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Jay's analogy with global exploration a few centuries back is right on! I'm old enough to have lived through a number of bubbles: one was in military electronics, back in 1957. Any little or big stock with that tag quintupled fast. But the scope of military electronics or of tulips cannot be compared with the revolution leading to instant contact between business to business, person <--> business, person to person that we are in the midst of. In Japan this is now being accompanied by a second revolution, from a closed stock market, highly manipulated, to an open, stockholders are boss and have a right to know, situation. In the days before Jasdaq there were some Japanese companies which reported openly and completely. Matsushita and its subsidiary companies are a good example. You could certainly believe their annual reports. But such companies were (are) not in the majority. The man on the street was rightly suspicious. Unfortunately he fell into the arms of sharks like Nomura, full of advice. A number of my friends in Japan were in this situation, relying on a fox to give them a good tip on one of the mysterious companies. Jasdaq won't be perfect since it will be run by human beings but it has potentialities that the Economist can't see. There's no startup company in the world that would satisfy the Economist's definition of a good investment. Every one of them has more cash going in than coming out. I myself wouldn't invest in an isolated start up company because I don't have the time to conduct the thorough investigation that that would require. A "netbatsu" package is different, much safer. I believe the principal dangers to Softbank are not internal but external, i.e. political. These political dangers are probably less than I think, because each of us can have a more or less warped viewpoint depending on our personal history. |
