Cha2,
I will be the first to admit that I was surprised about eBay's performance in both the Icarus and the Foolish 5 criteria. I've heard the CEO of eBay give a couple of interviews on television, but I never really 'listened' because I had tuned eBay out of my mind based on the sheer stigma and rolling eyeballs that everyone gave when the name was even mentioned. I think it is time I start addressing that by looking closer at a scoring system.
Glad to be the first to try to make sense of the Icarus scoring system. I had to combine it with the Foolish method because that one I can understand due to practical use on my own part for some time now. The Icarus method leaves room for error when deciding between High, Medium and Low for each of the categories. One investor might score brand as High while another scores it as Medium. Same good be said for stickiness. However, in the new chapter - each of the seven categories used (brand, stickiness, low-cost business design, experience curve, switchboard/exchange, value chain position and specialization) to score are explained quite well and would put us on equal ground for debating whether or not a companies strategic focus and market place success to date in each category was being rated fairly or not. It's an objective scoring system and combining the Icarus with traditional 10-Q evaluation makes sense to me. Keep in mind that in most of the Godzillas and Internet start-ups, we will have to bend a few bars to allow for start-up costs and hope that debt doesn't get in the way for too long of a period.
I would be happy to run the Icarus scores and Fool method on Amazon as well. I do have to hop on a train to go to an audition for The Marriage of Figaro this weekend, so I'm not sure I will able to get it presented until after the weekend. However, being that the flush out is in progress in the markets - perhaps it would be worthwhile for me to get it up on the board ASAP in case anyone is considering picking some Godzillas up on sale. I will say that this summer, eBay and Amazon were much, much lower than they are at today's levels. They are both also way, way off their highs. I'm not saying we should get out our checkbooks and buy at will. I thinks it is more important for us to get a good handle on these Godzillas before rushing into them. I have owned Amazon (many times) and traded it for a profit because I never had a handle on its financials. eBay - I've mentioned didn't even enter my mind as an investment until the last few days after digging deeper.
I'm not going to jump over to any stock message boards to chat about it, because I prefer to do the work myself to get a handle on it with my own methods before jumping into the fire of a Godzilla message board which looks to me to consist of about 95 percent sludge and a lot of mouse clicking to get to any substance.
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