How well does our system work? You can use the numerical index to check our blogs from the last big recession.
Much of the world suffered a severe recession from 2008 to 2011. During that time, we wrote more than 250 blogs using publicly available information and our Strategystreet system to project what would happen in various companies and industries who were living in those hostile environments. In 2022, we began to update each of these blogs to see what later took place and to check the quality of our conclusions. To date, we have completed the first 175 of our original blogs. You can use these updated blogs to see how well the Strategystreet system works.
Posted 7/7/08 We have two domestic industries in overcapacity: the automobile and the airline industries. We call these industries Hostile markets because returns for most of the players in the industry are low and price competition is intense. Over the last twenty years, we have studied and worked in many of these Hostile markets. In about three-quarters of the cases, market hostility is caused by the expansion of industry competition, especially expansion by low-cost competitors. Hostility in both the airline and automobile industry is the result of expansion by competitors. In autos, the expansion of…
Read MoreCompanies who are not ranked in the top two positions in their industries can prosper providing they follow a highly disciplined strategy. Here is one of those smaller companies. At first, it made several strategic mistakes and sought to leave the market in disappointment. After some time, it reentered the market where it followed a better strategy. Fortunately, the industry was relatively comfortable as it reentered. The industry is just as comfortable today, but there are clear warning signs for the market leaders just over the horizon. Posted 6/23/08 Deutsche Post AG is surrendering in…
Read MoreOver the long term, most industry leaders are likely to fail. You can see this in analyses of the Fortune 500 or the S&P 500 over 20 to 30 years. Think of companies like GM, Sears, Howard Johnson’s, GE and others. You may wonder how this happens. Here is a story of how one dominant industry leader has failed. Posted 6/19/08 Recently, Intel announced the Atom chips. These chips are inexpensive, built for ultra-cheap desktop or portable computers called Nettops and Netbooks. The Atom chips for Nettops cost $29 each, while those for the Netbooks…
Read MoreHere is an interesting case. The gaming PC market has grown faster and to a far larger size than we see in most industries. The regular PC market is much less attractive as a place to compete. The PC gaming leaders do very well. Here is an explanation of how that has happened. And the hats off to Dell for a job well done. Posted 6/12/08 Two years ago, Dell bought Alienware, the leader of the game-oriented personal computer business. Game-oriented PCs are the high-end of the market. They usually sell for several times the…
Read MoreA leader may be dominant in its industry and still fail. There have been many examples in recent years, including Sears and GM. The RV industry has seen a dominant leader, doing many things right, fail outright. Fortunately, a new set of leaders emerged who did even more things right. Here is the tale. Posted 6/9/08 The RV market is in hostility. A hostile market sees low returns on investment, even for the industry leaders. One of the largest players in the market, Fleetwood Enterprises, has seen five straight years of losses. Another leader, Winnebago…
Read MoreTwo strong industry leaders, both highly successful in other markets, decide to combine their subsidiaries in one market in order to gain market share and improve economies of scale. This made some good sense a few years ago. It didn’t turn out quite the way they hoped, though. We cover the story and four separate blogs, numbers 23 – 26. Posted 6/4/08 This entry is the last in our series of four entries on the HP/ED deal. The Setting Hewlett Packard has proposed a take-over of EDS, in order to improve its services, revenues and…
Read MoreTwo strong industry leaders, both highly successful in other markets, decide to combine their subsidiaries in one market in order to gain market share and improve economies of scale. This made some good sense a few years ago. It didn’t turn out quite the way they hoped, though. We cover the story and four separate blogs, numbers 23 – 26. Posted 5/29/08 This entry is the second in our series of four entries on the HP/EDS deal. The Setting Hewlett Packard has proposed a take-over of EDS, in order to improve its services, revenues and…
Read MoreTwo strong industry leaders, both highly successful in other markets, decide to combine their subsidiaries in one market in order to gain market share and improve economies of scale. This made some good sense a few years ago. It didn’t turn out quite the way they hoped, though. We cover the story and four separate blogs, numbers 23 – 26. Posted 5/27/08 This entry is the first in our series of four entries on the HP/EDS deal. The Setting Hewlett Packard has proposed a take-over of EDS, in order to improve its services, revenues and…
Read MorePosted 5/19/08 Microsoft has problems getting its stock price up where it thinks it belongs. Some analysts believe that the reason, in part, is that Google has introduced free substitutes for the Microsoft Office products. These substitutes are called Google Apps and include spreadsheet and word processing applications. The fear is that Google’s advertising-supported free applications will force Microsoft to reduce prices on Office products where it enjoys a 70% gross margin. These fears are premature and probably overblown. Google Apps is a long way from offering a true challenge to the Microsoft Office programs.…
Read MoreIt’s one thing to be the market share leader in your industry. It is another thing to take full advantage of that place by creating and exploiting significant economies of scale. The average industry leader fails to do this. But here is an example of an industry leader who does it extraordinarily well. Posted 5/15/08 Microsoft, at least for now, has failed in its efforts to acquire Yahoo. If it had succeeded in this acquisition, Microsoft would have had to do some radical surgery on Yahoo’s search business, and on its own as well. Yahoo…
Read More