By Horacio Marquez
Contributing Editor
Money Morning

McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) is thriving despite a difficult environment.

This very difficult environment is sending a lot of consumers scrambling for cheaper alternatives in dining.  That is where McDonald’s distinguishes itself.  With January same-store-sales up more than 7% worldwide – even in the face of the global financial meltdown – McDonald’s is proving that it can not only execute, but thrive.  Indeed, sales in Asia were up 10%, while those in Europe were up 7%. Even U.S. sales were up 5%.

McDonald’s is the unparalleled leader in the arena of quick service and value dining.  With roughly 31,000 restaurants in 118 countries, a balance sheet laden with $1.5 billion in cash and a size and market capitalization that dwarfs the competition, it is almost impossible to compete against the Golden Arches.

It doesn’t stop there, either: In an environment such as this one, the strong get stronger and run away with the market as the weak disappear.

The Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald’s is the world’s leading food-service retailer, with more than 30,000 local restaurants serving 52 million people in more than 100 countries every day. More than 70% of McDonald’s restaurants are owned by independent local men and women. McDonald’s is also one of the world’s most-recognizable and most-valuable brands.

Not only is McDonald’s the largest, but its huge geographic diversification and economies of scale imbues the company with its many enduring competitive advantages.  These advantages result in huge cost savings that are not as important in good times, when the industry has runaway pricing power. During lean, economic times, however, those cost savings are the difference between life and death.  If you are a supplier, and you sell to the Golden Arches – much like selling merchandise to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) – you have very little bargaining power.

To the advantages related to economies of scale and migration to cheaper alternatives by consumers, you need to add the renewed inflation policy and the drop in commodity prices. Other than the cost of chicken, which is about 10% higher than last year, all other key food ingredients have dropped between 5% (beef) to 45% (milk). This will show up nicely in McDonald’s margins, which, coupled with sales growth, will give the company’s bottom line a nice push higher. 

Who says that you cannot expand profits in a recession?

Indeed, McDonald’s is maintaining operating margins in excess of 25% and a net margin of 18%.  This provides the firm a rock-solid cash flow, which, together with a very low level of debt, puts the company in the ideal situation to face these times.  McDonald’s nice 3.5% annual dividend yield is very safe, meaning the company will continue its 30-year history of paying cash dividends.  It will be easy to do this, since the dividend payout comprises less than 50% of the company’s yearly profits.

Also safe are the $5.5 billion in share repurchases planned by the company for 2009.  These planned stock repurchases are up from last year’s $3.8 billion and represent a sure threat to any potential shorts.  These strong profits produce a stunning 30% return on equity, given McDonald’s franchised model: Because nearly 80% of its restaurants are franchisee-owned restaurants, the company’s capital requirements are very low.

We mentioned shorts: The few that we’ve seen are already running to cover.  In fact, of the entire restaurant sector, McDonald’s is the company with the least amount of shorts.  That tells you right there that the pros do not want to risk it against Big Mac.  If anything, you are almost assured that in this environment, McDonald’s will outperform most of – if not all – of its competition.

McDonald’s shares, trading at only about 15 times last year’s earnings and 13 times next years’ earnings – are right now at valuations that are well below historic parameters.  In fact, the stock has come down nicely (for us buyers) recently as the market has sold off, allowing us to buy in at an attractive valuation, close to the bottom of last year’s range.

But this is not all.  The U.S. dollar rally typically hits firms like McDonald’s, which enjoy a huge international diversification.  But the rally is running out of steam, as global economic activity stabilizes and starts bouncing back later in the year, driven by globally-lax monetary and fiscal policies and the mammoth fiscal incentive packages, especially in China and the United States. As the dollar starts losing ground on other currencies, then McDonald’s international profits should rise.

New products will also contribute to higher margins. The company is introducing some products that will help bring traffic away from less-casual venues over to the Golden Arches.  With these new products, McDonald’s will attack its more-pricey competitors by offering some comparable products at better prices.  I would not like to have one of the competitors’ franchises if I have a McDonald’s nearby these days.

So with expanding sales and profits on the back of insurmountable competitive advantages, a solid balance sheet and a sound management that is executing thoroughly, we take advantage of this great opportunity to jump into McDonald’s.

