Slashdot Mirror
Another Dot-com Boom?
Ryan Hemelaar writes "CNN Money is reporting that the internet might be at a stage of another dot-com boom, with the top tech stocks now gaining ground again after the dot-com crash. From the article: "Now, 10 years after two key events in the history of the Internet -- the successful IPO of Netscape, which many cite as the beginning of Wall Street's love affair with 'Net stocks, and the founding of Yahoo! -- we're in the midst of a new, let's say mini dot-com boom.""
There's no end in sight!
They just want more people to watch their boring Money TV programs. Nice try!
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
finaly, I'll be able to order my groceries online again!
no more brick-and-mortar for me!
"What does slashdotting mean?"
"You've never heard of slashdot?"
"I know it makes websites not work."
Not to mention Google's IPO today, which has been valued quite highly.
Google is a great company with some really good services, but where does their core revenue come from, other than ads and maybe sales of their few SE boxes?
Makes you wonder, once again. Remember - it does not matter if you have the greatest idea on Earth, if your revenue is not from tangible assets (for relative measures of tangible ofcourse), the market will put you down eventually.
This is what I'm scared of - if things like that do happen, we'll once again go into an IT industry crash.
Old business-plan to resell, never used. vc@boo.com
(Sorry my bad French) Je fais parler les Guignols de l'Info. Le pied, quoi.
It's this kind of speculation which drove the first dot-com boom... and eventually burst the bubble.
OLPC Australia
It will be interesting to see how Wall Street reacts the second time around with these tech stocks. I would hope people can look back now and wonder what they were doing, consistently buying these stocks with P/E ratios of 300 and higher. With the tech bubble of the 90's still fresh in investors' minds, I would speculate that this time it won't get quite so out of hand. The name of the game on Wall Street is earnings, and in my opinion, one of the biggest problems we had with the last tech bubble is that so many of these companies had no earnings to speak of. To make matters worse, I don't know that a lot of these companies (pets.com) had a good idea of how they would ever have earnings. Hopefully the big investors such as pension funds, insurance companies, and mutual fund managers will think twice about backing some of the more obscure companies. Perhaps I should do an understandfinance.com IPO :)
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
...whether it's mini or not in my mind. Hype is what helped cause the legendary dot-bomb, and I'd rather keep my job.
All credit given to successful internet companies, I don't see it as a boom of any sort, I think of it more like big forecasts for what has actually worked this time around. Google may not continue to rise endlessly in the stock market, but internet companies are doing better in part because the internet is becoming so ubiquitous that you really can't avoid having some tie-in to your website in many industries. I'm glad to see companies coming back from the dot-bomb, but I can't call it a boom or a mini-boom.
How about a more stable term like 'successful market'? That sounds a little bit safer than over-hyping things again.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
The gangsters in the movie are nervously sitting around in the hotel bar waiting for the hurricane to hit. Rocco, who's a tough guy but can't stand the tension, orders one of his underlings to talk. The most cheerful thing the thug can come up with on the spur of the moment: "I think in a coupla years, maybe, they're gonna bring back Prohibition."
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Look at that PE. Do the fools never learn?
Blasphemy! How dare you suggest that Google might not be worth nearly EIGHTY BILLION DOLLARS. That's its current market capitalization.
How does that compare to other companies?
Oracle: 64.78 billion
3M: 58.56 billion
American Express: 68.43 billion
Disney: 57.82 billion
General Motors: 19.48 billion
Red Hat: 2.2 billion
Anyone that suggests that a brand new company like Google shouldn't be worth 4x more than General Motors just isn't thinking correctly.
I'm a big tall mofo.
it seems another round of unemployment is just around the corner!
Recovery? More like a dead-cat bounce. To many people, the internet is no longer a new and exciting place to explore , but instead a cesspool of viruses, trojans, dialers, loggers and malware. For successful eCommerce you need consumer trust. But with all the phishing scams, people are now wary about on-line sites and on-line transactions. For many, it's just not worth the hassle.
