Amazon's Imminent Liquidity Crunch And Share Price Collapse [View article]
I am an old shorter of amzn and lost a lot of money doing it. The p to e is insane and no company (especially one that has been in business 15+ years) deserves that. Having said that I think amzn has done two things that are brilliant. They have become a place where you can buy almost anything but food. I bought a pair of jeans from them last week because I didn't want to think about how I was going to go to the store to buy it. In addition, what they are doing with online movie rentals is brilliant. They are getting as many movies as they can and if you want, you can pay a very reasonable fee and watch them immediately whenever you want. This is brilliant and if they wind up one of the final players they will make a lot of money doing it. I can't believe nflx can't compete with them here, although nflx customers would get confused about their subscription vs. what they have to pay for.
What Is QE And What Does It Portend? Probably Less Than You Think [View article]
This is a good and interesting article. I think the author has formal economics training. But at some stage the multiplier effect is going to kick in and the v in mv=pq is going to kick in and we will get inflation. I guess banks get a guaranteed .25% with little/no risk so maybe it can go on for a while.
Facebook: Headed For A Slow Burnout [View article]
I disagree that it is fb management of the company that is hurting the stock. I think it is too early to say whether the management of the company is effective or not. I agree with the author that the expectations around fb were huge and I was amoung those promising a 100+ p to e once it got going. I think something is really different between the number of shares offered by fb and just as an example goog. Whatever goog did in terms of shares offered after the ipo was correct. goog had a good ipo and in general went steadily up going forward. I don't have the data but somebody should compare how many shares (and what ownership % they represented) between the goog and fb ipo's.
3 Cash-Loaded Small-Cap Stocks Holding Down The Debt [View article]
I would like to give my take on Tejon Ranch. The review I saw of it said what this author said about having a strong cash position but I think there is more to it than that. They hold a ton of real estate around Los Angeles, and yet currently do what I would call minimalist usage of the land (lease it out, farm it, etc.). If real estate ever grows around Los Angeles, the value of the land they own is going to far outweigh anything they are currently doing with it.
Remember when people say a 1000 p to e for lnkd they are talking about a p to e with special items that reduced earnings. I think lnkd was a proxy for fb pre ipo when no one could buy fb. I would think when fb flopped, lnkd would really flop, but no luck so far.
How To Profit From Natural Gas's Wild Ride [View article]
I don't know how you can call it a "Wild Ride". ng has been mostly down the last few years. To be below 3$ is just incredible for someone who has been watching ng for a long time. I got out of sjt in time but I thought my canadian energy trusts were more oil than ng and judging by how much they went down, boy was I wrong.
Has anyone ever asked Bernanke directly how we can only collect 60 cents of taxes for every dollar the gov't spends? Where does that break? When do we see inflation because the Fed can no longer cover fiscal profligacy? I think he would answer. This sentence reminded me of that "The Federal Reserve can always do more, but it is at the point of diminishing return given the specter of crippling fiscal policies in the U.S. and Europe". Good article.
How Much Lower Until Facebook Finds A Bottom? Lower Than You Think [View article]
Good article. What I would like to see is a comparison with other momentum darling tech ipo's (goog, amzn, yhoo, msft). fb clearly did something different in terms of issuing shares than those other companies. All those other companies carried a p to e > 100 for years after they ipo'd. fb has yet to get to 100 p to e and they make money, which in the 90's was unusual for a tech ipo momentum darling. Like how many shares of goog were for sale at +3, +6, +9, +12 months after the ipo. And when I say shares I'm not even sure that matters. How much ownership interest was for sale at various checkpoints after the ipo. Absolute values of the shares is obviously different between fb and goog. goog started at 80 and was quickly up in the 300, 400's. fb obviously chose to issue more shares at a lower price. I don't think that is important. But stock performance after the ipo is important. Like what was goog's lockup release the first 18 months after the ipo. Something between these two stories is obviously different, and I think it's too early to say that fb management is somehow less capable than goog management. Some investment banker, early founders, early investors, and the cfo/treasurer of fb did something really different with the fb ipo than was done with the goog ipo in terms of the number of shares hitting the market during and after the ipo.
