Hulu.com has become a major disruptive technology in the field of online video that is now dominated by youtube. Hulu has been around for a year but is only now beginning to make mainstream traction and become a force within itself. Youtube right now is still hundreds of millions of viewers beyond hulu but when it comes to a niche of more sophisticated content viewers hulu has build itself a niche that will be hard to breach.

The service offers you the ability to watch TV, Movies, and Clips all from within the comforts of your browser. So you may ask what makes this different than all of the other places where I can view content? First of all it is a collaboration between different media companies so that means you can watch a variety of these shows legally for free. Also the service provides up to date content for a lot of your favorite shows, so in case you miss any shows that day, just wait a couple of hours and it will be available on the site for viewing. For the ability to watch up to date shows there is one penalty cost though, commercials. You get a quick commercial break that last about 15 seconds once or twice during the viewing of the show. The commercials are relatively painless and I think regular TV should take note on how smoothly the commercials slide in and out.

The one drawback on the service comes from the movie section of the site. They do not have the greatest selection of movies compared to similar services such as Netflix’s Watch Now service. Also the commercials are a lot worse in the movie section than it is in the TV section. When I was watching the TV shows I saw one or two commercial breaks, maybe even three. The movie I watched had at least eight to ten commercial breaks and they were all the same commercial. Watching the same commercial eight to ten times even with beautiful women can be a bit nerve wracking. Other than that I am a big fan of the service.

While the market is in a downturn we will be focusing on innovative businesses as well disruptive technologies that we think can withstand the downturn of the market. Hopefully these will provide you inspiration on knowing that even though the overall economy is bad, by being smart you can still prosper.

If you follow the link you will find an interview with CEO of Hulu.com, CEO Video

In 3 months we have lost 1.2 million non-farm related jobs. The only industry that was up was Government jobs. Ladies and Gentlemen meet recession, recession meet the people. You are hearing reports that the economy is bad. The economy isn’t bad, it’s hell on a hot plate. The highest unemployment got in the 2001 recession was 6.3%, we are already at 6.5% and most economist believe that this recession is only at the beginning.  I am not telling you this to scare you, only to warn you that don’t believe anyone trying to sugar coat what kind of trouble the economy is in.

Before the economy busted you kept hearing the talking heads on TV say the the fundamentals of the economy were good and that the media were trumping the problem up. I have not seen not one of those talking heads say, “oops my bad, I was wrong”. The stock market is indeed influence by news but it also is influence by the realities of what was going on in everyday life. The tech bubble that blew earlier this decade was bad but this recession is a whole different kind of monster. We are talking about housing, the biggest investment most Americans will make in their life. Last year around this time you would keep hearing on TV that the “sub prime crisis was contained”. Obviously they were wrong. This is not the time for I told you so, this is the time to listen to your gut more than any talking heads on television. You know better than any professional whether your financial portfolio is sound enough to start spending and investing again.

I’m a big believer in knowing a little about the market before you jump in, even if you are using a broker or relying on your 401k plan to get you through your golden years. I am not speaking about becoming a financial whiz kid, I am just speaking about knowing the very basics so that you won’t get swindled when dealing with your personal finances. Today I thought I would start off with a term that you hear all the time when people are discussing a companies value. This term is P\E Ratio.

The P\E Ratio simply means Price to Earnings Ratio. Okay what’s that mean? That means that you take the current price of what a stock is trading at and then you divide it by the EPS. Okay what’s an EPS? EPS simply means Earnings Per Share. The earnings per share of a stock is how much of a companies profit is placed on a single share of stock. I will go more in detail of EPS in another tutorial but for right now let’s stick with the P\E Ratio stuff. So as I was saying before you simply divide the price of a stock by it’s EPS. Let’s give an example.

We have Company A and it’s stock price is at $25 a share. Now we go look up Company A on finance.google.com and we find out that the EPS is at $1.25. Now we take the price of the stock and divide it by $1.25. It would look like this 25/1.25 = 20. So we have found out that our P\E Ratio is 20. Most investors look for high P\E Ratios as part of the formula to determine if a stock is a good buy or not. A multiple of 20 depending on industry is definitely a stock that you wuold want to take a look at.

The last question you are probably asking yourself now that you know what the P\E Ratio is and how to calculate it is, “Why is it important?”. A P\E ratio is important because it usually indicates how much earnings a company is expecting to make in its future. An investor that is looking at a stock’s P\E that is 20 is willing to pay $20 for every $1 of a companies current earnings. That is because he is expecting that company to grow. There is one word of caution though, when looking at a stock to purchase use the P\E Ratio only as a comparison indicator not the whole story. You want to check a companies pass P\E and also it’s rivals in the same industry P\E. That will give you a better picture of the stocks future earnings.

The worst thing that you can do when the economy turns sour is to become scared. Warren Buffet has advised people to start buying equities now to prepare for the eventual turn of the market. He is only partially right. Yes you do need to be prepared for the eventual turn around of the market but unlike Buffet you can not afford to let your money sit in the market watching as the value slinks further and further down waiting for the day that it finally shifts. The main thing that you need to do now is plan and plan well for the eventual turn around.