2010: The year we milked the cash cow

Well I hope all CGI members took some well deserved (some less than others) rest, as 2010 will be a key year for our company. Analysts expects that something will happen with CGI, anything but something. Those whores didn't learn a single lesson from 2008, some fruitcakes told them the recession was over and now every drone on Wall Street slipped back into their former devious behaviour. Analysts want something grand, something out of proportion, 5% is not cool anymore. Man, oh man, where are you, Luis Rukeyser?

So since CGI is not on the block (I mean, not officially), my plan for 2010 is to milk the cash cow using all our brainpower. Some business units received a major butt last year, I hope they'll learn a lesson or two and start printing money. We also plan to choke all local expenses, like pencils, paper, paper clips. Cents do add up. Salary raises for 2010 have been topped to 1.8%, so if you get 2% this year this mean that another dork got 1.6%.

This is all for now, Serge is waiting for me to sign my new salary terms for '10, I'll talk about this later this week.

Do not daytrade GIB

When I was a teenager living in Pembroke Ontario, life was much simpler. I was the head of the Young Visicalc Club, a non profit organization aimed at teaching the wonders of this new thing called a spreadsheet. Yes dear members, that was before Excel, that was before 1-2-3. Life did exist before the Internet. While some of my friends were launching Estes rockets and some others were learning to play the Stratocaster, I was at aw with the power of the TRS-80 Model III. I was consumed with the desire to use this new spreadsheet tool, and I could foresee a not so distant future where an entire corporation could be numbers-driven to profitable growth.

I did of course some stock market research and investing at a pace that was in tune with the era. Those were the golden Louis Rukeyser days. Men were real men and they wore 3-piece suits even on week-ends.

Nowadays I feel like I’m totally disconnected with the world, or maybe it is the world that is disconnected with the reality. CBNC announces a breaking news every 5 minutes, and it is usually a pointless press release or a 0.05% share price drop from a low-volume stock. I was a teenager back again, I’d feel obligated to post every thought that crosses my mind on Facebook.

This is why my friends CGI does not issue mindless press releases 5 times a day, and this is why - even if you're a shareholder - you should not daytrade our public stock. GIB is like slow cooking, it is a long term value that keeps on growing if you are patient. Truth is, I don’t check the stock price 25 times a day because daytrading GIB is verboten in the C-suite. What I check though every 15 minutes is our revenue stream, where it is coming from, why some business unit is having a bad week, how many traitors left for a competitor.

If you want to daytrade a stock, why don't you pick a company whose products loose value every day, like Dell. Makes sense, doesn't it?