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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.""
...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
I agree. What I would be watching is where the 'smart money' is going. Where are people like Warren Buffett, the hedge fund managers, etc. putting the money they manage?
you should buy a stock when it's hot and sell it when it's cold. Buy high, sell low?
I would like to clarify what you're saying just in case someone is reading this far down. In stock market evaluation, some theories you would buy hot stocks and dump them in a short time periods. Make a quick profit but the problem is you're mostly making the broker houses more profitable with all the transaction fees. But if the stock is hot enough then who cares as you make money.
In a view of buy low and sell high; you would buy a depressed stock. This is just the opposite of the herd. When everyone is selling you are buying and when everyone is buying you are selling. The demand of the stock is your indicator of buy or sell. This is a hard one to live by, as you don't really know where the bottom is. Look at companies like MCI, Enron; you have to pick carefully. But this is a kind of a similar method Warren Buffet uses to amass his fortune. Buying undervalued, yet profitable companies works for him.
The best bet is to stick with index funds (S&P 500) especially for portfolios below 100k. Historically these funds have yielded consistent returns and you have spread the risk. Low cost and very little hands on maintenance is better since your regular job is probably not working as an investor. You wont hit a home run with a one hit wonder but odds are you wont with a gamble on 1 stock.
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.
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.
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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.
Downward movement is, by the nature of how stocks are priced, caused by decisions made by the sellers in the transactions, not the buyers. The buyers were already waiting, ready to buy if the stock price declined to whatever level they found acceptable. It was the sellers who changed their mind about the value of the stock. It's that decision that Dobbs is characterizing, not the transactions themselves which, by definition, require two parties.
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Surely you're joking. GM makes STUFF. All it really needs is restructuring to stop the loss of money. In contrast, Google makes NOTHING. And what it does can be duplicated by a large company that puts its mind to it.
... and all because the small engine is producing steady power while the large engine is leaking oil and needs a tune-up.
GM is still a huge economic engine, which is currently hobbled enough to stop its power output. Compared to this 350HP beast, you are attempting to compare it to a company (Google) that is the equivalent of a weed-whipper engine that is putting out 1/3hp
People like you caused the dotcom boom to happen. Please stop. You just don't make any fucking sense. GM is INTRINSICALLY worth far more than Google, and you know it. Hell, if GM actually went bankrupt and fire-sold its assets, those alone would be worth far more than Google.
Please, please don't go apeshit over paper assets AGAIN. I was unemployed for YEARS after the last time people went insane for paper assets. Learn to value STUFF, not promises, smoke and mirrors.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]