This was an article I published on the iPhone app review site AppStruck.com that I am in the process of launching with some friends and figured I would cross-post it on SINLetter for some light weekend reading, especially for investors who own an iPhone or are considering buying an iPhone.

The siren song that tempted me to switch from using a Blackberry (RIMM) to the iPhone was the native Stocks application on the iPhone. The ability to rapidly scroll through the list of stocks to view quotes and charts was in itself worth the price of admission.

The Internet sun may appear to be setting on AOL, which posted a 20% decline in advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2009 and ranks fourth for financial websites after Yahoo Finance, The Wall Street Journal network and MSN Money. However the DailyFinance app developed by AOL Money & Finance is a brilliant time saving app that is my chosen partner for breakfast every morning. In about 5 minutes it helps me quickly get a read for not only the market but the dozens of stocks I track everyday.

Before switching to the DailyFinance app, I used the native Stocks application for almost two years and then tried out the Bloomberg application for a few weeks. Neither app can hold a candle to the DailyFinance app.

My key frustration with the native iPhone Stocks app was its inability to show news related to the stock I was looking at. The little Yahoo! icon at the bottom left of the app would simply do a web search for the name of the stock and display a bunch of non-finance related results. So if Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) jumped up by 20%, I would have no idea why unless I looked elsewhere for that information.

In contrast tapping on a stock from the DailyFinance app opens up a screen that displays real time quotes during trading hours and extended hour quotes after the close of the regular session. Income investors would be happy to see dividend and yield information at their fingertips. There are two additional tabs that display news and charts. Oddly enough these two tabs and the dividend information will only show up in portrait mode. Not only does the chart display volume information at the bottom, it also shows the gains in percentage for the time period you select. For example in the screenshot to the right, I am looking at a year-to-date chart of RIMM and it shows that RIMM gained 71.51% since the start of this year despite strong iPhone sales and a very favorable launch for the Palm Pre (PALM) but over a 1 year period the stock has lost 51.35%.

Version 1.2 of the DailyFinance app solved a couple of issues I had with the app. The app used to open by default to the markets section and it took a couple of clicks to get to my Watchlist. The new version is supposed to let you set a default screen to open to but I am yet to find this setting. I am just happy that it opens to the last section I was viewing before quitting the app.

The second issue the latest version solved was the ability to reorder your Watchlist so that you are not restricted to viewing stocks in the order you entered them. As you can see from some of the screenshots below, I have grouped the apartment REITs AvalonBay (AVB), AIMCO (AIV) and Essex Property Trust (ESS) together as well as software-as-a-service (SAAS in industry parlance) providers like NetSuite (N), Salesforce.com (CRM), Rightnow Technologies (RNOW) and SuccessFactors (SFSF) together.

    

The Markets section of the app allows you to stay on top of domestic markets, bonds (10 year treasury note), international markets, currencies (limited to Euro and Yen right now) and commodities (Oil and Gold) from a single page. It would have been cool if the app allowed users to update this section to view commodities of their choice (at this time corn futures interest me more than oil) and also view additional international markets.

The news section is organized by sector and the movers section allows you to view most active stocks as well as the top gainers/losers of the day. A few things the DailyFinance team could do to improve the app are,

1. Allow users to share Watchlists with other investors by email.
2. When adding a stock to the Watchlist or looking up the quote for a stock, automatically bring up the keyboard like the native iPhone Stock app does instead of making users go through the additional step of clicking on the search box to bring up the keyboard.
3. Allow users to customize the Markets section to suit their preferences.
4. Let me track multiple watchlists without having to sign on to AOL to create portfolios.

I was about to add "allow users to view charts in landscape mode" to the list when I discovered that the feature already exists and exudes "cool" as you can see below. A well deserved 5 star rating.

Additional Information:

View/Write Comments  

After sending out the special report earlier this week, I have been following both the rise in price of our featured stock and a corresponding decline in the price of large eggs. The more I think about it, the more I feel that while the company is the best in its industry the price just isn't right at this point. It reminds me of our first special report pick AvalonBay (AVB) where I liked the company but had to wait for more than 2 years for the price to decline from close to $150 to just over $40 before the price was right to act upon....

The rest of this blog entry is only accessible to Special Report Subscribers. Click here to subscribe to Special Reports.