Google should remember to grab as much copper wiring from the walls as possible!
Am I in a slashdot time warp? Everything seems like its 1996 all over again.
The internet is a new playing field. It is going to go through a few cycles like this before everything evens out and we get to a stable place. Also, since the bust, there's been a lot of increases in not only technology, but also availability of the internet. There's lots of new stuff to try out. There's going to be a lot of companies that want to try out new things, take a risk, because it could end up meaning big income. Going global on the internet is more possible than with other types of business. I think there's a lot of money to be made, just like the first time around. The good ones will survive, just like the first time around.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Lets face it, the internet and technology is still a leader in the economy and the business world. Innovations that companies actually want are being made everyday by tech companies, and they will be for the foreseeable future. Put this along with the fact that tech savvy geeks can play with most technologies in their spare time and you have a base of people that think it's really cool! I think the trend up is not a fluke, but everything concerning Wall St. needs to be approached cautiously.
The internet has matured from ten years ago, with a lot of privately held companies contributing to the present boom.
Take a look around, the Internet is everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of companies have an online presence. Instant messaging is commonplace, as is online gaming. Newspapers publish online, granted most of those are traded on the stock markets. Internet chat/discussion is more active, we've seen a steady increase over the past 7 years in pageviews to our site, indicitive of an increased usage of discussion forums. Online dating is another area that has come of age.
All of this helps to push stocks higher, and investors for the most part know how to spot the larger trends, not just todays hot picks. They look for longevity in a sector, and they are seeing it now with the tech stocks as their entry into the larger sector. Don't discount those of us with privately held companies that are boosting overall Internet usage, and helping to fuel the boom.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
Time to start volume buying of Value America stock. Was I the only one who created like 10 accounts with them to receive the $100 worth of "value bucks"? For the life of me, I'll never understand how a business model that sold merchandise for 50% of retail never become solvent. Chalk it up to one of life's mysteries I suppose.
Hey, maybe with the rumors of a mini dot-com surge, those CueCat chaps will find someone to buy their scanners?
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
mini dot-com boom
:P
There is no such thing as a mini boom.
Eiter it's gonna be a real boom (which I hardly doubt) or it isn't.
CNN Money is reporting
Seems to me like some asshats want to dump some stock...
Hopefully people will have learned the mistakes that caused the last great .com implosion and not get the economy trashed yet again.
Brainless speculation and investment in junk does not an economy bolster.
At least, not in the long view.
Not really in the short view either.
While I can sympathize, here's some food for thought:
We may not care what some dink at CNN Money thinks, but investors may. If the people with funding don't understand what they're investing in, stories like this could be hazardous if it convinces enough people. CNN is pretty well read amongst a lot of typical 'professional types' and if we're a little more aware of what misinformation they may be getting, I'd rather be that much more prepared.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
Bears like to slide a slippery slope of optimism. Bulls like to climb a wall of worry. Personally, I only hear about the impending crash, not that I'm buying anything, I'm just saying...
GM has a major outbound flows. I was reading how of every car they ship $1600 goes to just Pensions. Their stability is declining. Income from tangibles is all well and dandy, but Google's has next to no materials overhead which tips the scale. Still it's not the income, it's the long term stability. Keeping Google afloat is cheap. If a goose eats $100 bill then it better lay golden eggs and this goose is laying some nice golden eggs. Once last word to the to wise, playing the stocks is like surfing. You ride the wave till it falls. Long term anything in the stock market is a fools game.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Booms are good. Insane run-ups like the dot-com boom in 1998-2000 are not. I graduated right into it, and ended up working in IT for decidedly non-dotcom companies the entire time. My reasoning: I was learning, so I might as well start with an established company. Turns out that was the right decision, even though it really bothered me watching people I knew changing jobs every 6 months for 30-40% pay increases!
