TO ALL:
For a variety of work and travel-related reasons I won't be able to post on SI for the next several months. Best of luck to everyone here, and thanks to everyone--bulls and bears, young and old, traders and investors:)--for sharing your respective thoughts and expertise so generously.
Four parting thoughts:
1. Beware of "sinkholes" caused by the biotech and MSTR blowups for the next couple of weeks. In the same way that subway construction often causes the ground to collapse in seemingly random places, there will likely be some nasty forced liquidations in the days ahead. (At least that seems to have been the pattern after momo disasters for the past several years.) I'm setting some very low GTC orders for some of my faves.
2. Money doesn't care who owns it.
While I have learned a ton from the folks who hang out on the "bear" threads on SI (guys like Defrocked, Michael Burke, etc., are very very valuable, imo) some of the more extreme bears remind me of a French guy who lived next to me when I lived in London about ten years ago. He could spin elaborate, elegant theories about how the United States was facing certain social, economic, and even military doom. He was passionate and at times compelling, but his analysis was fired by his conviction that the (in his view, boorish and uncultured)United States' primacy in the world had to be some sort of cosmic joke, and was certainly temporary in nature.
A few years ago, I had done some work to convince myself to stay out of AOL (or AMER, as it traded then). Shortly afterward, I sat next to a grandmotherly type on a plane who insisted on showing me pictures of her dog (in a bonnet, in a sweater, you get the idea) and who also mentioned that she owned a lot of America Online stock.
She didn't know anything about the company's miserable financial profile. Her eyes glazed over when I mentioned "deferred subscriber acquisition costs", the accounting gimmick AOL was using then to make a very specious claim to profitability. She insisted that her broker had told her that the web couldn't offer color pictures like AOL, and therefore would never be a threat. She asked if Graham and Dodd were like the Gardner brothers. I walked away feeling smug, and patted myself on the back as the stock swooned. Now you have to squint to make the drop out on a ten-year chart.
My point is NOT that you should invest the way that woman did. I have to confess, however, that my failure to revisit AOL for several years was at least partly due to my condescension to that woman, who came to represent AOL's entire shareholder base in my mind. Cost me a fortune. Anyway, the tendency to personalize investment decisions is widespread and dangerous, imo, and the tone on this thread sometimes reflects that, especially when the market is turbulent.
3. Glenn and Bearded One may well prove to be right about many aspects of AMZN's development. For example, I suspect one day AMZN will announce a partnership with a bricks-and-mortar retailer to facilitate pickups and returns, proving Glenn's fulfilment-costs argument at least partly correct. However, if AMZN management negotiates a good deal with a strong partner, the stock will probably rally on the news. Moral victories have their time and place. This isn't one of them. Being "right" about anything other than the stock price doesn't count for much. (Believe me, I learned that lesson the expensive way.)
4. I will check PMs from time to time, so feel free to contact me that way(e.g. if anyone is coming through L.A. this summer).
Best of luck,
Ganesh |
