Oakes [Brian Oakes, a former network engineer who came to Wall Street 12 years ago and now analyzes Internet and publishing companies for Lehman Brothers.]: I follow a publicly traded sector that's always said to be threatened by the Internet--newspapers. I think that has been blown out of proportion. To date, they don't see any impact. It may be different for booksellers. Amazon has just captured the Internet marketplace. In fact, the whole retail industry could be threatened by an Amazon.
So we have a former network engineer who went to Wall Street 12 years ago. I think the above paragraph is a prime example of what Peter Lynch talks about when he says that you can beat the street by investing in what you know -- because often WS analysts are so narrowly focused that they lose the big picture. Let's repeat that last sentence: In fact, the whole retail industry could be threatened by an Amazon.
Mr. Oakes, I think you need to take some aspirin and lie down for awhile. Clearly your fever is high. I'm going to print out this post, and hopefully refer to it every 6 to 12 months. I bet right now that in three years, which would put us in the summer of 2001, the retail space isn't going to look a whole lot different than it is now. We will see more Kiosks in stores such as book stores, where people can use the internet to immediately pull up and read book reviews on a particular book, for instance. Other people can probably quickly find other examples.
Mail order and home delivery of some products has been steadily growing in popularity for at least 10 years, but nevertheless, we still have malls, Wal*Marts, etc: Retail stores. The power is still in the physical presence, and always will be, IMO. The bottom line is we are a nation of people who for the most part enjoy getting out and shopping, when we have the time. |