If you want another example of a bad boom, just look at the housing market lately. I read a statistic the other day that said interest-only mortgages have reached 40% of all loans made in some housing markets. Just wait until interest rates go back up and the interest-only period ends. People will be paying way too much on houses that aren't worth nearly what they bought them for. I see this going on in my area, and I just wonder when the market is going to tank.
Market bubbles seem to occure every 3 generations. The big ones that come to mind are Dot-com, 1929, the railroads, the colonies, ... Dutch tulips... seems every 3 generation(s) that has their savings wiped out and dreams dashed wise up to the chants of "this changes everything", "this market is different", "these properties will only gain value", "these prices will last forever". I think it will be another 50 to 75 years before there is a new buzzword technology and enough new suckers who can't remember the previous crash.
Long term anything in the stock market is a fools game.
Let me make a modification for you:
Long term any single thing in the stock market is a fool's game.
A balanced portfolio of domestic small-cap, mid-cap and large-cap stocks along with a smattering of international funds and bond funds is the only sure bet long-term. Anything else and you might as well put it all on black at the casino.
Never mind. I forgot - you're better at picking stocks than everyone else in the world, and your winning streak will never end. Good luck with that.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Yeah, I noticed the same problem sometime back. Updates were not showing up on RSS, and even on the main page, newer stories were just shown as "Read more..." with no number of comments or the like.
I thought my RSS feed was broken or something was wrong, but now it seems to be working, the comments have been updated and the RSS feed is back up.
Weird.
As in most industries there are raises and falls in stock prices, it's a safe bet to assume that we would start seeing tech stocks rise in value. The first wave is over and people are starting to recover from the tsunami that was March of 2000. We'll see people be more cautious with there choices which will help this wave be one of tech's stories of redemption, rather than mania. However, don't be fooled after every crescendo, climax, upsurge if you will, there is always the trip down. The key being knowing when to hold, and knowing when to fold.
Peter Corcoran
Impermanence
r manence.html
-- Thich Nhat Hanh
Nothing remains the same for two consecutive moments. Heraclitus said we can never bathe twice in the same river. Confucius, while looking at a stream, said, "It is always flowing, day and night." The Buddha implored us not just to talk about impermanence, but to use it as an instrument to help us penetrate deeply into reality and obtain liberating insight. We may be tempted to say that because things are impermanent, there is suffering. But the Buddha encouraged us to look again. Without impermanence, life is not possible. How can we transform our suffering if things are not impermanent? How can our daughter grow up into a beautiful young lady? How can the situation in the world improve? We need impermanence for social justice and for hope.
If you suffer, it is not because things are impermanent. It is because you believe things are permanent. When a flower dies, you don't suffer much, because you understand that flowers are impermanent. But you cannot accept the impermanence of your beloved one, and you suffer deeply when she passes away.
If you look deeply into impermanence, you will do your best to make her happy right now. Aware of impermanence, you become positive, loving and wise. Impermanence is good news. Without impermanence, nothing would be possible. With impermanence, every door is open for change. Impermanence is an instrument for our liberation.
http://www.serve.com/cmtan/buddhism/Treasure/impe
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
First of all- we've had a solid six years of web development since the last boom, and people know a lot more about how to use the Internet for Marketing. Also, the population as a whole is more comfortable with computers as well...
We wont see a boom like the last one, but we will see more tech companies rising to the top again, but slower than before.
One of the major factors in the dot-com boom was the opportunity for no-name tech workers to step up to the plate and try their hand at this "internet thing". The people that strived and made it are now your tier 3 techs and making ~$80k/year. The bubble burst also wasn't just inflated IPO's, it was the saturation of overpaid underqualified techies. If anything, a boom like that is great for a break-in attempt at an industry, but will have it's reprocussions later.
that the people who were in the first dot com boom are going to fall for getting overly excited again. VCs are not being near as generous as they were 6 or 7 years ago. You now have to have a plan with some vision, a product or service that is enticing and interesting, and a damn well-written biz plan that shows profit for all concerned. Gone are the days of getting rich from jumping on the skirts of some startup and then flogging the stocks for profit.
