Happy Girl,
We really don't think alike, do we? I just posted a totally different type of response to Dave before seeing yours -- neither one of us agreed with him, but even that didn't provide much common ground in the responses.
OT -- The Raleigh/Durham vs. Bay Area examples. Two of my favorite areas of the country, actually. In my view, the difference can be explained by simple supply and demand economics. R/D has more supply of land, by far, and it is not hemmed in by natural barriers as much as the Bay Area or Valley. The demand side is really driven by wages and wealth. Although Raleigh Durham has emerged from its tobacco past quite impressively in the past 15 years or so, it was once a sleepy, rather poor group of southern towns with a couple of good universities thrown in. Not much of a high wage job base until the Research Triangle started to develop, and even when that happened there was so much available land around for next to nothing it was no problem to build relatively cheaply -- land costs are low, nonunion cheap labor is plentiful, water is available at low prices, etc. (I had close relatives there through the 90's until last year, when they moved to California for a better job opportunity -- but they hated to leave; it really is a beautiful place to live).
So what's the point? Maybe it's this: in the end, value *is* what people are willing to pay, and with YHOO right now that is expressed as a belief in the company and its management more easily than it is if you factor current valuations into the analysis and use a traditional approach. I try to use a blended approach -- I'm not going to wait for 8 and certainly not for 15 quarters of phenomenal growth, because if that happens this thing might be worth 50 to 75 billion (although the "fundamentals" would still suggest that 10 to 15 billion would be appropriate even then). But I want to see a little more continued good performance and the expected technical pullback to run its course before taking the plunge.
MAD DOG
(p.s. -- why do I call it a plunge when the stock always seems to go up?) |
