Bloomberg Israel-U.S. Equity index of the biggest Israeli companies traded in the U.S. rose 0.2 percent on Oct. 12, trimming its fall in the week to 1.2 percent.

“Sales of our product have been quite good and the drop doesn’t make much sense to me,” Borislow said by phone from West Palm Beach, Florida, on Oct. 12. “There will not be any downside surprises reported next week.”

MagicJack said on Sept. 6 that it probably made as much as $41 million of sales in the third quarter, a number reiterated by Borislow on Oct. 12. That would be the highest revenue posted in any quarter since the three months through Sept. 30, 2010, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The Netanya, Israel-based company, which competes with Skype Technologies SA andVonage Holdings Corp. (VG), will boost sales as it expands into products used on mobile devices, according to the CEO.

The weekly drop for the Israel-US Equity Index was the most since the week ending July 13. The gauge trades for 12.9 times estimated earnings, compared with the average multiple of 11.7 for the benchmark TA-25 Index in Tel Aviv, which slid 0.8 percent last week.

EPS Estimate Raised

MagicJack raised its 2012 earnings estimate to as much as $2 per share, compared with an earlier estimate of $1.50 to $1.80, according to the Sept. 6 statement. The shares have lost 24 percent since that announcement was made.

The company’s main product is a device that connects to a computer or to a router to enable voice calls over the Internet.

“There’s always apprehension with MagicJack,” John Gualy, a partner at Eagle Global Advisors, which oversees about $3 billion in assets and holds the company’s shares, said in a phone interview from Houston. “It’s definitely a one-trick pony, but it’s been doing that very well. Some people believe the management will trip over at some point, but they have been executing well so far.”

The stock has increased 47 percent this year.

Israel, which has a population of similar size to Switzerland, has about 60 companies traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, the most of any country outside the U.S. after China. The nation is also home to more startup companies per capita than the U.S.

‘Virtual Monopoly’

Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (MLNX), the Yokneam Elit, Israel-based maker of technology used to transfer and store data, led gains on the Bloomberg Israel-U.S. index on Oct. 12, adding 1.8 percent to $103.38. The company may report a record $153.2 million in third-quarter sales when it releases results on Oct. 17, according to the mean estimate of 14 analysts.

“They have a virtual monopoly in an expanding market opportunity,” Rajesh Ghai, an analyst at ThinkEquity LLC which rates the stock buy, said by phone from San Francisco. “InfiniBand is seeing increasing penetration into new use cases and that is responsible for the significant growth that the company has seen in the last year.”

Mellanox’s InfiniBand product is used in high-end computing and data centers. American depositary receipts of Mellanox traded at an 88-cent discount to its stock in Tel Aviv on Oct. 12.

Syneron Medical Ltd. (ELOS), the largest Israeli maker of aesthetic medical products, dropped 0.7 percent to $9.40 on in New York on Oct. 12, the lowest level in a year. The company has reported losses for the last six quarters.

“A lot of investors were hoping there should be no questions of profitability by now and they have gotten impatient about that,” Jeremy Feffer, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald which rates Syneron buy, said by phone. “There just haven’t been any positive catalysts.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Sridhar Natarajan in New York atsnatarajan15@bloomberg.net

Microsoft sets Windows--opens for pre-order

Microsoft sets Windows 8 price, opens for pre-order

Shoppers can reserve the software pack at Microsoft's own stores, Amazon.com, Best Buy, etc

Reuters / Seattle Oct 14, 2012, 00:35 IST Microsoft Corp opened its Windows 8 operating system for pre-orders yesterday, setting the price for an upgrade to the full version of the software at $70 for a DVD pack. Users can also wait for launch on October 26 to download the system onto their computers for $40, an offer price that will expire at the end of January. PCs running Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 will be able to upgrade to Windows 8. Shoppers can reserve the software pack at Microsoft's own stores, Amazon.com, Best Buy, Staples and elsewhere. Microsoft has not yet announced the price of the full software to install from scratch, as opposed to the upgrade. The current price for a comparable version of Windows 7 is $200. Any customer who buys, or already bought, a Windows 7 PC between June 2 and the end of January 2013 will be able to get an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $15, a move designed to prevent a drop-off in PC sales before the launch of Windows 8. Microsoft also said PC makers such as Acer, Asustek, Dell, HP, Samsung and Sony were also now taking pre-orders for machines with Windows 8 pre-installed.The world's largest software company did not mention its own Surface tablet PC, which is expected on the market at the same time as Windows 8. Microsoft has not revealed the price of the product it hopes will challenge Apple Inc’s iPad.

