Reality Star Susan Boyle’s Upcoming Album Becomes the Largest Global CD Pre-Order in the History of Amazon

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Call it Amazon Marketplace envy. Wal-Mart (WMT) and Sears (SHLD) recently created their own marketplaces — places on their Web sites that link to other online sellers. They hope that adding other retailers to their Web sites will help boost traffic and sales and help them become more competitive with Amazon.com (AMZN), the Web's leading retailer, as the Christmas shopping season unfolds. "They are trying to follow the Amazon model," said Graham

(Credit: Barnes & Noble)If you were interested in buying the Barnes & Noble Nook as a holiday gift, strike it off your list. The e-reader is now officially sold out through 2009, according to the B&N Web site."The hottest holiday gift is out of stock," a message at the top...

"Software as a Service" and cloud computing companies have proven they can be viable. The question is, how many of them can the industry support?

Insider trading can be a sign for investors to jump on board.

The reason for the failure of the tech sector to double-dip in March is because it was already gearing up for a potentially big fourth quarter thanks to Windows 7.

Barnes & Noble (BKS) reported today that their new eReader product has sold out of the entire supply for delivery before the holidays.  This may be a positive sign for Barnes & Noble in the long run as demand appears to be quite strong, but it is clear that production limitations are restricting sales this holiday season.  Yesterday, Sony (SNE) pushed back the shipping date for their Daily Edition Reader to between December 18th and January 8th.  This puts Sony’s August promise to have the Reader available for[More...]

Google's (GOOG) entry into the Operating System space is at least a year away, but the Internet and Search behemoth showed off a technical preview of what they've been tinkering with to an audience of journalists and "techies".[More...]

BloggingStocks: Every day, it's becoming clearer that e-readers will be the hot holiday gifts of 2009. Amazon (AMZN) is obviously in the game with its Kindle, with which it took an early lead in the industry. Barnes & Noble (BKS) has made a play with its new Nook ... Read more

One obscure way of measuring how efficient a company operates is the amount or sales or revenues that are generated for each employee at the company, also known as the Revenues per Employee Ratio or R/E Ratio. It is also sometimes referred to as the Sales per Employee Ratio or S/E ratio. I've written about the R/E ratio in the past a couple times, but there doesn't appear to be much interest in this metric.

The concept is simple. Let's assume there are two companies in the same industry generating the exact same amount of revenues. But Company A has 1,000 employees and Company B has 10,000 employees. Which company do you think would generate higher net earnings? Which stock do you think would perform better?

Let's take some real life examples, using the technology sector. With only 19,665 employees and raking in $182.95 billion in revenues, Google (GOOG) is by far the top large cap tech company with the highest R/E ratio at $9,303,330 for every employee. And to top things off, the stock is up 79% so far this year. Apple (AAPL) is close behind with an R/E ratio of $5,408,163 and the stock is up an amazing 127% for the year. Then there is Amazon (AMZN) at $2,746,376 per employee. Amazon has a top return year-to-date of 142%.

Now let's look at some of the tech stocks that don't have as high an R/E ratio. Yahoo (YHOO) has a revenue per employee ratio far below the others at $1,646,323 and the stock was only up 24%. Both Dell (DELL) and IBM (IBM) generate almost identical revenues per employee at $410,000 and are up about 49% for the year; not even close to the returns for Apple or Amazon. And Hewlett Packard (HPQ) only has a R/E ratio of $372,866 and has the lower year-to-date return to show for it at 38%.

So next time you are trying to decide which stock you want to buy in a particular industry or sector, take a close look at the R/E ratio.

Author owns AAPL, AMZN, and YHOO.

By Fred Fuld at Stockerblog.com - Stockerblog - The St...

Schaeffer's analyst Morgan Searcy takes a look at news on the Street before the market open.

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