February 16, 2007

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Last Updated on May 28, 2009 by stlplace

When Steve (Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft) speaks, Wall Streets listens. Yesterday in the MicroSoft analyst day Steve tried to put a more realistic picture on the Vista sales. Basically he says that the Vista sales won’t be as good as analysts thought. With his words the stock MSFT lost 2.4% today.

When did Steve start soft spoken? I remember years ago, I attended a Microsoft technical presentation by Steve. I can see the energy and passion from his talk. He even put up his email address steve at microsoft dot com for the audience who are not satisfied with Microsoft’s customer serivce. We all know the mail probablly won’t get to his desk. But Steve is the Sales person and provides energy for the Microsoft, just like Bill Gates is the heart and soul of Mr. Softee. I also remember when I visited Microsoft campus in Redmond, only Bill and Steve got designated parking spots (side by side).

Now with Bill announced the retirement in two years, and Steve started soft spoken, the software world has really become soft.

Be Open Minded

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Last Updated on February 16, 2007 by stlplace

I think one of the most important take away from Ken Fisher’s book is “be open minded”. This is easily said than done. Because our brain is not trained that way. For instance, we usually felt pretty bad when we have to cut a loss after buying a stock, even if the company’s fundamental is deteriorating. Because we think if we don’t sell, it’s not an actual loss. On the other hand, we usually feel equally bad about ourselves when we saw the stock went up after we sold it, even if we already make profit from the sale. It seems to me we just can not tolerate “we lose money”, “we leave some money on the table”, “somebody else make more money than us”.

This is very similar to things in life, suppose you bought a Toyota Camry at a dealer for 20,000, and your buddy Joe bought the exact same car at exact same dealer for 19,500. Are you happy or not? Don’t tell me your are happy. How about I tell you I bought it the same car for 20,500 last month? Do you feel better?

Sometimes, we should adjust our mindset to “making money together”, or “as long as we make/save money, we are happy”.