Good to hear you're ready for any storms ahead. For sure, the internet is not a bubble - it's a great and transforming innovation. Does that mean Amzn, eBay, and Yhoo are great investments today? No, that doesn't follow. They are extremely overvalued companies with minimal earnings and an uncertain future. eBay's stock in my view is floating in a cloud-cuckoo-land of speculative mania, the foam of an unprecedentely overvalued market. If I'm right, we will know before the year is out; I'll be happy to eat crow if the Dow is above 10,000 and ebay above 150 a year from now. Even by a single point.
Don't take this to mean I'm staking the farm on shorting the handful major e-stocks; other stocks are much more tempting targets with greater percentage moves. But when I read the reasoning people use to argue that eBay is undervalued I get a sense of an historic moment that just can't last and I give it some thought to riding it all the way down.
I think I put this up before, but here goes the 1929 parallel. "As the author Robert Sobel noted recently, the best lesson comes from Radio Corporation of America, which saw its shares rise from $US3 in 1921 to $US91 in 1928. That climb accelerated madly over the next year, hitting $US573 before the 1929 crash.
For two decades after the crash, RCA stock hovered at around $US10. Even in 1960, when the company was stable its stock was only $US78. The technology was revolutionary, the business was genuine and the company eventually delivered on its business plan. But early investors lost all the same."
afr.com.au
The last two sentences is my response to why I think eBay is a bubble even though the internet is great and auctions too for that matter.
Kailash |
