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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric Wells who wrote (73913)	8/15/1999 5:47:00 PM
From: KeepItSimple	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

>If you feel there is no constructive value in looking at AMZN's >performance since the beginning of the year, What do you expect? The only way William can deal with the staggering losses is to convince himself, in his own mind, that the last 4 months have no relevance, or even better, did not really happen. Denial ain't just a river in egypt. The "true" performance of Amazon, according to William, would be when daytraders and eager shorters were being squeezed while unaware of the completely controlled float, pushing the stock up 20 and 30 points on a daily basis. However, sadly, those days will never return. The mania will have spurts and fits again, since there will always be new daytrading people looking to get rich, but in the end, it will end just like every other mania in history has ended. Just because the internet is a revolution, doesnt mean that the stock symbols for various shady deals pushed down the pipeline by greedy brokerage houses represent ANYTHING other than a desire to empty the pockets of the retail crowd. It is perfectly possible to fully understand the internet and its potential yet realize most of these companies should never have come public in the first place.

To: Eric Wells who wrote (73913)	8/15/1999 7:11:00 PM
From: Eric Wells	Respond to of 164684

William - there's one other reason why I feel it is constructive to look at returns on stocks from the beginning of the year: because other people are doing such analysis. I believe there are a lot of analysts, including media analysts, that do look at and publish YTD numbers - and investors will look at such numbers (along with a lot of other data) in making decisions on whether to buy, sell or hold. I just went up to the Motley Fool's site, and I noticed that for each of their portfolios, they list two numbers: daily return and YTD return. We can argue the relevance of a YTD number of a particular stock when that stock is analyzed in isolation. However, even if you argue that YTD return is not relevant, I don't believe you can say that other investors won't give any relevance to YTD numbers. Imagine, if you will, if AMZN does not recover this year, and that by the end of 1999 that AMZN is actually lower than it was at the beginning of 1999. I believe that such an event would end up as a news item through more than one media outlet - and it could help to foster greater negative sentiment for AMZN. So, in summary, while it may be some truth to stating that analyzing YTD return numbers does not bear much relevance, I don't think you can discount the psychological impact of YTD returns. And since most of the internet stocks lack fundamentals to justify their high prices, I would argue that psychology does have a significant impact on the prices of these stocks. Anyway, I hope that this helps to clarify my thinking behind my posting of the YTD numbers yesterday. As always, I welcome your comments. Thanks, -Eric