Salesforce To Join Dow Jones, Replacing Exxon, As Tech Rises, Energy Falls (cnbc.com) 45
jmcbain writes: The benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average, a selection of 30 companies that aims to represent U.S. industries at large, is going to have its largest change in seven years. Notably, Salesforce will replace Exxon on the DJIA (and Amgen and Honeywell will replace Pfizer and Raytheon), marking the end of Exxon's 92-year stay on the index. CNBC notes that Exxon's removal is a sign of the times, "as the company -- and energy sector broadly -- falters, a weakness made all the more apparent by strength in technology names."
Analysts observe that "five tech stocks -- Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook -- are individually larger than the entire U.S. energy sector." But why is this change happening right now? It's apparently due to Apple's upcoming 4-for-1 stock split on August 31, which will significantly reduce the DJIA's exposure to the technology sector. "Basically Apple -- by itself -- took the technology [weighting] within the Dow down from 27.6% to 20.3%. It's a significant decline," Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, told CNBC. "By adding Salesforce, you can come back to 23.1% of the Dow being in technology."
Analysts observe that "five tech stocks -- Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook -- are individually larger than the entire U.S. energy sector." But why is this change happening right now? It's apparently due to Apple's upcoming 4-for-1 stock split on August 31, which will significantly reduce the DJIA's exposure to the technology sector. "Basically Apple -- by itself -- took the technology [weighting] within the Dow down from 27.6% to 20.3%. It's a significant decline," Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, told CNBC. "By adding Salesforce, you can come back to 23.1% of the Dow being in technology."
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Automate spam using fancy tools
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Automate spam using fancy tools
Good 5 word summary of what passes for "tech industry" these days.
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Needs more buzz words to really hit the mark.
Ai cloud analytic marketing solutions.
I have no idea what it does but it is needed for a more streamlined business. The salesperson from salesforce said as much and they were very convincing so it must be true!
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If we go that route:
"Globally distributed customer-friendly AI cloud analytic marketing solutions that enhance team synergy and improve ROI."
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lol, I don't know which is worse. That I have seen pitches akin to that. Or That I have seen management gloat about pushing forward with similar sale pitches.
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The world is full of Dilbertian PHB's, believe me.
Re: What does Salesforce even do? (Score:2)
Prettymuch sums it up right?
CRM (Score:4, Informative)
They make CRM software.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If you are a medium or large company that sells to other companies, CRM is very useful.
Re: CRM (Score:2)
There are other platforms but youre more assured of salesforce integration in your UC platforms than others. They ass-rape you on monthly seat costs, but some businesses blink at the expense, while others wince and make due with shitty ticket systems and email distribution lists. I think the salesforce ticket interface is rather lacking, but having used ticket systems that dont integrate with a CRM, i would pick salesforce as ugly as it is over a non-crm ticket system like kayako.
Re:What does Salesforce even do? (Score:5, Interesting)
They're real good at convincing sales people that they're valuable additions to your software repository. One of our sales folks left for a bit, then came back to the company with a sweeping plan to get Salesforce installed to "clean up our processes." We've had it for years and the only thing I've ever seen it do is gather walk-in information for those that are dumb enough to hand over personal details just for daring to enter one of our stores. Then it uses that information to relentlessly hound the casual browsers to buy something.
Basically, it's a constant IT nightmare to support, AND it does something detestable. So, you know, sales peeps love it.
Re:What does Salesforce even do? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can vouch for this -- at a company I worked for years ago (and a big part of why I left) the owner went away to Las Vegas to a "Dreamforce" weekend event where they basically wined and dined a huge group of business owners to buy into their software. The owner came back and announced to the entire staff without any input from any of us "Starting today, we're going to move all of our ERP and CRM software to Salesforce -- I already signed a 2-year contract!". Right from the beginning, it was a nightmare of cobbled together "solutions" from their "marketplace". They were replacing everything -- sales, order entry, accounting, production, inventory and shipping with a bunch of Salesforce modules.
Speaking to a former colleague years later, it didn't end well and the company ended up switching away from Salesforce eventually, but not until spending tens of thousands of dollars trying to make it work. Buyer beware!
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it didn't end well and ... switching ... but not until spending tens of thousands of dollars trying to make it work. Buyer beware!
Well that's only because REAL Salesforce hasn't been tried yet.
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I was going to say something similar. If the whole fiasco only cost in the tens of thousands of dollars in the end they got off easy.
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Holy shit. You have my sympathy, man. At least our sales team relegated it only to the stores. If they tried to replace our ERP with that cobbled together mess I'd imagine our entire IT staff quitting within a month.
Re: What does Salesforce even do? (Score:2)
Linking objects like contacts, companies, vendors, tickets, products, and projects together is a big benefit. It really sucks when your ticket system cant link all the goddamn tickets called in by a specific company in a query and you have to resort to listing company name in the subject. Only to later find out the retards taking the calls will spell, truncate, or acronym the company name 30 different ways.
There are free CRMs like vTiger. I would mention SugarCRM but thats nagware/crippleware more so than f
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Just think of it as another Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, etc. They started with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software but have branched out to a wide range of SaaS and PaaS software products and services, mostly through acquisition. Once you start storing your client data in their CRM database it becomes more and more convenient to build custom software on their platforms. Their business model and practices will likely remind you a lot of Oracle, which makes sense because that is where their original f
The Dow is dumb (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're wondering why a company engaging in a 4-for-1 stock split affects an index, it's because the DJIA is weighted by stock price, not by market cap or any other sort of weighting that would actually make sense. I.e. If I'm included in the DJIA and my company's one and only available stock is worth $1 million, my company carries more weight in the index than a company with 1 million stocks each worth $100, which is lunacy.