If anyone has been paying attention, fewer and fewer kids are going to college for IT. They learned from their dads that are now working in retail that IT doesn't pay for long. There is always the chance your job will be outsourced. There are only a couple of methods to guarantee your position will NEVER be outsourced if you work in IT:
1. Work for the federal government.
2. Work for a commercial company that requires a security clearance, as only US citizens can have them.
3. Get into the medical field. There is a current dearth of medical IT people.
4. Get into medical compliance (e.g. HIPAA)
A mystery is why long term interest rates, especially US governement bonds, remain low in light of commodity inflation. One suggestion is that as the world is aging, there are huge retirement savings pools looking for investment. Many cultures and institutions around the world are leery of stocks so chase the most reliable bonds around: the US governement. This has the side-effect of fueling mortgages and credit cards for US consumers. Some of this probably fuels US tech stock stock prices too.
No "professionaly type" investor worth his salt would get his financial advice from the likes of CNN money. Moms thinking they are going to make millions off the stock market watching CNBC maybe, not not the serious kinds.
They would much rather look at something like Bloomberg, or approach their bank for financial consultancy services.
(How do I know this? My company has a product that caters to this market segment.)
"Once last word to the to wise, playing the stocks is like surfing. You ride the wave till it falls. Long term anything in the stock market is a fools game."
Being able to increase your money by 7%-8% (or more) every year with incredibly no risk makes you a fool according to mr 'infonography'.
The vast majority of day traders do not make money over a medium/long amount of time. If you honestly think that you're better than most of them then feel free to try your luck, but realize that you are just as likely to end up losing money.
Take your pick:
infonography's method of getting lucky a time or two day trading, and then losing all your money
or the majority of the educated people who invest in a long-term strategy that provides a nice increase in your pile of money which doubles it every 6-10 years with very low risk.
..if I had any money left that is!
LOL. A score of +1 subtle for you my friend. :)
Boom.
Now move along.
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
from the buy-lnux-please dept
Note that LNUX is good old VA Software, owners of Slashdot and also of this really sad graph.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
Yes, and we know whose those "many people" are: Windows users.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
In any new industry, there is always an early adapter phase (the 90's), then a disallusionment period with downward growth, followed by a more stable period with solid growth.
I expect to see the Linux world doing the same (Redhat, Novell, Mandriva, etc.).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Long term anything in the stock market is a fools game.
Hmmm...Buffett may have something contrary to say about that. He seems to have done pretty well sticking to the long term plan.
Markets will always go up and down, as soon as the press call it a boom everyone jumps on and increases the speed of the up and then what goes up must come down.. economics -101 ;)
I'm hanging on to my cash and investing in other areas until the market bursts. (OR alternately, I will buy in an area that isn't experiencing this artificial inflation I'm seeing in the DC area)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Is it really a boom, or is this just the tech sector settling into a normal growth pattern?
Actually, for every seller there is a buyer. Thus when Lou Dobbs says "the market was down on heavy selling", he could just as easily say "the market was down on heavy buying". Shows you the quality of thinking in the financial industry.
Ah, Google, the hype of the new millenium. I've posted on the valuation of this company, that defies all common sense, a number of times. But what struck a chord back in April was the way the /. readers fawned over and praised
the sacrifice made by the
egalitarian, visionary leaders who decided to
set an example and pay themselves
a token salary of only $1 a year, when they
could have easily paid themselves much more! As if this makes one iota of
difference in their billions (courtesy of the suck^H^H^Hinvestors). My
response.
...overall, I'm glad the dotcom boom happened. There was such a massive spending on IT and Internet that really drove online connectivity forward. Sure, it was not financially sound, but I doubt the online world would be where it was today without it (and a round number).