FUTURE PRIORITIES --GET RIGHT

Get your priorities right

The time between making a financial plan and executing it should not be very high

Steven Fernandes / Oct 14, 2012, 00:50 IST

As the saying goes, ‘even with the best of intentions, things just happen’. As it did with Pravin Sinha. The thirty-nine year old has been planning to get his finances in order for a long time. But time has been a serious constraint.

Almost a year back, when he met a financial planner, a former class mate as well, he was quite overjoyed that finally there was help at hand. Sinha, a vice-president with an information technology company, met the financial planner in the latter’s office soon.
And after a long discussion, it was decided that there were some urgent steps that were needed and some long-term planning. For this, the financial planner required some financial documents related to his income, expense, assets and liabilities in order to analyse and provide the right solution.

After the first meeting, it took the financial planner nearly four months of reminders and constant follow up to get all the required documents from him. While Sinha constantly apologised saying that it would take some time to locate all the documents. Finally, he did locate them, the plan was prepared and after long discussions the implementation schedule was put in place as well.

But again due to his job commitments, Pravin somehow could not even complete the initial risk cover enhancement or any investment suggestions for almost a year. Things are still to be implemented. And for all one knows, his financial situation may have changed and he may have splurged somewhere or is planning to do so. Obviously, the financial planner is quite uncomfortable with the constant delay.

Sinha’s is not an isolated case. Financial planners have many such clients. Another one is 40-year old Raviraj Gupte, a general manager in one of the leading companies in the hospitality industry. Gupte maintained scans of all his investments and insurance documents and was therefore, able to provide all his financial documents within two weeks of starting the financial planning engagement.

But once the financial plan was done, it became difficult to contact and communicate with him since he has to travel constantly to different parts of India as well as South-East Asia.

Even though the financial plan was ready at the start of the year, it was discussed only in mid April when Gupte was available in Mumbai. Since then, another five months have passed and there is no news about the implementation of the insurance or investment recommendations. At times the emails sent to him are answered after nearly two weeks.

Consequences
In both Sinha and Gupte’s case, we find that though both are very keen in putting their financial lives in order, somehow or the other due to job commitments they are not able to give priority to their finances. They did not even feel it necessary to involve their spouse thinking that they already had other family commitments. And what is the end result.

• Both are heavily underinsured and have excess funds lying idle in savings account earning 4-6 per cent interest when the inflation is in the excess of 7 per cent. Ultimately this excess cash sometimes gets utilised in buying fancy things which might not be your need but desire.  
• Imagine if in such a situation if god forbid, either of them meet with an unfortunate event, and the family income stops, they being the sole earning members of the house. This is a possibility given the fact that today people earn a fat salary but in return they spend countless hours at office under stressful circumstances.

What’s the way ahead? Just like a manager in an organisation knows exactly what is to be done when he is supposed to achieve certain targets, we too need to prioritise our financial goals in such a way that we are constantly reminded of our very own little things which we have planned to achieve within the stipulated time. A few tips here should help.