Someone doing a 4-for-1 split is like swapping dollar bills for quarters. It's the same value. But the Dow doesn't see it that way.
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Why? The DJ index is only 30 corporations, obviously not representative of any industry or other grouping of capitalists. It's job has always been showcasing the feel-good growth of share price. Using it to measure more than where late-adoptors are parking their money, is the lunacy.
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... which is lunacy.
Why? [...] It's job has always been showcasing the feel-good growth of share price.
An index's entire purpose is to provide a standard that we can use as a basis for measuring change in the market. As such, if an index tanks or soars when no change in value has occurred, it's failed at its only job and is useless as an index. Share price is one such thing that can rise or fall without any change in actual value occurring, hence my claim that an index based on it is lunacy.
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I was vaguely surprised to learn how primitive the DJIA was. Then I remembered it's run by business dudes.
I was once forced to take a business course in undergrad. They were talking about linear programming, in the context of price optimization. Solving the problem started with "draw a very accurate graph on graph paper" and ended with "now take out your ruler and measure...."
Until that point I thought staring with your mouth open was just a figure of speech.
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I told the prof both answers are the same. He would not accept it. I showed him he can re-arrange y = m x + C and get his form both are same equation. He kept arguing I had
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I constantly have clinicians demanding I include units on ratios. They don't seem to be able to grasp that ratios are unitless. Thus the "pu" unit is born.
Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to make it "fu."
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Some badly designed software API might make units mandatory. We should standardize on FU for such units.
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Sir or ma'am, you are my favourite person for today.
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It was created in 1896 and remains an unweighted index, that's why it seems "dumb". Nothing to do with "run by business dudes".
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People were entirely capable of weighted averages in 1896. Also, the fact that the DJIA is fiddled with on a regular basis means that it could have been updated to be meaningful at any time.
The reason claimed in the summary for this particular change possibly gives a hint of why it is as it is. And it's a very business dudeish reason.
Re:The Dow is dumb (Score:4, Informative)
Incorrect. The DJIA does take stock splits into account. It's a weighted sum of the stock price of all the constituent companies, divided by a factor. The factor takes into account stock splits and the stock's weighting so the price doesn't actually change during a split.
The goal is to have the DJIA reflect the pre-split price of its constituent companies. So if a DJIA company splits, the factor is adjusted so the new split price doesn't affect the index (i.e., if a stock splits 4-to-1, the DJIA doesn't drop by that fraction - it stays the same.
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Thanks for the factual clarification, but I'll point out that I never actually said what you think I said (at least in that post, but I did get it wrong elsewhere, so I'm sincere in my thanks for the clarification). I was speaking primarily to what the summary mentioned when it said:
"Basically Apple -- by itself -- took the technology [weighting] within the Dow down from 27.6% to 20.3%. It's a significant decline," Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, told CNBC. "By adding Salesforce, you can come back to 23.1% of the Dow being in technology."
The Dow is silly because it doesn't treat stock splits as being of the same value before and after the split. That that have a coefficient they need to tweak to keep the index from bouncing around is silly because it shouldn't b
Obsolete Index (Score:2)
The Dow was a pretty important measure of the stock market 50 or 75 years ago, but it's not all that relevant today. It gets cited by market watchers more as a matter of tradition than anything else. The S&P 500 is a far more important index because it is the one that many index funds are tied to (including the ones in a huge portion of 401k plans). It's really the one to watch.
Re: Obsolete Index (Score:3)
As much as people complain about corporate greed, I find it interesting they do not realize how a stock exchange drives that. Lets say I IPO and at the end of the year my company made 30 million in revenue. If I make 30 million next year in revenue, thats not a bad thing. Except in stocks it is. Since my profits did not increase considerably my stock value starts dropping. Suddenly there is constant pressure to make even more than the previous year, even if everyone is comfortable with their workload and in
I guess spamming does pay after all (Score:3)
Spammerforce gets big name recognition now....
Thats ok, they're still firewalled on my mail server.
204.14.232.0/21
13.108.0.0/14
136.147.0.0/16
Honeywell (Score:1)
What on Earth does Honeywell do these days?
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What on Earth does Honeywell do these days?
As a Fortune 100 company and one of the largest multinational conglomerates on Earth, the better question might be "what doesn't Honeywell do these days?".
But to answer your question with info pulled from Wikipedia, their aerospace division "provides avionics, aircraft engines, flight management systems, and service solutions to manufacturers, airlines, airport operations, militaries, and space programs" (including missiles and UAVs), their materials and technologies division is responsible for "process tec
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Everything, it seems. Aerospace (avionics is a big one), HVAC (primarily control - you may be familiar with their thermostats which seem to be in everyone's house), safety equipment (oh hey, pandemic!) and other things.
Just one big conglomerate that has its hands in many pies
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HVAC (primarily control - you may be familiar with their thermostats which seem to be in everyone's house),
I live in San Francisco. Our weather is boring all year round and the old buildings don't have HVAC. Hell, a lot of them don't even have insulation.
Got to make it look like the economy didn't fail. (Score:1)
They've got to make it look like the economy didn't fail.
Change the companies, and you can make the dow keep going up.
The whole thing has been utterly fake for years.
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It's an interesting conspiracy theory. But look at the S&P 500, which is always made up of the 500 largest companies ranked by market capitalization, not chosen by a shadowy group of men in a back room somewhere. The S&P 500 and DJIA generally track pretty closely with each other, though not exactly. Adding SalesForce may have a minor effect on the DJIA, but it certainly won't lead to a deceptive view of the stock market as a whole.