Thomas:
I wonder if it is really correct that valuation is a minority interest, as seems to be implied by your post.
I believe I was consistent in using past tense about interest. Given the participation in both the thread and the polls, I think it has for the most part been a minority interest. And I was responding to discussions that were about our collective past interest.
it wouldn't surprise me that there were a lot more people interested in some kind of valuation now
You may be right. But if the interest is sincere, then where are there questions or comments? Given the helpful and friendly nature of thread members, one would hope that if somebody had developed such an interest and wanted to get more information from threadmates, they would at least ask for direction or source material. If they were shy they could ask any of numerous threadmates by PM.
The problem, it seems to me, is that having an interest and knowing what to do aren't the same thing.
This is true. But we all have to start somewhere, and that somewhere is usually by asking, or by trying something. Not knowing the answer already is not a reason to not pursue an answer.
As for your points on sensitivity, we have to remember that we aren't going to get an accurate answer when gazing into the future. What we can hope to do, and can usually reasonably expect to do, is to identify obvious mispricings (over and under). Also, when one understands a model, one learns how to deal with its sensitivities. e.g., DCF analysis often looks unstable, yet there are ways of largely avoiding the sources of that instability.
Getting back to what started this, I just don't think the thread or any individual should be criticized for what it or they choose to focus on. Hopefully we do well on those things we do focus on. If our results suffer, hopefully we will be pro-active and learn ways of improving our results. If we just bemoan our results, oh well. That's our option too.
- Pirah |