• Keep reminders: People use gadgets like mobile phones or the ipad- off late to set reminders for their official meetings. Why not incorporate meeting your financial planner or meeting your insurance advisor to complete that pending life insurance/ mediclaim proposal, in your reminders!  
• Take responsibility: No one else but you is responsible for your financial future. The more you neglect and delay planning for your present and future, the more difficult it will be to achieve even basic goals like your retirement planning. Have you thought what would happen to your finances in the event of a job loss? Why wait for calamities to fall on you to meet your planner or to begin your investments?  
• Involve your spouse: Financial planners recommend involving the spouse in financial planning in order to ensure that one person takes charge and religiously helps in implementing the suggestions which is what is the ultimate aim of preparing a plan. It also helps that the spouse is aware of all the financial aspects related to insurance/ investments/ assets/ liabilities of the family. Haven’t we heard of several cases where on the death of the male earning member, the spouse was not even aware of how much insurance cover or loan liability her husband http://www.businessstandard.com/india/news/get-your-priorities-right/489496/

Mo Yan won the 2012 Nobel prize

(Reuters) - Chinese writer Mo Yan won the 2012 Nobel prize for literature on Thursday for works which combine "hallucinatory realism" with folk tales, history and contemporary life in China.

Mo, who was once so destitute he ate tree bark and weeds to survive, is the first Chinese national to win the $1.2 million literature prize, awarded by the Swedish Academy.

He said the award made him "overjoyed and terrified".

Some of his books have been banned as "provocative and vulgar" by Chinese authorities but he has also been criticised as being too close to the Communist Party.

While users of a popular Chinese microblogging site offered their congratulations, dissident artist Ai Weiwei said he disagreed with giving the award to a writer with the "taint of government" about him.

Mo, 57, who grew up in the town of Gaomi in Shandong province in the northeast of the country and whose parents were farmers, sets his works mainly in the land of his birth.

Mo Yan is a pen name which means "Don't Speak". His real name is Guan Moye and he was forced to drop out of primary school and herd cattle during China's Cultural Revolution.

Speaking to the state-run China News Service, Mo said he was happy to have won.

"But I do not think that my winning can be seen as representing anything. I think that China has many outstanding authors, and their great works should also be recognised by the world.

"Next, I'm going to put most of my efforts into creating my new works. I will keep working hard, and I thank everyone. As to whether I go to Sweden to receive the prize, I will wait for word from the organisers about arrangements."

"AT HOME WITH HIS DAD"

Peter Englund, head of the Swedish Academy, said Mo was "at home with his dad" when he was told of the award.

"He said he was overjoyed and terrified," Englund told Swedish television. "He has such a damn unique way of writing. If you read half a page of Mo Yan you immediately recognise it as him."

The award citation said Mo used a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives to create a world which was reminiscent of the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

At the same time, he found a "departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition", the Academy said.

Englund said Mo offers "a unique insight into a unique world in a quite unique manner."

His style is "a fountain of words and stories and stories within stories, then stories within the stories within the stories and so on. He's mesmerising," Englund told Reuters television.

Mo is best known in the West for "Red Sorghum", which portrayed the hardships endured by farmers in the early years of communist rule and was made in a film directed by Zhang Yimou. His books also include "Big Breasts and Wide Hips" and "The Republic of Wine".

"My works are Chinese literature, which is part of world literature. They show the life of Chinese people as well as the country's unique culture and folk customs," Mo told reporters in his hometown, Xinhua news agency reported.

The last Chinese-born winner was Gao Xingjian in 2000, although he was living in France by that time and had taken French citizenship. His Nobel was not celebrated by the Chinese government.

CHINA HAS "WAITED TOO LONG"

Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily praised the win in a commentary on its website (www.people.com.cn).

"This is the first Chinese writer who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Chinese writers have waited too long, the Chinese people have waited too long," it wrote.

Mo, a vice chairman of the government-backed Chinese Writers' Association, said he had nothing to say about Liu Xiaobo, the jailed dissident who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 and whose name has been banned from public discussion in China.

"His winning won't be of any help for Liu Xiaobo, unless Mo Yan expresses his concern for him," said Ai Weiwei.

"But Mo Yan has stated in the past that he has nothing to say about Liu Xiaobo. I think the Nobel organisers have removed themselves from reality by awarding this prize. I really don't understand it."

Beijing-based writer Mo Zhixu said Mo Yan, who once copied out by hand a speech by Chairman Mao Zedong for a commemorative book, "doesn't have any independent personality."

