Review of the Jobs Movie: Will There Be a Jobs 2 Movie?

I finally got a chance to see the Jobs movie, starring Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple (AAPL). I thought the movie was well done and covered a lot of historical information about the founding and history of Apple Computer, along with the rise and fall and rise again of Steve Jobs.

Anyone who has read the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson knows that there is an extensive amount of information about Steve Jobs that could have been included in the movie, but the book is over 650 pages long, and if everything in the book was put into the movie, the movie would have been 20 hours instead of two hours.

Kutcher did a fantastic job portraying Jobs, getting down the Jobs walk, talk, and look. Dermot Mulroney as Mike Markkula, and Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak, were also outstanding.

There were a couple issues in the movie. I wouldn't call them flaws, but I would consider them incidents that were left out that prevented a clear picture of other issues. A perfect example is when Jobs discovers that Microsoft (MSFT) had 'stolen' the graphical user interface with drop-down menus, then proceeds to give Bill Gates a severe tongue-thrashing over the phone. What wasn't mentioned in the movie was the fact that back in 1997, Bill Gates agreed to bail out Apple to the tune of a $150 million investment and even agreed to develop Microsoft Office for the Mac.

I realize the movie can include only so much, but this bail out by Gates and Microsoft shouldn't have been left out.

By the way, Steve and Steve got the idea for a GUI operating system, icons, and even the mouse from Xerox, which were developed for Xerox's Star computer, long before the Macintosh. These ideas were later put into the the Mac OS.

The movie ended at the time the iPod was announced. I'm wondering if there is going to be a Jobs 2.

Anyway, if you are looking for a great way to spend a couple hours, I highly recommend Jobs. And if you haven't read Steve Jobs, I recommend it also. (It makes a great gift for Apple fans.)

STARmeter Ratings of Famous Investors are Up

If you are not familiar with IMDB, you should check it out. It is the largest database in the world of celebrities.

IMDb.com [International Movie Database], which happens to be one of the subsidiaries of Amazon (AMZN), tracks actors, motion pictures, television shows, and production crews. IMDb now has a feature called STARmeter, which are rankings of every person in IMDb and gives the popularity of the people in film and television productions, based on the actual behavior of millions of IMDb users.

Here is a sampling of some of the well known stock traders and investors. Check out the fact that all of them are up.

Warren Buffett UP 5,756

Jim Cramer UP 24,967

Bill Gates UP 2,955

George Soros UP 21,094

Rachel G. Fox UP 1,185

What is interesting about Rachel Fox, the 16 year old actress, stock trader, and FoxOnStocks blogger, is that she is currently listed in the top 5,000 of STARmeter.

Microsoft's Bill Gates Gets Involved in Crap - Literally!

Microsoft's (MSFT) Bill Gates and his wife Melinda Gates have a foundation called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which is involved in many popular and important causes. The foundation's latest project is toilets!!! They are sponsoring the Reinvent the Toilet Fair which will be held on August 14 and 15.

I guess they won't take this project sitting down. Better toilets will help wipe disease from the world. I hope they won't be the butt of anyone's jokes.

Piggyback Off the Stocks of the Richest Man in the World

Forbes Magazine has published its billionaire list again and Carlos Slim Helu, or more commonly referred to as Carlos Slim, is again at the top of the list for the third year in a row. Slim is the Mexican businessman who is worth $69 billion.

In second place is Bill Gates of Microsoft (MSFT) fame at $61 billion, and third is Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK-A) (BRK-B) Warren Buffett at $44 billion.

One investing technique that has become popular is to piggyback on the stocks that are owned by the rich and famous. Taking a look at the stocks held by Slim, both directly and indirectly, there are several different ones to choose from in different industries, according to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com.

For example, he is owner of shares of, and on the Board of Directors of, Philip Morris International (PM), which makes and markets Marlboro, Merit, Parliament, Virginia Slims, L&M, and Chesterfield cigarettes internationally. The company has over 15% of the international cigarette market outside the US. The stock trades at 14.3 times future earnings and yields 3.6%. Earnings for the latest quarter were up 7.6% on a 9% rise in revenues.

Slim also owns Saks Inc. (SAKS), a New York based company which operates luxury fashion retail stores. The stock has a forward price to earnings ratio of 20.2 carries a price to earnings growth ratio of 1.36. The company recently reported a substantial quarterly earnings increase of 48% on a 6.8% boost in sales.

The New York Times (NYT) is another one of Slim's holdings. The stock trades at 10.9 times forward earnings. Unfortunately, recent quarterly earnings were negative.

To see a list of all the Carlos Slim stocks, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com. The list can be downloaded, sorted, and updated.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com