OK, folks, I’m going to go out on a limb here and tell you a strategy I’ve been cooking up lately for stock investing.  This has NOT been tried yet, but I intend to the next quarterly earnings cycle.  It involves Apple (AAPL) and “betting on all the horses at once.”

Sound crazy?  It may be, but hear me out.  In the past few quarters, Apple has either a) blown out their revenue and income guidance and shares rise hugely, or disappointed “The Street’s” analyst estimates of how awesome they should be and shares fall like a rock for a day or two.  This happened in April 2012 when they reported earnings and shares rose about $50 / share, then again in July when they “only” had a 21% increase in sales year over year, and shares fell 3-4%.  In both cases, this massive stock movement happened the morning after they reported earnings.

This strategy depends on a) a stock like AAPL which trades in the hundreds of dollars per share (currently around $665), b) a pattern of huge movements up or down, and c) stock options which are about to expire, so you can leverage hundreds of shares with options contracts for a little money.  Here’s what I plan to do (prior dates are listed here):

• The day of the announcement, buy the shortest contracts I can (if it happens on April 18, buy April contracts that expire a few days later).
• Wherever the stock is 15 minutes before trading ends (4pm EST), buy a set of CALL options at that price, and an equal number of PUT options at that same price (CALL assumes the stock will go up, PUT assumes it will go down).  Say $1,000 each way.
• The morning after the announcement, sell everything – one of them WILL vastly go up in value – so much so that you won’t care about the loss from the other.

Now, this will only make sense if the stock moves quite a bit, but it historically has.  Best times to do this are April (when iPhone / iPad sales are huge for the past few months) or July / Oct (when sales are typically lower in anticipation of the next iPhone in the fall).  I truly think this will result in a huge net gain for just a little invested.  Try it!

UPDATE: On January 23, 2013, Apple delivered it’s quarterly earnings report for the Oct-Dec 2012 quarter.  As of the morning of the 24th, it was down $60 / share.  So this strategy would have indeed worked.  Personally, I think the market overreacted.

Often your entire business is dependent on your ability to “pitch” your business idea or distinguishing characteristic.  Here’s a great video on how to do so – watch and learn!

Remember mainframes? Those gigantic machines with vacuum tubes, reel-to-reel tape drives, and terminal stations with a huge printer / tiny screen staffed by technicians in lab coats? Those were the days – days which the technology industry triumphantly declared dead during the birth of the PC in the 1980’s, as computing power migrated to the home / office and everyone got connected to the “Interwebs.”

Well, those days are back! Not with mainframes and lab coats, but with blade servers, banks of hard drives, load-balancing routers and very tight security. Why should you care? Simple – those data centers can save you enough money every year to justify pulling the trigger and moving your stuff to the 21st century version called “The Cloud.”

Cloud computing, via data centers, has enjoyed a renaissance because the ever-growing complexity of buying and maintaining server resources for your business can be handed off to a company that buys in volume and develops a maintenance ecosystem (so you don’t have to.) Just a few years ago, companies had to build out server rooms, buy servers, routers, battery backups, etc. – and the staff to keep it running.

But what if you didn’t have to do this? How great would it be to run the same software on faster, redundant hardware, accessible anywhere on the Internet, and get automatic speed upgrades for you as the Cloud gets upgraded for all? I submit to you that the time to rent your slice of the Cloud is NOW, and here’s why:

1. Cloud hosting is more cost efficient for smaller businesses – No hardware to buy and manage is especially beneficial for “Mom & Pops” (cash flow savings).
2. Maintenance of your software is someone else’s problem – no downtime caused by upgrades, database corruption, etc.
3. Ubiquitous accessibility (with proper credentials) – Got internet?  You’re done.
4. Fast setup, and fast changes – Pre-made server “images” can bring up an application within minutes.  Need a new user?  5 minutes.  Time is money.
5. Reliability is improved – your app is run on data-center-grade servers, with power, cooling and security systems you can’t even imagine, much less afford.

So where to start?  If you have a software VAR (Value Added Reseller), ask them about moving your app to Cloud Hosting.  If you’re looking for a particular application, check the company’s website to see if it can be virtualized, or Google it.  If it can run on a server in your office, it can definitely be run in the Cloud.

Here in Nashville, we have several hosting companies that offer virtual server hosting.  The best known of these is Peak 10 – I can’t recommend them highly enough.

I just went to Houston to visit Mission Control and marvel at the Shuttle Program.  Watch this and notice the one launch that didn’t go as planned.  I remember where I was.

You might live in the Arctic Circle right now – but if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, and haven’t seen a polar bear wandering by, then you may be “enjoying” a record heat wave that has befallen us. It’s currently 105 degrees in Nashville TN, so everyone here is cranking up the air conditioning. This can result in huge utility bills – but you can do some simple things to keep those costs to a minimum.

• Look for and minimize every heat source in your home

There are multiple sources of heat in every modern household, but most people don’t do anything to minimize them. Your AC has to work to counteract everything that is warming your house – let’s go through a few ideas:

1. Turn off or down everything that uses electricity or generates heat – stereo receivers, computers, TVs, refrigerators, dishwashers, even lights! They all generate heat inside the home, so keep them turned off, use dimmers on lights, or use them at night.  Even shutting off the pilot light to your furnace helps.
    
2. Cover windows where you get sunlight during the day – blinds, curtains, blackout shades, and other covers can prevent sunlight from roasting your interior. If you can’t do this, then move dark objects out of the sun’s path (they absorb heat).
    
3. Seal your house – this may be obvious, but it has to be mentioned.  Make sure your windows are sealed shut, your doors (and AC vents) have no air leaks, etc.

• Make your cooling equipment more efficient, and don’t push it too hard

This is the big one during the summer – air conditioners work by allowing a pressurized liquid turn to a gas (which makes it colder), forcing warm air through cold coils, then recompressing the gas back to a liquid outside (which moves out the heat).  These AC systems can vary widely in efficiency (and cost you money) based on a few factors:

• The SEER Rating of the AC unit – higher SEER ratings mean they use less power for a given amount of cooling.  In 2006, the minimum SEER rating for new AC units was raised to 13 from 10 – if your AC condenser is 10 years old or older, you will save double or triple what it costs you to upgrade to a 16 SEER condenser.
   
• The condenser itself – go outside and look at the box with the big fan on top.  This device compresses the gas into a liquid, then cools it by pulling air through a long coil.  If the coil is dirty or obstructed on the sides, the air can’t move through it.  If you’re handy, you can take the fan off the top, clean and straighten the coil fins with a wire brush, and spray out any debris with a water hose.  This really helps. If the air still isn’t cool enough, have an AC guy check the refrigerant levels (either older R-22 Freon, or R-410A Puron).  That can really affect cooling.
   
•  Make your AC work less – having the condenser sit in the shade helps, but there’s more you can do to de-stress your AC: replace your air filter regularly, close vents to rooms that you’re not using (then seal them off), raise the thermostat to 78 degrees or higher (every degree below 78 costs you 3-4% more), and if you have cool nights, open your house up to the outside air during the night, then close it for AC in the morning.  Some even use alternative cooling, like a box fan with ice on it.

Here’s a good video that explains how to optimize your AC unit’s performance: