I'll Have The Usual

I wonder if Norm from Cheers (George Wendt, pictured above) would move to a bar stool at Houston's if the restaurant chain offered his favorite suds at a price lower than what he's accustomed to paying at his usual watering hole. I doubt it, and not just because Norm doesn't appear to possess the alacrity to adjust quickly to much of anything. Norm knows, at least on some unconscious level, that a Budweiser (I can't see Norm gulping down a Founders IPA) at Houston's is just not the same as a Budweiser at Cheers. Norm's beer consumption is all wrapped up in, and inseparable from, all other aspects of his imbibing experience--where he does his drinking (Cheers), his normal perch of a bar stool, the company he enjoys (Cliff, the mailman), and the fact that Sam or Woody will always slide his "usual" down the bar to him before he has to ask for it. After all, Cheers is the place where "everybody knows your name."
 
I like to think of such consumer experience as being a "gestalt," a concept in psychology that says, essentially, not that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, but rather that the whole is something other than the sum of the parts. Merriam-Webster.com offers a more detailed definition: a structure, arrangement, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts. You can't take the beer out of Cheers and you can't take Cheers out of the beer. This helps explain why a consumer might not buy a particular product at the place that offers the absolute lowest price. I don't shop at Walmart because, honestly, I don't like their gestalt.

The implications for customer service should be obvious here, especially for the bricks-and-mortar retailers who face an onslaught of online competition. And yet, some of them just don't seem to get it. I make a point of supporting locally-owned businesses, and when I go to a store and they happen to be out of the item I came in to buy, I certainly understand that. But when the store clerk tells me that they can have it for me in two weeks, I feel insulted. Two weeks! Seriously? Have these people ever heard of Fedex (FDX, $171) and Amazon (AMZN, $367)? Well, I have, and I'll be stepping outside to place an order on my iPhone. Where it exists, this epidemic of nonchalance, a passive arrogance rooted in denial, is causing retailers who suffer from it to miss the best opportunity they have to stay in the game--exceptional customer service. All retailers need to cultivate a considered and tasteful--but not overbearing--familiarity with their customers. We all want to have our needs met and our expectations exceeded. And even if you don't want your usual, it's nice to have it offered, even as just a reminder that someone is paying attention.

Some businesses are not only staying in the game, they are ahead of it. My wife's sister and her husband live in Boca Raton, Florida, and they often tell us about a movie theater there that they love to frequent. They can reserve their seats in advance, and these seats happen to be leather with foot rests and a table between them. A server will bring them a glass of wine from the bar and what they choose to order from the food menu. This is all very civilized, and it makes for an experience that feels more like an evening out at a nightclub than time spent in a stadium. If this is such a great idea, we might reasonably ask why the commercial airlines have not done something similar. There are many answers, one being that they cannot afford to, and another being that they don't have to. In addition to the specific economics of air travel explanation, people seem willing to put up with all sorts of inconveniences and discomforts on their journey that they would never tolerate at their destination. Getting there is just a means to an end, the end being a Disney World experience, for example, or seeing that first-run movie while enjoying a glass of oaky, buttery Chardonnay. There was a time when people actually would get dressed up to travel on a plane, but what once had a sense of panache and style to it has now been reduced to its bare-bones utility: getting from Point A to Point B. Last week was spring break for many school kids here in Memphis, and I enjoyed seeing my friends' Facebook posts with pictures of their beach vacations and ski adventures. I don't recall seeing any post with a caption that read, "Here we are on the airplane, enjoying our flight to Turks and Caicos."

When the purchase of a good or service is perceived as more utilitarian, consumers are going to be more price conscious, but at the same time they are willing to pay up for those experiences at the other end of the spectrum that provide a positive gestalt. Spirit Airlines (SAVE, $79) has made a success of itself with ultra-low ticket prices and all other services "unbundled" and available for an additional charge. Want to check a bag or choose your seat in advance? That's ala carte, for a fee. Meanwhile, Disney (DIS, $106) has recently raised prices for admission to the Magic Kingdom and has introduced the "magic band," a preprogrammed wristband that visitors wear to help them navigate  through the various rides and attractions at the park. Disney is world-class when it comes to providing the gestalt experience, and it is able to extend that to the toys and games that feature its beloved characters. Apple (AAPL, $127) has been able to escape the commoditization of electronics with its "ecosystem" of devices, and that may soon be enhanced with a new streaming video service. Under Armour (UA, $78) has moved into fitness apps, creating a sort of "fitness gestalt" that goes beyond its traditional athletic wear. But for a perfect example of the utilitarian shopping "experience," look no further than Costco (COST, $150), which has its members (including me) embracing the idea of no-frills shopping and buying toilet paper and paper towels in bulk. It makes perfect sense, as long as the price is right.

The analysts and experts who make their livings following trends in the economy tell us that members of the so-called Millennial generation are increasingly unconcerned with owning the traditional signifiers of the American Dream-- houses and cars, for example. They would rather rent than own their homes and prefer car-sharing or ride-sharing services over buying their own automobiles (read more here in this analysis from Goldman Sachs: http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/outlook/millennials/index.html?cid=PS_01_18_07_00_01_15_01). Does this mean that the Millennials are less materialistic than their parents? Not necessarily, because they are really just spending their money in different ways, typically on intangible experiences such as mountain climbing or deep sea diving. To look at it another way, they are spending money on things that will never show up on their personal balance sheets--a mission trip to Ghana is not a tangible asset. That distinction way be lost on the Millennials, since many of them seemed to have earned a college degree yet still don't know the difference between a balance sheet and a fitted sheet. But they likely do understand how to find the best prices on their utilitarian needs, and their shopping habits will probably continue to chip away at brand loyalty--why buy the costlier brand label when the store-label or generic version has the same ingredients? The spoils of utilitarianism go to the low cost provider.

If all of this economic talk on the news about there being no inflation has you scratching your head and wondering how the bean counters seemingly missed your experience when tallying the statistics, we may have an explanation.Companies that have successfully developed the gestalt experience have pricing power. They have positioned themselves so that their version of a particular good or service, enshrouded in an experience, is not the same thing as the knock-off version elsewhere. The stuff we have to buy may come at a bargain, but the stuff we want to buy will not come cheap. There is no substitute for a week at Disney World, and you get what you pay for, both on the journey and at The Magic Kingdom.


Life is short. Get busy.

Jim

Disclosure/Disclaimer: My family members and/or I own shares of FDX, AMZN, DIS, AAPL, UA, and COST. Individual stocks are mentioned here for the sole purpose of illustrating investment concepts, and nothing stated here should be construed as the advice to buy or sell any security.

Copyright MMXV

Take Me To The River--Of Green

Since my days of pub crawling are long gone, my observance of St. Patrick's Day consists mainly of living vicariously through the antics of others. I'll just be thankful that I am not staggering down Madison Avenue and wondering how much Uber will jack up their rates to get me home. What I find more exciting is that the arrival of St. Patrick's means that spring--or at least the vernal equinox--cannot be far away, and that is especially felt in this late winter of frigid temperatures and wintry mixes. We Memphians are unaccustomed to even the mildest accumulations of snow and ice, making sequestration the inevitable consequence. House arrest makes sense, though, when our fellow motorists show no respect for the dangers of black ice until they find themselves in intimate embrace with a utility pole. But enough is enough. A self-diagnosis of cabin fever seemed appropriate when I realized that I was staring mindlessly at the television, watching a show called Brazil Butt Lift on cable.We all need some springtime. Now, the folks up in Chicago, who take blizzards in stride, know how to set the tone for St. Patrick's Day celebrations. They dump emerald green dye in the river (pictured above), and maybe if I lived there I might feel more enthusiastic about the true roots of the holiday. Nevertheless, I am a Memphian, not a Chicagoan, so when I hear the words "river" and "green" in the same sentence, I think first of Al Green--who, I suspect, is not even Irish.

No observation of St. Patrick's Day would be complete without beer stories, so we'll offer a few today. During my college years (of which there were many, and the legal drinking age was 18), Coors beer was not sold east of the Mississippi River. This gave it the cachet of the unattainable, and whenever some friend would arrive back in town with a trunk-load of the contraband, the stage was set for a celebration. This rare treat of a hops potion would, we believed, cause the ladies on campus to beat a path to our door, that being the front door of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house at Rhodes College (then Southwestern at Memphis). Coors later lost its talismanic allure once it became regularly available at the local Seven-Eleven. Beer, it seems, just doesn't taste as good if the acquisition of it doesn't involve dodging the Arkansas Highway Patrol.