Yu Shicun, a Beijing-based essayist and literary critic, said Mo Yan was a puzzling choice for the prize.

"I don't think this makes sense," said Yu in a telephone interview. "His works are from the 1980s, when he was influenced by Latin American literature. I don't think he's created his own things. We don't see him as an innovator in Chinese literature."

On the streets of Beijing, there was pride in Mo's achievement.

"I think this is an unprecedented breakthrough, because before this they spoke of Chinese nationals getting the Nobel prize, but it was only the peace prize, never the others such as the literature, the physics and chemistry prizes," said Xu Jiebiao, 28-year-old IT consultant.

"So a Chinese getting the Nobel prize for literature will increase the national pride."

The literature prize is the fourth of this year's crop of prizes, which were established in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and awarded for the first time in 1901.

The writer, who was in the People's Liberation Army before progressing to academia, was one of the favourites to win the award this year, according to British bookmaker Ladbrokes, along with Japanese author Haruki Murakami.

(Additional reporting by Johan Ahlander, Simon Johnson, Anna Ringstrom, Niklas Pollard, Sui-Lee Wee, Ben Blanchard and Lucy Hornby; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Peter Millership)

Richard J. Davidson WORKS ON EMOTIONAL LIFE

The Emotional Life of Your Brain

In many human cultures emotions have been considered something suspect. Capricious, fleeting, and difficult to control, emotion is often set up as the enemy of rationality. As the field of neuroscience developed, emotional responses were often looked upon as scientific artefacts, something that distracted from studying the brain under “normal” conditions. The prime focus of study was the frontal cortex and its ability to carry out the so-called higher functions of logic and deduction.

However, neuroscience is beginning to discover that emotional responses may be more complex. Instead, they could be important cognitive elements that play a crucial role in shaping the human personality. In their new book The Emotional Life of Your Brain neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson and science journalist Sharon Begley argue that emotions are as integral a part of our personalities as our reasoning ability, intelligence, or demeanour. In fact, according to the authors, our emotional response to a situation is what makes our personality unique. “I’ve seen thousands of people who share similar backgrounds respond in dramatically different ways to the same life event,” Davidson notes in the book. The difference is due to what the authors define as each person’s unique “emotional style.”

According to Davidson, emotional style is made up of six dimensions: Resilience, Outlook, Social Intuition, Self-Awareness, Sensitivity to Context, and Attention. Each individual falls along a continuum in each of these dimensions. For example, some people may demonstrate a level of social intuition that borders on clairvoyance while others may traipse through life blissfully unaware of social cues. Most of us fall somewhere in between, and where we fall on all six of the dimensions determines our emotional style.

While the concept of emotional style may reek of pop psychology, Davidson bases his theories on patterns of neural activity and other biological mechanisms. His reliance on “hard science,” like cutting edge brain imaging techniques, sets him apart from the run of the mill self- help gurus. However, there is most definitely more than a tinge of the classic self-help ethos in The Emotional Life of Your Brain. Much of this comes from the authors’ descriptions of how an individual can, through concerted effort, change their emotional responses to external stimuli and remould their emotional style.

The idea that we can change our personality, an idea based on the scientific concept of neuro-plasticity, means we are not locked in a pre-disposed set of reactions and character traits. Instead, we carry with us the tools to tweak our traits. Davidson and Begley suggest methods that might help people reform their emotional style. Among these is meditation, which brain imagery shows can strengthen or change neural connections. The message is clear: Biology, especially psychobiology, is not destiny. We can train our brain through various techniques the same way we train our bodies with sport or exercise.

Ultimately, the message conveyed by The Emotional Life of Your Brain is upbeat and individualistic, not unlike the great bulk of self-help literature currently available. However, the authors’ citation of cutting edge science and insistence on basing his ideas in biology sets the book well apart from most other popular psychology volumes. The result is a work that manages to breathe new life into many tired self-help mantras, including the hackneyed refrain of mind over matter.

http://www.thefinancialist.com/the-emotional-life-of-your-brain-richard-davidson/