Recommendation: Buy McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD), a leader in its sector, which has global competitive advantages, and which is trading well below historical valuations, making it a sound bargain (**).

[Editor's Note: Veteran Wall Streeter Horacio Marquez is the author of Money Morning's hugely popular "Buy, Sell or Hold" (BSH) series, and is also the editor of the longstanding "Money Moves Alert" trading service.

As the hundreds of thousands of readers across the Internet who've read Marquez's insightful BSH missives know, the longtime Wall Street insider has a knack for picking stocks that are poised to move. Indeed, when he recommended the Brazilian exchange traded fund - the iShares Brazil Index (NYSE: EWZ) - in late October, it zoomed 42% in six days.

In a new free report, Marquez has identified a category of stocks he has labeled "rocket stocks," which display key characteristics hinting that they're ready to move. One such characteristic: Heavy insider buying. In fact, one particular sector right now is seeing especially heavy insider buying - and many investors will be surprised to discover just what sector it is, and what companies top executives are buying into. For a free report that details these "rocket stock" plays, and that outlines this torrent of insider buying, please click here. The report is free of charge.]

(**)  Special Note of Disclosure: Horacio Marquez holds no interest in McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD).

By Horacio Marquez
Contributing Editor
Money Morning/The Money Map Report

Continuing with the trend of companies that have blasted through Wall Street’s earnings estimates of late, The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) last week announced its ninth-straight quarter of double-digit earnings per share (EPS) growth and a third straight year of meeting or exceeding its long-term-growth targets. Excluding one-time items, the Atlanta-based company’s earnings per share of 64 cents represented a 10% gain from last year’s fourth quarter, beating analysts’ expectations by three cents.  In addition, Coke’s unit-case volume was up 4% in the fourth quarter and 5% for the full year.

And they achieved this profit growth despite a very adverse situation.  In addition, the company had to take losses from the appreciation of the U.S. dollar, which was product of the flight-to-safety experienced in the last few months of 2008.  As the U.S. dollar has stabilized from last year’s lows – and even rebounded in some of the key currencies – we do not expect to see the phenomena repeat itself in 2009.  Quite the contrary, we should see China pulling out economically and the yuan strengthen, and similar movements across key emerging economies.

Coca Cola’s secret for success?  The emerging markets.  Despite the naysayers, as I have been writing, the reality is that most of them took advantage of the unprecedented phenomenon of global synchronic growth and reduced debt and accumulated reserves.  So China, which has almost no debt, has “only” some $2 trillion in foreign reserves. And a similarly benign picture occurs with India, Brazil, Chile and many other emerging economies.

Very importantly, these countries have a lot more people and populations that are younger and much-faster growing than the United States, and the real per capita income in all of them has been increasing at much faster pace, as well: Imagine 1.5 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indians incorporating Coca-Cola’s drinks into their regular diets.  Will they? 

For starters, Coca-Cola has been around for so long and has been so successful, that its brand is marketing nirvana – the best-known consumer brand in the world. And research tells us that there is strong correlation between income growth and the consumption of sugar across the world, which brings us to Coca-Cola’s secret sweet flavor, the envy of the soft-drink industry.

We clearly saw this phenomenon in Mexico as it came into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and incomes grew.  In the case of the region of Yucatán, where incomes grew strongly thanks to the spectacular growth of tourism and its development in the Cancun area.  And once people adopt a habit – especially a cheap one like a soft, fizzy drink or Coca-Cola’s Vitamin Water, Dasani bottled water, PowerAde for sports or Nestea – it is hard to give up, even if things turn down.

From Beijing to Buenos Aires, to Goa, India, you will find that Coca-Cola refreshes not only your body, but your portfolio as well.  Because 75% of the company’s sales come from outside the United States, this is the kind of stock that’s worth owning long-term. So, if you are worried about the housing meltdown and the prospects for the U.S. economy, this soundly-managed U.S. company already gives you global diversification in the places that matter most today – the emerging markets.

You see, a good 90% of global growth this year is going to come from emerging markets.  And the reason is simple. Since these markets have accumulated that huge wealth, they are in a much better position than the advanced economies to stimulate their own economies.  And that’s just what’s happening.  China, Chile, Brazil and many other countries are resorting to lowering interest rates and expanding fiscal stimulus plans in order to grow.  These programs have been very appropriately targeted to support much-needed infrastructure development and also to support house, cars and appliance purchases with lending and tax breaks for most.  It took longer for the United States to launch its own, much-more-complex plan.