I remember learning, at that very same college, about the differences between Busch beer and Budweiser. This was marketing class, though, not chemistry class. The difference in the cost of making those respective brands was slight, but in the marketing world of price and perception, Busch was the "cheap" beer and Budweiser the "premium" brand. The field of beer, if not the field of dreams, is much more crowded today, and we might reasonably think that there are going to be winners and losers. I suspect, though, that the old standards of Budweiser and its brethren will continue to rock along with their loyalists, even as the craft beers chip away at market share. Not compelling growth, but a sort of "hanging in there" stability. The more upscale beers will continue to draw in the adventuresome, those looking for more in the way of taste and, perhaps, status. Who may get consigned to the netherworld in between--or, shall we say, left out in the cold--are the aspirants to premium status who just didn't make the cut.

Shareholders of Boston Beer (SAM, $258), the brewer of Samuel Adams, were probably crying a river of a different sort (in their beers) as the shares took a shellacking after the company reported quarterly earnings in late February. Earnings per share for the fourth quarter came in at $1.40, ahead of Wall Street's consensus of $1.37, but revenues fell short at $232.97 million versus an expectation of $235.96 million. Then the company committed the unpardonable sin of forecasting 2015 earnings per share in the range of $7.10 to $7.50, well short of the consensus view of $7.96. It may be too early to draw too many negative conclusions from this one report, other than to note that the stock market always shoots its prisoners before it interrogates them. Shares of SAM now trade at $258, down from a January high of $325. A reduced earnings outlook does not go down well when a stock is trading at 36 times earnings. If there is more than beer brewing at SAM--trouble, perhaps--then we might look at it this way. My own little world of experience does not constitute anything close to a statistical sample, but if I am going to move on up from drinking Bud Light, I am not going to stop at Samuel Adams--I am going all the way to Sierra Nevada, Anchor Steam, and Founders IPA. And that is exactly what I did, as the evidence sits in my refrigerator (and my recycle bin) today.

I think of the popularity and proliferation of craft beers as another example of a general trend that I call "up-scaling." I view up-scaling as the tendency for goods and services once considered to be out-of-reach or rare luxuries to be adapted, mainly through technology and marketing, for a more mainstream market, and for consumers to expect those former luxuries as increasingly commonplace. Starbucks (SBUX, $92) offers a perfect example. A Cup of Joe at the Barksdale Cafe in Midtown Memphis will set you back $1.50, but at Starbucks a barista will grind up some premium coffee beans, froth up some milk, and charge you about $4.00 for a Venti Latte. Gourmet coffee, once available mainly in high-end restaurants, has come to the masses. And what Starbucks has done with coffee, Nike (NKE, $96) has done with athletic shoes (Are you really going to wear Keds to The University Club Fitness Center?). Hollywood celebrities have probably been shooting up poison in their faces for decades, and now You Too can do the same with Botox, courtesy not of your personal Beverly Hills physician, but of your own doctor and treatments from Allergan (AGN, $233). So now we have, in the mainstream, gourmet beer to go with gourmet coffee and gourmet versions of running shoes and cosmetic treatments. It appears that we are becoming ever more sophisticated, but cynics might say we are just becoming more spoiled.

Boston Beer is the largest craft brewer, a designation that seems like an oxymoron when we consider that the craft side of the beer business is all about small batches from small, independently-owned breweries that emphasize taste and quality. Just recently at The Fresh Market, I counted at least 50 different beers, most of them of the craft variety. If you want to invest in this trend, you might think about starting your own brewing operation. Bosco's has been brewing beer in Memphis for years, and now it is joined by Memphis Made, Wiseacre, and High Cotton. All of these beers are of very high quality. Do you really want that Samuel Adams when you can have one of these local brews?

Better positioned, at least among publicly traded companies in the alcoholic beverage sector, might be Constellation Brands (STZ, $115), which has its own well-stocked bar of brands in wine (Robert Mondavi and Clos du Bois), beer (Modelo and Corona), and spirits (Svedka vodka). In January the company reported earnings and sales numbers that exceeded estimates and offered a 2015 outlook above the Wall Street consensus view. Given the changing nature of consumer tastes, it makes sense to have a broad portfolio of libations under the same roof. As Al Green might say, Let's Stay Together. I will also be on the lookout for the next upscale product to go mainstream. Caviar at the drive-thru, perhaps? I would raise a glass to that.

