COST - Costco is still kicking!

Costco is still moving steady.  They are slowly but surely increasing there fundamentals.  Their leadership team is doing a very nice job doing it too.  

Last month, Costco had a 10% total sales growth, and that was just June.  It wasn't anything special, such as the holidays or any tax holidays.  

It is expected that there's a corresponding earnings growth this quarter.  

Sources: 

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/16/costco-wholesale-corporation-is-still-on-the-rise.aspx

AAPL & IBM - Can they be friends?

After having a rough competitive history between the two decades ago, Apple and IBM are teaming up.  

IBM has agreed to bring in iPads and iPhones and develop business and big data apps for their customers.  They also plan on bringing in IBM employees to support their devices on-site for their customers.  

This is another step closer of Apple taking over the commerical market and widening the uses of their devices.  As of October 2013, there were 1,000,000 apps in the App Store with 475,000 of them native to the iPad.  In June 2014, there were 1,200,000 apps.  

iOS developing has exploded since 2008.  Apps are Apple's strength.  People who were interested in developing apps for the iPhone, have now had the opportunity to graduate from a 4-year college by now and are prime for programming and developing.  Apple recently release they new iOS 8, with a health-monitoring kit. The best apps are yet to come!

Sources: 

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2316545?source=iphoneportfolioapp_copy

http://ipod.about.com/od/iphonesoftwareterms/qt/apps-in-app-store.htm

TSLA - Tesla's secret market

Tesla recently announce that last month, they reached 1GWh of charging at their supercharging stations.  Based on the math and estimates done by Siddharth Dalal, Tesla made $1.8 million from the supercharging access payments and yet only paid about $120,000 supplying the electricity.  It's a highly profitable, subscription service for charging your car!

With more and more of these stations being built and filling in the grid across the country, more Tesla owners should find the fee more reasonable and surely adopt it.  Tesla is becoming a cross between an auto company and an "oil" company, which makes them very exciting to be an investor of.  

Hold TSLA!

Sources:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2315075?source=iphoneportfolioapp_copy

Jobs - Status of the Job Market

With some emphasis brought by President Obama the economy and jobs are coming back strong and it's about time!

Housing is coming back!  This news means people are feeling more stable at their place of employment.  

Manufacturing jobs are also coming back to pre-recession levels.  Manufacturing however, has a ways to go to become strong again. China reaching slower growths and workers demanding better conditions and pay, certainly help US workers in the long term.  

Talking about jobs, the cofounder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, has said that the job market needs to evolve once again after the recession.  After reports of workers afraid of leaving they current job for another, even for advancement, and employers giving out yearly contracts, instead of the traditional hire, he came out with an interesting solution.  

Hoffman states that new-employees should be given less of a "trial run" and more of a "tour of duty" for 2-4 years.  This allows the employee to follow through a project or product life-cycle while having meaningful meetings every couple of years about career development, expectations, and most certainly pay.  You are forced to have those conversations while giving you stability of having a job.

I think of this as an inbetween an employee and a contractor and certainly benefits from the stability of one while having the pay of the other.  

Sources: 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/a-radical-approach-to-hiring-152858417.html

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/obama-finally-has-some-good-economic-news-to-deliver-172745113.html