Why You Should Short Amazon This Fall [View article]
Most online brokerages have "Sell Short" as one of the choices for acting on a stock. Brokerages are only allowed to offer for short sale a % (I'm going to say 10 to 15%) of the stock that their customers hold long, so you may get a message saying there is none to short. If you short a stock that pays a dividend, you have to pay the dividend. You don't have to worry about that with amzn. When you short, technically you brought money into your account, so it affects your margin capability. There is no limit unless something really unusual happens on how long you can have a short position open. If you keep a short position open longer than a year, any gain is only a short term gain. You can use a short sale as a device to sell something you will have but don't currently control (you inherit shares, but haven't received them, company espp grants (companies frown on this)). A Put is betting on the same direction as a short but has much different time limit considerations and is generally riskier.
Amazon: Great River, Bad Investment [View article]
Interesting perspective of talking about the employment side. I too interviewed there (a long time ago) and would concur it did not appear to be a pleasant place to work. I guess I would ask what kind of options the employees have. A lot of tech companies issue employee options to current employees and new hires at the current market price (of when they are issued). So it is only movement from the current price that helps employees. So I'm saying a new amzn hire today, if they are smart, knows making more on the stock is going to be tough. There are other kinds of options where you are just given shares (less shares) and you get a movement from zero to the current market price when they vest. Different employee options would elicit different behavior to a big drop.
The True Value Of An Idea: Why These Social Media Stocks Are Likely Overvalued [View article]
Some monopolies are due to "network" affects. We don't want 50 pc operating systems so we have just aapl and msft. I would argue people don't want 50 social networking companies for general social networking so fb is probably going to keep general social networking for a good while. But with Saas, crm may be good, but for new customers, the barrier to entry is low for someone to put up a server and offer a saas erp solution. But msft is as good a monopoly (and I don't think they did anything nefarious) as I can think of and they have a p to e of 15 so what did it buy them or their shareholders?
The True Value Of An Idea: Why These Social Media Stocks Are Likely Overvalued [View article]
Robert, I did the same thing initially. It's psychological. You say "Oh, people wanted in to fb and they did lnkd before the ipo, so it exploded". You see what you want to see. But I looked at the real earnings for Q2 2012 and here's what Fidelity said "LNKD met the First Call Consensus of $0.16 and "
The True Value Of An Idea: Why These Social Media Stocks Are Likely Overvalued [View article]
By the way I agree emphatically that competitive factors are as true in technology as they are elsewhere (plumbing, airlines, grocery stores, etc). It's a good point and one you don't see made very often.
The True Value Of An Idea: Why These Social Media Stocks Are Likely Overvalued [View article]
The p to e of lnkd at 912 causes a lot of us value investors to drop our jaws. We had amzn and crm sit with p to e's of 100 to 200 for long periods of time, but 900 is a whole different ball game. In the most recent quarter lnkd had eps of 16 cents. Special items took it to 3 cents. They must do this a lot because yhoo finance show yearly eps at 12 cents. But without special items lnkd earnings would be more like 60 cents a year and an eps of ~175. I'm still short and it depends how you feel about special items, but you have to know the full story behind the p to e of 912.
Amazon's Imminent Liquidity Crunch And Share Price Collapse [View article]
What Is QE And What Does It Portend? Probably Less Than You Think [View article]
Facebook: Headed For A Slow Burnout [View article]
3 Cash-Loaded Small-Cap Stocks Holding Down The Debt [View article]
The Juiciest Shorts Of All Time? [View article]
How To Profit From Natural Gas's Wild Ride [View article]
The Irrelevance Of QE3 [View article]
How Much Lower Until Facebook Finds A Bottom? Lower Than You Think [View article]
Why You Should Short Amazon This Fall [View article]
Amazon: Great River, Bad Investment [View article]
The True Value Of An Idea: Why These Social Media Stocks Are Likely Overvalued [View article]
The True Value Of An Idea: Why These Social Media Stocks Are Likely Overvalued [View article]
The True Value Of An Idea: Why These Social Media Stocks Are Likely Overvalued [View article]
The True Value Of An Idea: Why These Social Media Stocks Are Likely Overvalued [View article]
Zynga Bulls Need To Look At The Facts [View article]