Now? Good broadband (5-50Mbit) is showing up, everyone and their mother is on the 'net and overall I see competition from OSS which forces Microsoft to innovate. Just recently I read about a county here which that tightly integrated OpenOffice with their archival system, thus saving license fees. One down, 434 to go (which can now use that as a basis) not counting those that already use it for other purposes.
Now is the time to be investing in making such one-off transitions, not cutting back. Companies have disposible cash now, with XP released in 2001 and being between upgrade cycles. It is either laptops (movable) or thin clients (non-movable). I must admit Microsoft is scoring big on the former, but Linux is coming in hot on the latter. A flop now would only give Microsoft the time to milk the market until Longhorn is ready, because people will run on old systems, not taking either upgrade nor switching costs.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So? We're talking about 20K plus durable goods here. That also means that at least $1600 of rubber, steel and plastic are also in the finished product. That finished product also reflects the effort required to transform all the raw materials.
The end result (if it weren't GM) could be useful to you for 10 years or more.
GM's problem is that they make crap and are more interested in being "better salesmen".
Bringing up pension costs is just another indication of why the management of GM shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a company with as much national and global economic impact as GM.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
People honestly expect property values to continue to grow at double digit rates for the foreseeable future(!), with no regard for what's actually sustainable.
Power to the Peaceful
Don't forget, the rules have changed. That was the answer for a while when all the pundits on CNBC had been scratching their heads wondering how the run-up could be real and long-term.
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
I want it to be the way it was before the dotcom boom, when people could actually get jobs in this industry.
A balanced portfolio of domestic small-cap, mid-cap and large-cap stocks along with a smattering of international funds and bond funds is the only sure bet long-term. Anything else and you might as well put it all on black at the casino.
Don't forget to put some in tangible assets (such as paying off your house and property).
Following your strategy circa 1925 would have been a disaster for you over the next ten years. When the entire capitalist economy starts slowing down, the people who fall the furthest are the ones who play the game "intelligently", i.e. following the best practices that led to previous success.
I have a book out of the Great Depression, and it has a few very interesting nuggets. The people who lost everything were the middle-class agrarian landowners who had to take mortgages to continue living. The crop prices couldn't make up for mortgage payments, then the property taxes increased. After ten years of that, the employees of the landowners turned out to be better off than their old bosses -- they had living space and a lifestyle so cheap they could make it. At the same time the representatives of the established economic powerhouses kept saying "better times are just around the corner," but obviously that wasn't so.
Despite the very real science learned (Keynes of course) from the 30's, we've failed to stick to the market controls that created our post-WWII prosperity. Any of the following can disrupt the economy and we've got no real Plan B:
Peak oil
OPEC political crisis
OPEC dropping the petrodollar
China rapidly changing the yuan-dollar peg
Mass unionization in Central America and Southeast Asia
Major terrorist attack
Mass wave of American consumer bankruptcy
things tend to bounce if they are stale enough and you drop them far enough.
Oh well, what the hell...
This most recent "boom" has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with housing and debt, which is why the dollar is at a very high risk of collapse like what happened in Asia during the "currency chrises" on steroids times 1000.
Are there some hot technologies, yes, but there is no way that big money (eg microsoft) is going to invest in p2p networks and Linux. Anyhow, with the last "boom", bubble or not, people created a lot of technology infrastructure that had a lot of long term benefits for society that enhanced productivity and economic growth - this boom has done nothing but create a lot of economic activity by using real-estate to max out the credit cards, it has generated almost no technolgy or factory or transportation or cummunication infrastructure that will promote future growth or back the dollar with genuine productivity.
What can Greenspan do. Nothing! If he lowers interest rates, we have inflation and the dollar collapses. If he raises interest rates, it cuts off the housing boom puting people and government in a debt situation that is impossible to repay and the dollar collapses.
