Hello Space Flower, Admittedly Globalstar is still just wishful thinking on the ground, but success looks likely. $30 is not really that low when you consider it was trading at $25 about 9 months ago. People buy, people sell. Prices go up and down. It doesn't affect the company prospects. No worries. Volatility is likely to remain a way of life until the phones have sold in the million and profits start to look like real dollars on the profit line, though we could have a philosophical discussion on whether dollars or Globalstar shares are more like smoke. I think Globalstar is way past the smoke stage - that was when CDMA was still unproven, GSTRF was $6 [split from $12], profits were half a decade away and the future was unpredictable. Of course, the future is all buttoned down now in a Globalstar Concept Partner's safe somewhere.
I'm a smoke-holding long value investor. If people sell at $30, I might just be tempted to buy more. Actually, I saw a good post yesterday which included a 1950s article by Alan Greenspan on the Gold Standard, currencies, crashes etc. If I can find it, I'll put an url here.
Briefly, I think money is pretty much finished as a store of value and might even lose its use as a means of exchange. Money used to be gold backed - paper could be exchanged for a real object people valued. So much better to use paper backed by productive capacity of cellphones, cars, oil, intellectual property and real stuff that doesn't just sit there in a vault. One day, Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange or individual companies, or groups, might start issuing their own tradeable bits of electronic data or paper which people could use as a store of value AND a means of exchange. Cut out the Fed, the banks, the tax people and many other sticky fingered bandits.
Money is having a little flurry of acceptance just now, but watch the central banks get printing roaring. Japan has announced a few hundred billion dollars worth of printing already. USA will follow - which will help keep exchange rates in balance, help stop the debtors getting into too much trouble, lower interest rates, avoid deflation. I like deflation - everything should be cheap in my book, but that's too hard to do just yet, though things are much easier to produce than they used to be.
The Fed uses the fact that prices are stable or even reducing as an excuse to print more money. Who can blame the monopoly holder of the money tree from puting a bit of fertilizer on it and plucking a few more leaves to spend?
So at the moment, shareholders seem to be losing, but look back over a couple of years, or decades, or centuries, and see whether money holders or shareholders are losing. In a few months, or maybe a year, shareholders will see the value of production relative to dollars start to climb again.
Goodbye Money! You've had your day as a value store.
Maurice
Dow 8000 Feb 98
Dow 16 000 Feb 2002 |
