Google's Larry Page Tips for Entrepreneurship

Times are challenging for the new CEO of Google (Larry Page) especially when Google is at a war with the other hot pre-ipo start-ups like Facebook, Twitter, Groupon etc. My inquisitive mind wanted to know more about the personality traits of Larry Page and see how he'd be currently leading Google so I started searching on him for his leadership attributes / personality traits.

I stumbled upon a bunch of videos uploaded on the Stanford website. I specially liked the following one.

In this 4.5 minute video he gives some tips for entrepreneurship. The most important
aspect that he is touching on is "why you should start-up a company"; because you have a better solution to a problem. His is a very software engineering point of view and which I think is a correct approach. Had Google not mastered the search engineering they would not be successful. Search was not new when Google started. Google was in-the-works for a couple years in the Stanford labs while there were giant IT companies employing search websites. Theirs was an engineering approach to solving the problem the best way. It did pay off.

He brings up interesting points which are good take aways for the entrepreneurs like how to be focussed
more on the problem your company is solving than on the funding/VC aspect.

If your idea is not anything new but you have the best solution to the problem in that space the 

 world is bound to come to you.

I had one of my favorite quotes which I am reminded of : "If you don't know the solution it is not a problem but if you don;t understand the problem then this is the real problem!".

So as he says, and which is quite makes sense is your ingenuity in solving the problem. Maximize that!
That will bring you customers and hence the revenues! So I'm thinking Larry is on the right track not paying too much attention to the wall street "clutter" and he is going back to solving problems that Google is facing.

The important thing is he understands what Google's problem is and focusing all effort and eyes on solving those. He is on the right track. We don't care what solutions they come out with. But they are on it!

The problem for Wall Street is that they don't understand Google's problem. I am thinking this might end
up as a problem for them.

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Make the most of your stock position. This works for all types of investors.

Hello All,

I am going to be discuss the trick that I use to make the most of my stock position.

First of all you want to be careful and protect your stock investment when a high volatility is anticipated.

You can subscribe to market news channel or stock news feeds using Google Finance, Yahoo Finance or

your broker etc. 

The most conservative and the best way I find to protect my stock is to buy a put option against the quantity

of my stock. I always make sure I'm buying a quantity of 100 for every put that I want to buy to reduce

my total cost on protecting the stock I own. 

Next the times when the stocks plunge / take a deep dive / gap down by few percentage points. This usually happens in extended hours (Pre-market and after hours) or when there is some PR announcement (expected / unexpected). The best example I can take is the earnings announcements every quarter for a given company.

Earnings are announced pre-market (before the market opens 9.30 a.m. EST) or after markets close (4.00 pm EST). 

Usually you would pay 2-3.5% of your total investment on the put option for a given month. During and post earnings announcement the stock may jump up or down a few percentage points. If it jumps up then you 

are making money of your stock and once it breaks even with the cost of the puts you are in the green line.

If the stocks starts taking a dive as a result of the announcement (in case people did not like the earnings result) then the bleeding would usually continue through the session and may lead into the next day trading session. One way to benefit from this is you can set up an "after-hours stop-limit order" to sell your stock

if it starts falling down .For e.g. if AAPL (APPLE stock) at market close is at 350 and on earnings announcement if the stock starts falling lets say u see the selling (and the price dropping) you can set a comfortable stop - limit and sell your stock as soon as possible. Next day when the market opens most likely 

you will have your put gained by a huge percentage (depending on how much the stock drops). 

Next day if it still keeps dropping you can wait and then when you feel you want to take profits you can sell your puts position with profits.

If you had not sold your stock in the extended house then you would have accumulated a loss on your stock which would be compensated by the put you would have bought on your stock position. Selling your stock position earlier prevents an additional loss on the stock and any additional gain on your puts becomes your profit. 

In summary, the key is to have the ability to trade your stock in the extended hours. Options House / Ameritrade do provide this facility to investors. There may be other brokers too. Also, this tactic

does not require any margin privilege on your trading account. So this works for conservative investors too.

The other key thing is to be very attentive during the news announcements and watch the stock price --

a piece of important advice : You should not try to read the earnings report when it is release; let the wall street guys or the BIG Money guys do it and react because thats what most influentially drives price up or down. You only focus on the real time price (in your brokerage account) and follow the herd. 

As they say trade first ask questions later!

Happy trading!

For more tips you may subscribe to my blog or contact me.

This one's for Chris Paul!