In any case, Coca-Cola is not content to just go through the ongoing global financial storm; it plans to grow through it.  This company, with its very long history of operating in a very long list of countries around the world, has seen recessions, financial blow-ups and currency disruptions as few have seen. It’s managed to not only survive through them  but thrive. In addition to the end of dollar strength effects, we have seen commodities drop to much more comfortable levels, and this is wind in the sails for the company, even if this respite is temporary.

Sign up below… and we’ll send you a new investment report for free: “Credit Crisis Report.”

The stock is undervalued after having dropped from a 52-week high of $61.90 to the low $40’s, even while still experiencing profit growth (Friday’s close of $43.85 is only slightly above its 52-week low of $40.28).

A Price/Earnings (P/E) ratio of 12, for a consistent grower in a market as uncertain as this one, is very low. And that’s especially true of a stock that also pays a 3.7% dividend rate, a company with a superb balance sheet and $8 billion in cash.

So we are going to jump onto Coca Cola, ahead of all these global stimulus packages and ahead of the positive effects of a global liquidity growth, as central banks keep easing rates and growing their monetary bases.

Recommendation: Buy The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO), which has blasted through earnings estimates as its global diversification and worldwide commodity softness keeps powering profits (**).

[Editor's Note: Veteran Wall Streeter Horacio Marquez is the author of Money Morning's hugely popular "Buy, Sell or Hold" (BSH) series, and is also the editor of the longstanding "Money Moves Alert" trading service.

As the hundreds of thousands of readers across the Internet who've read Marquez's insightful BSH missives know, the longtime Wall Street insider has a knack for picking stocks that are poised to move. Indeed, when he recommended the Brazilian exchange traded fund - the iShares Brazil Index (NYSE: EWZ) - in late October, it zoomed 42% in six days.

In a new free report, Marquez has identified a category of stocks he has labeled "rocket stocks," which display key characteristics hinting that they're ready to move. One such characteristic: Heavy insider buying. In fact, one particular sector right now is seeing especially heavy insider buying - and many investors will be surprised to discover just what sector it is, and what companies top executives are buying into. For a free report that details these "rocket stock" plays, and that outlines this torrent of insider buying, please click here. The report is free of charge.]

(**)  Special Note of Disclosure: Horacio Marquez holds no interest in The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO).

News and Related Story Links:

• Business Week:
  Coca-Cola 4Q profit down on charges, strong dollar.
• Reuters:
  Coca-Cola profit tops view, shares jump 7 pct.

Horacio Marquez
Contributing Editor
Money Morning/The Money Map Report

If you still look at Amazon Inc. (AMZN) as just an Internet retailing giant, you’re not just missing the point – you are also missing one of the really great long-term profit plays in the market today.

Amazon remains the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the online retailing space. And business is both healthy and growing. But the company is counting on a whole new series of technology-based ventures that will provide the real fuel that will put this stock into orbit. Let’s take a closer look.

Just last Thursday, in yet another positive “surprise” that Wall Street missed predicting, Amazon annihilated analysts’ earnings estimates by announcing a big jump in fourth-quarter profits and told investors even better days are ahead.

Fourth-Quarter Fireworks

In a financial-crisis environment in which there is supposedly no financing available, in which massive job cuts and huge job worries are causing consumers to cut way back on their spending, in which all retailers – even vaunted discounter Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) – face huge challenges, Amazon actually increased its sales and profits.

In fact, Amazon’s fourth-quarter net income rose a hefty 9%. And not only did its per-share earnings of 52 cents blast through the Wall Street consensus of 39 cents by a full 33%, the company actually boosted its first-quarter outlook, stating that it expected sales to be stronger than analysts were predicting.

For the fourth quarter, Amazon’s sales advanced 18%, beating analysts’ expectations by about 4%. Sales actually would have grown by 24%, were it not for the strengthening of the U.S. dollar.

International sales were even stronger, and now account for a full 45% of Amazon’s overall sales.  One notable category was electronics and general merchandize advanced 31%, and that category now accounts for 43% of worldwide sales. 

