What Do You Think About Pfizer?

Wow, it seems that people don't have much respect for Pfizer, the giant drug company that dedicates itself to humanity's quest for longer, healthier, happier lives through innovation in pharmaceutical, consumer, and animal health products. I was browsing through the Biofind Rumor Mill, a message board where pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry insiders share "insightful information" about the industry and players.

This thread titled "5 words that come to mind when u hear Pfizer" attracted my attention today. And at the time of writing, I can only find five neutral/positive posts in there. two of which were at the beginning of the thread:

* Caring, happy, children, smiling, women.
* ha, ha, ha, ha, ha

Well, it went downhill from there. Most of the positive toned comments I found were mostly about the company's leading Erectile Dysfunction pill:

* PILLS THAT GIVE GREAT ERECTIONS!
* My Grandfather Has Sex Now!

And another one is not really an opinion, but hinted at Pfizer's possible M&A strategy.

* Looking to buy Abbott Labs

Some of the classic ones:

* I've no intention of staying
* change, turmoil, lack of productivity, downhill, demise
* You paid Hank how much?

There are some other good ones in the thread, but I decided not to post them here. I am trying to keep this site at least PG-13 rated.

Well, I suspect that the people who posted in the thread are probably mostly disgruntled Pfizer (former) employees. And like everything else, people who are happy about something tend to be quieter. But I think this thread suggested that Pfizer's PR has some work to do.

Disclaimer: I and my relatives don't own Pfizer stocks, but I own some Abbott stocks.

Funny HomeWork Answers

OK, while researching for my last post, I found these funny homework answers at EclectEcon. I wish I was that creative when I was in school.

Financial Contagion Party

Last night I went to a party. After a few hours pigging out and drinking wine and limoncello, someone started a discussion about the recent stock market downfall, asking why Chinese selloff triggered selloffs elsewhere in the world (e.g. US and Europe). Well, if all those pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds and other savvy investors got out of Chinese stocks, shouldn't it increase demand for financial assets elsewhere? So why did US and European equity market went down also, instead of going up? well I had hard time answering the question myself. I remembered vaguely from my very limited reading that even economists had come up with hundreds of explanations, but no consensus yet. The best answer I could offer was the usual herding behaviour theory and the empirical fact popular after the 97 Asian crisis that markets are quite highly correlated, and therefore prone to financial contagion.

OK i got home and geeked out. So I searched "financial contagion" at Wikipedia and I found that Wikipedia article on financial contagion is well, still disorganized and a little too esoteric for most people. But I think this is the main point: "Despite of substantial progress in research, there is still no consensus on definition of contagion. Generally it may be defined as an excessive unanticipated increase in cross-market linkages after a shock to an individual country (or group of countries). ... Researchers argue that interdependence can be measured and anticipated. However, an existence of extreme, asymmetric patterns of excess volatility that can not be explained by fundamental links between economies has led experts to suggest that contagion - rational or irrational - can be the only remaining explanation." Which means that "Financial contagion" is the interdependence between financial market that experts cannot explain.

Then I found this nice page on financial contagion in World Bank's website. I am pleasantly surprised that this one was a little easier to read, but still concluded "So, What Is the Ultimate Cause of Contagion? This is a very hard question to answer. As you can find in this web site, different papers point toward different directions. "

OK if an army of smart people with average IQ of 180 or higher can't explain this, how can I explain? Here's my answer... Thanks to EclectEcon.

To Kill a Brand (PS3)

A video about how Sony killed the PS3 brand. Better than many analyst reports out there.

Video credit: "How to Kill a Brand" by Doc Adams.

Where's my Wii?

OK initially I wanted PS3 for Christmas. But during our Christmas shopping, my fiancee spotted a Wii demo and she got hooked. So we scratched out PS3 and decided to get Wii instead. Ok after trying (not so) hard we didn't get any Wii under our Christmas tree. I didn't manage to get Wii for my recent birthday either. It's simply flying out of the shelves faster than I can say Wee. However, to my surprise I have been able to spot a stack of PS3's at my local BestBuy and Target. It's been tempting to grab one but $700 is a steep price to pay, and we don't even have an HDTV yet. So for now we decided to continue watching patiently for any Wii's to show up in our friendly neighborhood retailers' shelves.

it's impressive, that Nintendo with Wii has been able to overtake Sony's dominance in thie new gen console war. Look at this sales chart, courtesy of vgcharts.com. Yes Sonny was behind, because it had production problem, even now I think Nintendo has more production capacity for Wii than Sony does for PS3, but I can't find my Wii and find a small stack of PS3 inventories. Does this mean that Sony's in trouble?

I still plan to get a PS3 sooner or later. I got hooked to the Metal Gear and Final Fantasy series, but maybe I can live with Mario and Zelda instead. Or maybe if PS3 truly tanks, Konami and Squenix decides to move the Metal Gear and Final Fantasy to Wii instead. hummm. OK I'll start saving again to make up of the money I lost in the last few days in the stock market bloodbath.