Some recomendations:
dump realestate
get out of debt no matter what
buy gold and gold stocks
most other tech stocks are not recommended, they will likely do extremely well for awhile as people from arround the world dump dollars, but will then likely crash in a big bloodbath.
Yeah, I know it's a run toward the hills mentality, but you do not want to be arround when the shit hits the fan. And BTW, new technologies make the economic "cycles" more vicious and responsive, not softer and smoother so watch out.
They're hoping that pr0n goes on the public trading block. Can you imagine the profits?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I work in the hosting business and I can tell you, there's definitely something happening. Back in 2001 when the bubble burst, we lost 40% of our customers in a six month period, and then business was downright anemic for a long time. Gradually we've been building up new business by signing more customers whose revenue didn't depend on "dot com" type business. This year, though, it seems that there's another ramp-up happening. Our cabinets are filling up again -- not at the irrationally exhuberant rate that they did in 1999-2000, but at a more careful pace. And customers are being careful with their spending this time; they're only buying the services they need. Lots of colocation this time around instead of more expensive managed hosting, for example. But it's definitely happening.
Let's hope that this time around, the "Internet economy" can get firmly on its feet.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
This is one of the few, insightful and meanigful post I've seen on this topic. Geeks shouldn't be trusted with money.
Wired doesn't post dupes and has fewer spelling errors.
Obligatory pdf link here...
Quote for those without pdf reader:
"Individuals have historically underperformed the markets, earning just 2.6% vs. the S&P 500 gain of 12.2% between 1984 and the end of 2002*. Research in the U.S. has shown that this dramatic underperformance comes as a direct result of client behaviour, or more specifically, the attempt to avoid bad performance while seeking out better returns" -- Dalbar Inc... Jul 2003
1) has lots of un-invested cash since this strategy doesn't present itself w/ lots of opportunities.
2) admits he never got the "hi-tech" thing.
3) most of his earnings are from the insurance companies he owns.
4) currently doesn't practice what he preaches by hedging against the dollar ( he lost $310m so far)
However I saw a quote from him a while back and investors would be wise to keep it mind
"Buffett says investors would be better off if they could invest only a limited number of times, as if you had only 10 tickets that permitted investments in your whole life. Buffett gives the example of a baseball batter just patiently waiting as the pitches sail by him. You wait for the perfect pitch--and then you hit it out of the park."
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
It's not a boom, it's the bounce off the floor. Look at what sort of companies are being invested in. It's not the 50-100 person startup. It's large 1000+ companies that survived the burst. Investors finally realise "hey, if that company survived, maybe they actually -are- selling something!". Since even those companies got their stock prices harm by the burst, they're largely undervalued. Hence the "mini-boom". Not a boom. Just adjustment.
You are right that there is too much money in the world, and part of the reason for that is that the fed has loaned out trillions and trillions of dollars that went into housing. So the last thing you want to do is invest in bonds, they will crash right along with the dollar when investors figure out that the US likely has more debt than it can ever repay or ever be repaid.
This world needs more black entertainers willing to set themselves on fire for their public!
No, let's not.
It's stupid.
Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, ybt bss abj. Tb bhgfvqr. Syl n xvgr.
OMG!! Buy now!
;)
Last Trade: 1.70
Trade Time: 11:22AM ET
Change: 0.07 (4.29%)
No , Red Hat for one dont have a tangible source of revenue , all there profit come from the use of there 3.2 Billion IPO that they use to make 150 million in profit yearly ( thats really bad when you have 3.2 billion ) and dont forget there 600 million debenture.
What is Google ?
For one its the best online Internet advertiser ever , if you think news site ( CNN) and online paper (New york Times online ) have something to show Google think again.
http://www.google.com/ads/index.html
Billion of people go to there page to see what they are discussing and have to offer.
And Billions go out of there way to include and display there automatic addsense on there website.