One particularly noteworthy achievement was in the area of gross margins, which suffered almost no damage – in spite of a U.S. recession that’s forcing most retailers to discount heavily. Amazon’s gross margins barely budged, dropping from a fairly remarkable 20.6% to a still-enviable 20.1%. 

Remember, this outlook and performance is taking place in a market environment where there’s very little “visibility” – meaning company executives have almost no ability to predict what the market will look like next month, let alone in the next quarter or for next year. That’s forced a lot of companies to discount heavily, and is a key reason that a large number of firms have stopped issuing “forward guidance.”

Sign up below… and we’ll send you a new investment report for free: “Credit Crisis Report.”

But not Amazon: It continues to provide guidance – and then to exceed those expectations.

How is the company making this happen? These results point to strong market-share gains for Amazon and to new lines of business being introduced, which are powering the stock higher.  But, before we go deeper into Amazon, let’s consider the economic backdrop, in order to fully appreciate magnitude of Amazon’s accomplishments.

Anatomy of a Meltdown

In my 25-year investment career, I have seen countrywide market meltdowns like the one we’re struggling through perhaps every two or three years.  The hallmark of these crises has been an implosion of the banking system, which has then brought the entire economy down, as well.

In an effort to provide some context – and perhaps some reassurance to U.S. investors – let me say that I’ve seen much worse than what we are seeing in the United States right now. For instance, there are actually cases where all of a country’s banking deposits are either frozen (Argentina 2002) or lost outright (Russia 1998).

In each of those cases, there were two constants:

• From a business standpoint, the strong got stronger as their weaker rivals foundered and failed, allowing them to pick up market share and sometimes to even buy those smaller or weaker rivals.
• From a stock-market-valuation standpoint, however, the strong were initially equally punished in terms of their market valuations as the broader equity markets blew up, meaning their valuations didn’t reflect the much-brighter outlooks for them as stronger market leaders. However, when the market outlook brightened, those stronger firms saw their valuations surge with a vengeance and soar to new heights.

The lesson from each of those crises – from Brazil and Argentina, to more than 10 countries in Asia and in Russia – was that every single country made it back.
This was even true for those countries shackled with inferior policy mixes.  Some might say that Japan – with its “lost decade” – never came back.  This would be an imprecise statement, since Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth was above 2.0% for the two years prior to the crisis and unemployment for the last five years has been between 3.45 % and 4.5%
But what is true is that while even countries with inferior policy mixes eventually made it back, it took a lot longer for that to happen. The speed of their comebacks can be traced to the degree in which the policies implemented made them:

• Open-market oriented, especially with regards to foreign capital.
• A lower-taxation environment.
• Strongly fiscally disciplined – for the long term – because the governing body addressed such serious structural economic problems as imbalances in both the social security and health-care systems.
• Less constricted by regulation.
• More transparent, in both the private and public sectors, especially in cases where the public sector overhauls led to a more democratic governing process.
• More-consensus oriented, particularly when that consensus included support for all the changes I’ve listed here.

While we are not seeing an unequivocal embrace of these tried-and-true recipes by the newly installed Barack Obama administration, mainly because of a bias toward big government, we are seeing an open-minded attitude and some movement in this direction.  And we will have to monitor this closely, because history shows us repeatedly that there are no half measures when it comes to successful economic and financial reform – and because market investors know this and will therefore be watching closely.

Forewarned is Forearmed …and Other Axioms to Live By

This background is important, for we now know that we can expect to see some once-in-a-generation buying opportunities in companies that can navigate this slowdown and position themselves for a massive subsequent rebound.

We also have to remember that his rebound won’t be immediate. But when it does come, that rebound will be huge for the companies that have used this time to buttress their already-leading market position. They’ve capitalized on consolidations in their respective industries or market sectors, and have certainly grabbed market share away from their rivals. The maximum gains will be realized only if financial prudence prevails in the public sector.

Is that happening here in the U.S. market?

Well, we’re about to pass a huge stimulus – perhaps as much as $1 trillion or more, when all is said and done.

