Top E-Commerce Sites in 2011

Internet sales during the holidays went up 15.3% to 35 billion; Online sales for November and December 2011 were 59 billion.

Who are the big players? Obviously Amazon. I buy too much stuff there, but who can compete with them?

	Company	Headquarters	2010 Rank	Main Product
1	Amazon.com	Seattle	1	general merchandise
2	Walmart.com	Bentonville, Ark.	2	general merchandise
3	eBay.com	San Jose, Calif.	3	online marketplace
4	BestBuy.com	Richfield, Minn.	4	electronics
5	JCPenney.com	Plano, Texas	5	apparel
6	Kohls.com	Menomonee Falls, Wis.	7	apparel
7	Target.com	Minneapolis	6	general merchandise
8	Macys.com	Cincinnati	11	apparel
9	Sears.com	Hoffman Estates, Ill.	10	general merchandise
10	Google.com	Mountain View, Calif.	8	information

Logo for ecommerce consultant Sienna

According to stores.org, these are the top ten stores. Click here to see the longer version of the list. There are seven brick and mortar stores, and three electronic-only retailers. 

What is google.com selling? This refers to its sales of data to other marketers which does not sound like regular retailing at all. Google.com dropped two ranks from 2010. 

Surprisingly, nearly-dead Sears in the top ten! It looks like starving the maintenance budget is not hurting online sales. Could be helping since no one wants to go to the real stores.

On-line sales together are13% of all retail in November and December -- important but not dominating. Consultants say that 36% of retail sales have an internet component -- such as getting information, reviews, or comparing prices.

Amazon sold $44 billion all electronically. WalMart sold 208 billion; mostly in the store. I guess they would be selling
425 billion online.

Amazon's stock is selling at 103 times its earnings.  That's crazy high; Walmart's is 13, BestBuy's 9.

Z-Coil Running Shoe

Z-Coil Freedom shoe 

I got a new running shoe with an actual spring on it. Looks pretty gimmicky, but it is very well cushioned.

It is a "Freedom" model from Z-Coil, who makes elaborate footware for people with sore feet. I found them at a store in Dearborn.

The company is based in Arizona, but the shoes themselves are made in Korea. They have a whole line of shoes with different styles, but all with the big bulky spring in back. They make different strengths of springs for different people, and the springs do wear out.

I don't really have a foot problem, but I did have an Achille's tendon injury last August, and I have not really come back. Unlike my Nikes, this running shoe is rigid, and so tendons in my foot don't flex. All the cushioning is done by the big spring.

The disadvantage of this shoe is that it is heavy, at 1 pound, 8 ounces it is literally twice as heavy has my Nike Lunarglide at 12 ounces. The weight of the shoe is noticeable, but OK for training in. It occurs to me that the spring may provide some mechanical advantage like the spring steel limbs that amputees run in, but this is too heavy to race in.

The hope is that as time passes, my foot will get stronger, and I won't have to wear them all the time.

Table Top Gene Sequencing Machine Can Read Your DNA in a Day.

It can read your DNA in just 24 hours.

It seems like science fiction, but Life Technologies, has a table top sequencing machine for $100,000 to 150,000.  It does a whole human genome in a day.

Life Technologies sequencing chip. Note the tubes that deliver
reagents. 

The secret is a multi-parallel sequencing device. The press release text is pretty impenetrable, but they say it: "perform[s] direct, real-time measurement of the hydrogen ions produced during DNA replication. A high-density array of wells on the Ion semiconductor chips provides millions of individual reactors, and integrated fluidics allow reagents to flow over the sensor array.  This unique combination of fluidics, micromachining, and semiconductor technology enables the direct translation of genetic information (DNA) to digital information (DNA sequence), rapidly generating large quantities of high-quality data." Link

More recently Life Tech's archrival Illumina is suing them for patent enfringement on their analysis chip design.

Just eleven years ago, a collection of the scientists across the world worked to sequence the human genome the first time, and finished in 2003 after thirteen years. Just eight years later, we can do it in an day.

I remember how crazy it seemed when Star Trek NG's Dr Crusher put a few drops of blood in her "tricorder," and this little box sequenced it in a minute. Crazy because that would take a whole lab years, but now, it is not so crazy.

World Stock Market Performance in 2011

Percent change in eight stock markets in 2010 and 2011. January 2011 is normalized to zero.

Everyone who is paying attention knows that the stocks were flat in 2011, which means that the S&P 500 went up by only 0.1%.

The graph above has eight stock market indexes, all normalized to 0% on January 1 2011. You can see the big crash in mid-July. The Wilshire 5000 changed less than 1%, and the Nasdaq actually went down.

On the bright side the Dow 30 are actually up. Of course the Dow is often talked about, but isn't really that important.

Foreign indexes are down big. The formerly high flying Chinese Hang Seng crashed 20%. Japan's Nikkei continues its losing streak, going down another 17%. Germany's Dax went down 15% due to the fraying Euro-zone.

Gains and losses in eight stock markets since January 2010.

Still grasping for a silver lining? Two year returns were decent in the US, and bad everywhere else.  This does not make sense, since business in the US has obviously been bad. First, the market must have been over-sold in 2009. Second, corporate profits have been pretty good.

What does this mean going forward?  Past results usually foreshadow the opposite result in the future since stock traders usually overplay the underlaying trend.  Since Europe and Asia are over-sold today,  then they probably will do better next year.