 IN MEMORIAM

 This Post is Dedicated To My Friend Patrick Crump
1970-2014

 

Life is short. Get busy.

Jim

Disclosure/Disclaimer:My family members and/or I own shares of SBUX, NKE, AGN/ACT, and STZ. Individual stocks are mentioned here for the sole purpose of illustrating investment concepts, and nothing stated here should be construed as the advice to buy or sell any security.

Copyright MMXV

Not What You Expected

Take a Bow, Lady Gaga

There she was, onstage at the live television broadcast of the Academy Awards ceremony, belting out some tunes from The Sound of Music in tribute to the 50th anniversary of the film's release. I'll have to admit that I had never given much thought to Lady Gaga, except for thinking that she looked different every time I saw her, adorned as she always seemed to be in outrageous costumes, makeup and wigs. I never could figure out what she really looked like. I had also thought of her as more performer than singer, so when I heard that she would be performing at the Oscars, I figured that was my time to bring in some more firewood, check my emails, etc. Instead, my eyes were fixed on her. Not only is she indeed an exceptional singer, she was singing classic songs from a half-century ago. This amazing and riveting performance was not at all what I had expected. It was as if Justin Timberlake had stepped onstage to perform Rigoletto. Who knows, maybe that's next.

As investors, we are accustomed to developments that we did not expect, surprises of the pleasant variety and those of the most unpleasant kind. Fortunately for us, investing is one of the few endeavors where we can make a lot of mistakes and still be successful. That would not be true with, say, brain surgery. This happy state of affairs is made possible through diversification, and it allows for a portfolio to outperform the market even if it is holding a few duds. As for those duds--and the rock-star stocks, for that matter--what indication of company performance do we have other than the happy or unhappy tale that a stock's price movement might be telling us? That information comes in the form of quarterly earnings reports, and we are just now wrapping up the earnings season of reports on the quarter ended in December. As we have noted before, those earnings reports are similar to the report cards we used to get in school every six weeks. They tell us how our companies are doing--and, more important, they tell us how things are going relative to our expectations. Stock prices reflect a discounted valuation of what is expected to happen in the future, so if those quarterly reports indicate that sales and earnings are better than what we (Wall Street, actually) expected, and if the company's forward guidance tells us that these better-than-expected good times are likely to continue, the stock price should increase to incorporate this rosier outlook. That all gets thrown into reverse when the results fall short of our expectations.

Most of the stocks we follow here have had very good earnings reports, and we'll note a few highlights. First, let's define again what me mean by a "good" report. For our purposes here, that means that when it is showtime, the company reports a trifecta of earnings and sales that exceed the consensus Wall Street expectations, along with forward guidance that is also better than what was expected. Monster Beverage (MNST, $140) clocked in with results that lived up to the company's (and the beverage's) name, giving the stock price its own energizing jolt. Shares rose about 13% to a new 52-week high, and I counted no fewer than six investment firms raising their price targets on the stock. This is exactly what we like to see. A similar story played out with Home Depot (HD, $115), where it appears that all kinds of home-related goods have been flying off the shelves. Wall Street likes to focus on housing-related data such as building permits and housing starts, and that is certainly understandable, especially when it comes to assessing the prospects for the home builders. But HD may give us a broader picture of consumer discretionary spending trends as such spending relates to the home. As all homeowners know, you don't need to build a new house or move to another one when there's no place like your current money pit of a home for spending money. Those are the kind of expenditures that people can postpone, so it is another glimmer of encouragement for the economy that consumers are opening their wallets and purses to spruce up their environs.

Disney (DIS, $105) also exceeded expectations with its report, and shares moved up to  another new high. The company recently announced that it is raising the admission price for the Magic Kingdom to $105, which also happens to be where the stock is trading. Yep, one share of DIS stock will get you in to ride It's a Small World and watch the afternoon parade. Maybe they should just allow the admission price to fluctuate with the stock price--and then split the stock two-for-one just before we take our grand kids there someday. Parents also seem to be doing some spending at Carter's (CRI, $90), the retailer of clothes for babies and children, which also had across-the-board good news for investors. My wife and I have made our own contributions to the bottom line, as we love to see those grandchildren dressed to the nines. Visa (V, $273) and Mastercard (MA, $91) also joined the high-achievers party with their results, and we'll also note that Visa has now been crowned as the exclusive credit card for Costco (COST, $146), the warehouse club having announced recently that American Express (AXP, $81) would no longer enjoy that status. A company that may not have "household name" status is AmSurg (AMSG, $60), a Nashville-based owner and operator of ambulatory surgery centers. Last year AMSG acquired Sheridan Healthcare, a provide of outsourced physician services. Earnings came in at $.77 per share, ahead of the $.73 consensus estimate, with revenues also ahead at $581.8 million versus an expected $565.3 million. The company is relatively small, with a market capitalization of $2.9 billion, and may bear watching as a model of future healthcare delivery.