But that not all Google is also one of the most recognised internet brand name thats why they use it to include other product
http://www.google.com/options/index.html
wich generate income from the sale of data or from data mining
Google alert personnal: $4.95/month.
Google alert premium: $9.95/month.
Google alert profesionnal: $19.95/month
Google alert platinum: $39.95/month.
Thats not all they have one of the best labs in decades
http://labs.google.com/
they invent new product alsmot weekly.
And whats even better they internationnalize them if you think 240 million US citizen is there only market think again they are global.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GOOG
BTW google as there own GNU/Linux server
http://www.google.com/enterprise/
unlike Red Hat they sale a lot of them
Thats only the tip of the iceberg , I am waiting for there first full financial year review and shareolder meeting disclosure to see what else they have in there.
So all in all you obviously clueless about what you discuss , and if your responsible of anyone savings or financial futur I only have one word for them RUN AND SWITCH TO SOMEBODY ELSE ! your loosing money listening to this person.
I am a REAL American from Canada , not a wanna-be from the country , self called "last remaining superpower" "of America
It's going to be driven by these interest only mortages.... you're not gaining equity so if the value of the home DOES drop, you're sunk. Period. Particularly when the case seems to be that interest only mortages are on houses too far out of the buyer's true ability to pay. I.e. I Only is the only way they could afford the house.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Two things.
One, they might be taking the advice of Warren Buffet regarding their stock price.
Two, I think people want to be a part of a company that doesn't have a reputation for screwing their employees or customers. People want to be a part of something "good".
1) Raise Capital
2) Consume Resources
3) Die
4) PROFIT!!! (if you were 'in' on the scam in the first place)
as long as male species reside on this globe it wont burst ..... BUY BUY BUY!!
The automobile industry in the United States took off at a rapid clip, and there were dozens of manufacturers in the early days. It took time for the market to consolidate, which is when the real growth of the automobile took off. Now there are only a few major players in the market worldwide, but thousands of parts suppliers, distribution companies, niche manufacturers, and so on.
Growth rates for Internet-oriented companies will likely never match those of the late 1990s, as the industry matures, there will be dominant players that will continue to thrive. The churn at the top that characterized the Dot Bomb Era is gone, and that's a good sign.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I've got this Virtual Brooklyn Bridge for sale. Contact my agent in Nigeria, and he'll set you up.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Pay attention to what you invest in.
Learn to read and understand the quarterly reports to make an accurate judgement as to how the company is performing.
Don't buy 2000 shares of stock just because your friend is doing so.
Etc...
You know why it was a boom? Because people saw it as "get rich quick by buying any and all tech"... yeah, not so much.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Phishing with Worms today!
3 New Mytob variants out today:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/index.html
the grandparent of the parent (ErichTheRed's post) cited a 40% figure. Haven't seen it myself but I do know the Fed has raised concerns w/Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae recently.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
You ride the wave till it falls. Long term anything in the stock market is a fools game.
Except the stock market as a whole. The average annual compounded return over the past ten years: 10%. The average compounded return over the past ten years: 10%. There are few other long-term bets that are as good.
The average compounded return over the past ten years: 10%.
Er, the second one should be:
The average compounded return over the past fifty years: 10%.
...fool me once...
---
The average compound return from 1965 to 2005 on the Dow Jones is a little under 7%.
Dow Jones in 1965 = 800 (approx)
Dow Jones in 2005 = 11000 (approx)
factor = 11000 / 800 = 13.8
now we have
(1 + x) ^ 40 = 13.8
1 + x = 13.8^(1/40) = 1.067817
x = 0.068 = 6.8 %
I agree with you that it looks very good, however you have to substract inflation from that good return, and in the 70s inflation was well over 15%.
clicky
The stock market is suffering a "financials boom" right now. While by market weight, technology was most dominant heading into 2000 by now it is by far the world of the financial industry and services. When that bubble bursts everyone is going to wonder wtf happened.