View/Write Comments  

iRobot (IRBT), the company that makes those lovable and sometimes efficient Roomba and Scooba line of robotic vacuum cleaners, reported results that are most likely going to clean out short sellers tomorrow. The company reported results that were 10 cents better than analyst estimates, an increase in gross margins and revenue that only declined 0.9% to $56.9 million in this tough environment.

Sales were buoyed by international Roomba sales, which were up an astounding 69% when compared to the first quarter of 2008. Government and industrial product revenue dropped year-over-year but was offset by home product revenue and government contract revenue. The company posted an adjusted EBITA loss of $0.3 million and operating cash flow of $14.3 million.

The company ended the quarter with $54.74 million in cash (an almost $14 million increase in cash quarter-over-quarter) and no debt. This represents nearly $2.20/share in cash. The stock closed the regular trading session at $8.02 and shot up more than 12% after hours to $9.

Given the low daily volume (average daily volume for the last 10 days was 68,937.5) and a short ratio of 23.81 (2.31 million shares were short as of March 31,2009), the stock appears to be ripe for a short squeeze tomorrow and could be an interesting as a short-term trade. Even without a short squeeze, given that management has reaffirmed its full year 2009 guidance of $290 to $310 million in revenue (flat to slightly lower than 2008) and earnings of break even to 4 cents (break even in 2008), the stock is worthy of consideration for a long position.

View/Write Comments  

It was over two years ago when I met a former boss for lunch at the Dolores Park Cafe in San Francisco on a sunny March afternoon. Having worked in various consulting and management roles in the natural and organic products industry, he was brimming with excitement regarding his new role with a sustainable seafood startup called CleanFish. Little did I know that aside from sharing the mission and plans for CleanFish, he also wanted me to join a team that would help build a triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) company that would source delicious sustainable seafood from artisan fisheries around the world. Despite a deep recession, CleanFish has nearly quadrupled its revenue over the last two years and is currently on track to exceed $20 million in sales in 2009. Along the way the company picked up Social Venture Network's 2008 Innovation Award and was a recipient of Food & Wine Magazine’s 2008 Eco-Ocean Award. CleanFish was no longer just a company but was becoming an aspiration and a movement.

CleanFish recently became a finalist in BusinessWeek's "America's Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs" contest along with 24 other businesses that were narrowed down from a list of more than 200 nominees. You can read the BusinessWeek story titled "Making a Profit and a Difference" here.

We are determined to win this contest and are asking for about 30 seconds of your time to vote for CleanFish from this page. Obviously it will take a little longer than that if you were to also check out our worthwhile competitors. :)

Voting ends on April 26th, so please don't hold back and vote for CleanFish now.

View/Write Comments  

After numerous friends and colleagues recommended Slumdog Millionaire, I finally got a chance to check out this award winning movie last night. Watching a movie with high expectations is usually a terrible idea, as more often than not your expectations are going to let you down. I have to say the movie exceeded my expectations and the soundtrack that I had been listening to on Rhapsody certainly added to the viewing experience.

However it felt like I had seen this movie before. Slumdog Millionaire seems to be one part Salaam Bombay! (the life of kids in Mumbai slums), one part Satya (the gangsta portions) and one part any Bollywood romance blended together to achieve impressive results. The connection between Slumdog and Satya runs a little deeper. Saurabh Shukla, who played the character of Seargent Srinivas (the fat nearly bald cop who tortures the hero at the start of the movie) in Slumdog was not only one of the characters in Satya (Kallu Mama) but was also one of the writers for Satya. As I dug deeper into Mr. Shukla's history, I came across this article in The Independent where Danny Boyle, the director of Slumdog, claimed that Satya was one of his reference points while filming Slumdog Millionaire.

Salaam Bombay!

+

Satya

+

Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na

=

Slumdog Millionaire

For anyone who watched Slumdog Millionnaire and enjoyed it, I highly recommend checking our Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay!, which was nominated for an  Oscar back in 1988 and won the audience award at the Cannes Film Festival. The portrayal of Mumbai's slums is even grittier in Salaam Bombay. As for Satya, it could be easily considered the Godfather of Indian cinema and my brother was so enamored by the movie that he watched it nearly 18 times in the summer of 1998.

I am still shaking my head in disbelief that after the Slumdog Millionaire's original distributor Warner Independent Pictures (TWX) dropped it, Lionsgate Films (LGF), which has often done a great job of finding independent films with a lot of potential, still did not pick it up.

View/Write Comments (1)