Big Losses at Weight Watchers  would have made for a clever headline, but the fact is that the company did not report losses, but instead earnings that matched the expectation of $.07 per share. It was, instead, the shortfall of revenues ($327.8 million versus a consensus expectation of $332.7 million) and a serving of disappointing guidance for the future that sent the shares tumbling more than 30%. Here we have yet another reminder that investing is all about the future. Earnings results are, by definition, a report card on the recent past. No matter how splendid that last quarter may have been, it is not going to help the stock price if the future does not hold similar promise. As for shares of Weight Watchers International (WTW, $10.50), the precipitous decline in the stock price suggests that the company's poor outlook came as a surprise to investors. Really? I think they should have seen it coming. The first shot across the company's bow came some years ago with the popularity of the Atkins Diet and its idea that you could eat all the bacon you wanted as long as you didn't put it on a croissant. The company seemed to recover from that, at least for a time, but let's note that the stock was trading around $80 per share just a few years ago and has been in pretty much free-fall since then. Despite the obvious fact that there is a huge (the pun potential is unlimited here, so my apologies) market for the company's services, there is also a growing plethora of ways to shed some pounds and get in shape, a number of which pose a challenge to established Weight Watchers orthodoxies. What the company does is not losing relevance, but how they do it may be.

Can positive financial surprises give us a tool for picking stocks?  Perhaps, as one of a number of factors we want to see in a prospective investment. The old "Cockroach Theory" holds that the lone cockroach we saw on the kitchen counter may have 100 cousins in the wall waiting for us to turn out the lights and go night-night. In similar fashion, a surprising earnings report might presage more of the same, in either direction. We don't want to be on the bad side of that, sleeping with the cockroaches. In my screening work, I will regularly screen for companies that have reported positive earnings surprises over the last few quarters--but that is only a start. It is worth noting also that a stock that doesn't move up on the heels of a trifecta report may be signaling trouble. That's part of the total picture: an exceptional earnings report, analysts increasing their future earnings estimates and price targets, and a stock price that follows accordingly. The real point today, though, is that we should pay attention to those reports as an assessment tool, just as we would give such attention to our child's report card.

Lady Gaga received a much-deserved, rousing, standing ovation for her mesmerizing performance at the Oscars. I would say that our trifecta stocks deserve a round of applause for their "Not What We Expected" performances, but I'd rather know that the hands of traders and investors were otherwise preoccupied placing buy orders.

Life is short. Get busy.

Jim

Disclosure/Disclaimer: My family members and/or I own shaes of MNST, HD, DIS, CRI, V, MA, COST, and AMSG. Individual stocks are mentioned here for the sole purpose of illustrating investment concepts, and nothing stated here should be construed as the advice to buy or sell any security.

Copyright MMXV

Investing With Mr. Spock

Live Long and Prosper

With the death of Leonard Nimoy (pictured above as Mr. Spock on Star Trek) last week, I have been thinking, once again, about the unwelcome role that emotions can play in our investment decisions, and how much prosperity, as measured by portfolio returns, might be enhanced by having the logic-driven Mr. Spock as a stock-picking partner. Mr. Spock's Vulcan logic was leavened, but never eclipsed, by his human side (his mother was human, his father Vulcan), and it was this potential for inner-conflict that gave the series some of its best Spock moments. Given that we are all humans with enough emotional baggage for own own versions of intergalactic travel, it would be wise to get in touch with--and cultivate--our own "Inner Vulcan."