There’s an old axiom about government stimulus packages: When money is spent, the economy grows. The key, however, is at what cost and who pays for it. So the short-term “steroids” effect of the stimulus has to be measured against the long-term weight its costs will exert of future growth.  But, ahead of that steroids injection, investors need to invest in the beneficiaries.
A much-repeated market axiom states that  “no one buys at the bottom, and no one sells at the top.” Much like no one was – or will be – ringing a warning bell at the market bottom, no one was ringing a bell at the top a year and half ago.  And nobody will be letting you know which of these companies will be thriving and which will be vanishing – because the investors who understand all this are very busy accumulating them for themselves right now.

So it is no surprise that Wall Street missed by a mile on iconic companies that are thriving, including International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM), Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), United States Steel (NYSE: X), PMC-Sierra Inc. (Nasdaq: PMCS), Level 3 Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: LVLT), 3M Corp. (NYSE: MMM), Colgate-Palmolive Co. (NYSE: CL), Automatic Data Processing Inc. (NYSE: ADP), United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS), Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE: MRK), and many others.  And Wall Street always seems to miss to the downside in its estimates in these superb companies.

In the same way, Wall Street missed it with Amazon.  You see, Amazon survived the dot-com bubble because, unlike most of the start-ups, Amazon actually had a strong-and-viable business model.  In addition, starting with founder and chairman, Jeffrey P. Bezos, and continuing down through the rest of the organization, Amazon has in place a superb management team that has continued to carefully refine and build upon the company’s original vision, and has continued to execute almost flawlessly.

It’s not just the great value, convenience and solid customer service that contribute to Amazon’s results – it’s also innovation.

Those “Killer Apps” – “Cloud Computing” and the Kindle

Amazon first revolutionized the bookstore business. Then it revolutionized overall retailing. Now it’s aiming at the book-publishing business with its super-lightweight electronic reading device – called the Kindle. The Kindle allows you to buy and download books in less than a minute – from almost anywhere – without the need to connect to a computer or any device. Lots of books are available.

This is all possible because you are using the fastest wireless standard and the service is included in the price of the book you downloaded. And Kindle can hold some 200 books, newspapers and blogs and has free wireless access to Wikipedia.  The newspapers and blogs are downloaded automatically and updated instantaneously.  Kindle recharges in less than two hours and you can also email your own Word documents and pictures.

With all these features, I am seriously considering buying one. Here’s why:

• It will eliminate the need to walk down my long driveway to grab my copy of The Wall Street Journal every morning.
• It will be much easier to read than in my PC.
• All my downloads will stored in Amazon’s servers, just in case I lose or damage my Kindle.
• And it will save me countless trips to the library to pick up books for myself, and for my avid-reader daughters.

However, I’m going to wait until after Monday (Feb. 9), because Amazon has invited the news media to an event it has planned for the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. The scuttlebutt is that Amazon could be announcing the “Kindle 2.0.”

By saving trees (reducing the need for paper) and eliminating the costs for printing, storage and delivery, publishers can reduce their costs considerably and pass part of those savings on to the consumer.  Therefore, the typical book will cost you $10 or less.  And you can even get some steals, like all sixteen novels by Charles Dickens in a single file, with an active table of contents – all for only 99 cents!

It’s incredible.  No wonder Kindle is expanding sales and margins for Amazon.

But Amazon’s “miracle” performance is not due just to the Kindle.  Amazon has jumped in on the fast-growing trend of “cloud computing.”  Now that the Internet has become ultra-fast, and is getting even faster – thanks to such hyper-fast, high-speed fiber-optic networks as the Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) FiOS broadband system – the balance has shifted towards centralized computing. 

What this means is that with a relatively cheap computer and fast Internet access, one can perform most of the computational activities in the servers of somebody else.  So, somebody else will host the applications, store the data and perform the computation – for a fee, as it is accessed via the Internet.

Therefore, the need to maintain the storage and back it up, to keep your systems up to date and even to help prevent viruses is essentially transferred to the supplier of the service. This is especially important for individual users and small- and medium-businesses, which look to minimize all these costs.  But it is also very useful for some large enterprises in services where Amazon’s scale and expertise can deliver superior cost-savings and reliability.

Amazon aims to be a major player in this realm. Indeed, some analysts believe this could one day be the “real” Amazon business, with books and other retail goods serving only to bring folks in the door.