You know how during the tech craze, anyone could go and get an awesome paying job seemingly doing nothing? Well my friends in economics and commerce are experiencing that (past 5 years or so). But they do absolutely nothing, and the business has been exhausted IMHO.
GOOG is going to stay solvent much much longer than say CFC
You forget dividends. From 1965-2005 the average dividend yield was about 3%.
The stocks go up, the stocks go down. Right now they're going up. There was a bigger bubble than the current one that peaked about January.
You know the dot com boom is around the corner when the quality of promotional items improves. When I can stop buying t-shirts and have tech companies hand them to me hand over fist, I know good times are here again.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
The dot-boom was a hype. Bazillian normals hopping on the bandwagon and banks and the goverment (at least here in germany) spending utterly insane amounts of money on the whole thing. The crash was nothing but a large bushfire taking out the weed and wannabees.
People who were into the business for the sake of "computer stuff" being their thing, were in it way befor the boom and were in it after the bomb exploded. It's nobody else but these professionals gaining momentum after 10-15 years of a steady growing IT.
Let's face it friends: 6 years ago, when everybody with more than 2 braincells knew that OSS is the only way to go and that 30 000 $ for a MS server package or Dreamweaver Ultradevs template engine just can't be the last word, nobody would care. People would buy licences of utter crap, such as the "twister" from that nutcase sham company "Brokat". It was all insane maniacs and idiots all around that didn't see the potential of the whole thing and just fell for cool visions and nice websites predesigned in a 8 week Photoshop 5 session (Yeah, really, I've seen it with my own eyes). Like kids using a ferrari as a scateboard ramp, not aware what it's really all about.
All the idiots doing this back then have utterly failed. It's now that OSS, server side apps, intelligent appliances, minimum basic standards and computers are everywhere that the field is actually gaining some real momentum. This is what we are experiencing right now.
And this time it actually will be an actual service industry and actually will start nibbling at other enterprises, such as print (Books and Newspapers), Television, Radio, Cinema, and other sorts of classic media we were used to up to now. As it is allready doing right now 'as we speak'.
That's all that's happening - a technology who's time has come slowly taking over.
The bomb and all it's idiots that came and went was just a minor hickup.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It just now the boom will be based in common sense. The boom will be with companies that can prove (or have) they have a REAL use and not just anything. There is plenty of room for companies that are willing to adapt computer and mechanical technologies to help people in real life. No more of this vapor ware basis for a company.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Like I said before: Tax market capitalization and get rid of other corporate taxes like income and capital gains.
Seastead this.
Bring him back...
If Alf can still make commercials 15 years later, so can the sock puppet...
GM is starting a new round of layoffs.
So I'm not surprised Google is worth more.
"I just buy stuff at random, then if it goes up I sell it, and if it doesn't I tell them it's a long term investment"
(GWH is Martin Brigstock, UK comedian).
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
"u ride the wave till it falls. Long term anything in the stock market is a fools game. "
t ober03/longtermreturns.asp for some examples of how over most rolling time periods of ten or twenty years, growth is normal.
I am not really sure this actually is wise advice. see http://www.mutualofamerica.com/articles/CapMan/Oc
> From 1965-2005 the average dividend yield was about 3%
Good point, thanks.
Phffft!
CNN's experts say we will have another dot.com boom.
However, my office mate who watched a film on Nostradamus told me that good ole Nostros predicts that the U.S. will become a poor country and that India will become a rich superpower.
So...who you gunna believe?
CNN or Nostrodamus via my office mate?
I agree with what you said, but I don't see why slashdot is an appropriate place for that kind of article. If you want to be well-informed, then you'd read CNN directly and not need it to be linked to from slashdot.
P.S. I wish people would quit moderating my legitimate questions as trolls. You mock American bible-belt prudishness, but you don't have to look further than yourselves for an example. (n.b. I am American.)