Yes, we need to keep our emotions in check when it comes to investing, but it is also important to possess a keen understanding of the emotions of others, particularly those others in whose hands we place our financial fate when we own stocks that trade in a market. Warren Buffet advises that we be "fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful." That's another way of saying buy low and sell high, that the best time to buy stocks is when no one wants to own them. Here it is helpful, though, to distinguish between an individual stock and the stock market. Major market sell-offs have a way of taking down the good stocks with the not-so-good ones, and if we can keep our heads under those conditions we might find some buying opportunities. We might suspect that the declining share price of a company with stellar sales and earnings growth is illogical, at least when the company's business is domestic and the market is having an emotional tantrum over the latest crisis in Greece. And while the strong dollar is taking its toll on the earnings of the multinationals, it would not be logical to apply such concerns to companies that don't have to convert their foreign earnings into U.S. dollars.

We have to consider, also, that an irrational exuberance driving the market higher could just be an expression of emotions run amok. The standard answer these days to a roaring stock market is our old friend, TINA (There Is No Alternative). TINA says that we can't get a return anywhere else, especially when we consider that the real bubble likely resides in the bond market. But investors always have an alternative, and they just might pursue it if they are gripped by the fear that a sinking stock market might inflict more pain than a slightly negative real return in bonds. Or they could hide their money under the Tempur-Pedic. And is it not possible that the actions taken due to unbridled fear could be the same ones called for by an unalloyed logic? Or that what we might chalk up to an emotional frenzy of greed has its own foundation in calculated logic?

What would Mr. Spock say? Perhaps he would agree that the valuation of Tesla Motors (TSLA, $203) is very different from that of Celgene (CELG, $121). TSLA has current losses and a forward Price/Earnings ratio of about 200. CELG, a biotechnology concern, has current earnings and a P/E of 50, with a forward P/E of 25. CELG has said that it expects to earn at least $12.50 per share in 2020. Of course, a lot can happen between now and 2020--as parents on a family road trip often have to say to the eager kids in the back seat, We are not there yet. There is always risk, and each year we add to the time horizon to justify current valuation adds even more risk. Stock prices reflect the discounted, present value of what is expected to happen in the future, and it is here that we can put on our pointy ears and apply some logic. Just how much of a rosy future does a stock price seem to be discounting? Skeptics of Tesla's valuation will say a lot. Someday TSLA will have to trade on its actual earnings, and we just don't have a clear picture now of what those earnings might be. CELG appears to be the more logical investment; if, IF the company can realize its stated goals over the next five years, it looks like a bargain. To put it another way, both companies may have very bright and promising, profitable futures, but what are you willing to pay today for those yet-to-be-realized futures? It appears that we are being asked to pay quite little for Celgene's 2020 earnings.

Investors often make the mistake of focusing on current valuation, as measured by the current P/E ratio, alone.This thinking would conclude, ostensibly, that a stock trading at 30 times earnings is more expensive than a stock trading at 10 times earnings. What's missing here is context, particularly the company's growth prospects. If the stock going for 30 times earnings is actually growing at 30%, and the stock at 10 times earnings is growing at 5%, guess which stock is "cheaper." That shifts the conception of risk a bit, as the more relevant risk may not be valuation risk, but instead execution risk. The logical approach to valuation is to ask, relentlessly, what is being discounted. The future always lies beyond what the eye can currently see, but it shouldn't lie beyond what the mind can logically and reasonably envision. When a stock's price seems to be discounting an ill-defined perfection that tempts us nonetheless, it might be time to suspect that our emotions had crept back into the room. Then it would be time to look elsewhere. That would be the logical thing to do.

Last night my wife and I were discussing Leonard Nimoy, and I persuaded her that we should delay gratification of the new House of Cards season 3 by about 50 minutes to view an old Star Trek episode on Netflix. We chose "Journey to Babel," my favorite installment of the original series and the one that introduced Spock's parents. The story has the combination of interpersonal drama and high adventure in space that made for the best episodes. The U.S.S. Enterprise is taking a group of ambassadors from various planets to what amounts to an intergalactic version of the United Nations. One of the ambassadors is murdered, Spock's father has to have emergency heart surgery and a transfusion of green blood from his almost-estranged son, Captain Kirk is stabbed, and Uhura is picking up strange communications from inside the ship as the Enterprise is followed by an unidentified and unwelcome vessel. Good stuff.

Life is short. Get busy. (And please, Live Long and Prosper.)

Jim

Disclosure/Disclaimer: My family members and/or I own shares of CELG. Individual stocks are mentioned here for the sole purpose of illustrating investment concepts, and nothing stated here should be construed as the advice to buy or sell any security.

Copyright MMXV