Amazon already provides storage, virtual private servers, elastic cloud computing, which gives developers a resizable capacity, content delivery and a number of other functions through its fast-growing cloud-computing activities.

This cloud-computing trend has also been embraced by Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), though Google Apps, and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), which has forced Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), which is built on the premise of distributed computing, to hedge by planning to offer a cloud computing operating system.  The new operating system will enable net books (barebones notebooks), PDAs and other smartphones to take full advantage of sophisticated computing capabilities and massive storage located in the “cloud.”

Clearly, cloud computing will be an explosive business, especially in Amazon’s focus areas of storage, content distributions and scalable computational capacity. 

So, with book sales, electronics and its international efforts already strong and accelerating, and the probability of a Kindle 2.0 announcement now imminent, we need to jump on Amazon, while planning to keep the stock for several years.

Rocking With Retailing

Is this consistent with a sound investment strategy for retailing stocks in the current weak-economy market environment?

I recently saw a noted short-seller, who runs a very successful hedge fund (and you have to be good to be still alive), who indicated that for the first time in a long time, he saw opportunities to make money both on the long and on the short side.  This is encouraging, since for the year and a half prior to last November, the opportunities on the long side have been overwhelmed by the financial meltdown and massive de-leveraging. 

In addition, this hedge fund manager was asking a renowned investor in retail stocks what opportunities he saw for shorting these stocks.  The reply: You have to be very careful – even in retailers, which were experiencing big problems – because, in his opinion, valuations had fallen way too much.

I agree with both assessments. At this point, there are good opportunities to buy, and in retail you want to go with the winners.

For all the reasons we’ve detailed to you, Amazon is that “winner,” the strong company with a rock-solid business model that delivers value to customers, that innovates, that has a clear focus on expansion, and that is producing results even in one of the worst economic periods since the Great Depression.

Recommendation:  Buy Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) before Monday’s product announcement and ahead of the rollouts of the stimulus packages planned by both the United States and China (**).

[Editor's Note: Veteran Wall Streeter Horacio Marquez is the author of Money Morning's hugely popular "Buy, Sell or Hold" (BSH) series, and is also the editor of the longstanding "Money Moves Alert" trading service.

As the hundreds of thousands of readers across the Internet who've read Marquez's insightful BSH missives know, the longtime Wall Street insider has a knack for picking stocks that are poised to move. Indeed, when he recommended the Brazilian exchange traded fund - the iShares Brazil Index (NYSE: EWZ) - in late October, it zoomed 42% in six days.
In a new free report, Marquez has identified a category of stocks he has labeled "rocket stocks," which display key characteristics hinting that they're ready to move. One such characteristic: Heavy insider buying. In fact, one particular sector right now is seeing especially heavy insider buying - and many investors will be surprised to discover just what sector it is, and what companies top executives are buying into. For a free report that details these "rocket stock" plays, and that outlines this torrent of insider buying, please click here. The report is free of charge.]

(**) – Special Note of Disclosure: Horacio Marquez holds no interest in Amazon.com Inc.

News and Related Story Links:

• Money Morning Buy, Sell or Hold Feature:
  Buy, Sell or Hold: iShares MSCI Brazil Index.
• Money Morning News Analysis:
  Cost of Obama Stimulus Could Reach $1 Trillion Now That Newly Passed House Bill is Subject to Senate Compromise.
• Wikipedia:
  Home Page.
• Money Morning Special Report:
  The Lost Decade: How the U.S. Financial Crisis Resembles Japan’s Ten Years of Misery – And How to Play it (Part I of II).
• Money Morning Special Report:
  The Lost Decade: How the U.S. Financial Crisis Resembles Japan’s Ten Years of Misery – And How to Play it for Profit (Part II of II).
• Wikipedia:
  Dot-com bubble.
• Wikipedia:
  Kindle.
• Wikipedia:
  Cloud computing.
• OnlineLiterature.com:
  Charles Dickens.
• Silicon Alley Insider:
  Google, Amazon Lead Disruptive Cloud Computing Wave, Microsoft Again Behind Curve.
• Zdnet.blogs:
  Amazon’s cloud computing will surpass its retailing business.
• Money Morning Market Analysis:
  Hedge Funds Have Another $200 Billion to go to Complete Their “De-leveraging”