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

To: trouthead who wrote (74906)	8/20/1999 6:40:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

JB... on this overuse of the "tulip mania" analogy, the first time I heard it was to describe the art market in the 80s. I love those pop art prints by Warhol and Lichtenstein myself. After Andy Warhol died in 1987, these things went up 20-fold and more in a year and a bunch of articles popped up about tulip mania. Well, that was an apt comparison in a way (except that fine art is not a renewable resource), nonetheless art is not a business really, etc. The problem is that a bunch of other subsequent bubbles such as real estate, biotech stocks and now internet stocks are being described with the same analogy and it doesn't apply. They should get creative and find something in the 20s... radio investments or something that is more appropriate..... but, my guess is, the reason they don't do that is because the other manias actually produced long term winners, therefore less alarmist! LOL

To: trouthead who wrote (74906)	8/20/1999 7:20:00 PM
From: Eric Wells	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Junior Balloon - thanks for your message. >>Item 1. You have to wait for the future to play itself out. My point is, though, that investors are overly optimistic about the future. People rarely talk about the risks associated with Amazon's business model - they only talk about how Amazon is going to capture the world's retail business. >>Item 2. I don't know how they measure the savings >>rate, but if it doesn't take into account 401 k or >>other monies invested in the market it is a bogus >>number. Each month I put my savings into the >>market. That is where I save my money. I'm not certain on the savings rate formula either. But I believe it is something along the lines of "individual spending - individual earnings" - which would help to explain the high debt levels we have. As for your 401k, I hope you have a well-diversified basket of stocks. >>The market has always been a casino. The market works best when it is used to provide capital to help companies grow. It works worst when stock prices are moved through constant speculation by traders. >>Many people have lost their life savings in the market. >>It is nothing new. My view is that when someone loses their life savings, that it is not a good thing - even if that person is not me (we can't function as a society if we wish ill financial health upon our neighbors). If enough people lose their life savings, it drags down the whole economy - and effects the livelihood of those that don't even participate in the market. >>The tulip mania analogy does not fit the current >>internet situation. I disagree. The Tulip Mania of 1630s Holland provides a very good example of a time when investors were willing to pay large amounts of money for tulips that really had no value. When I see people buying Priceline stock, I see people buying worthless pieces of paper - and the same is true for many internet stocks. But to set the record straight - I've mentioned many other investor manias in my post - including the South Sea Bubble, the South American Mining mania of the 1820s, the England Railroad mania of the 1840s, the Gold Rush, the Silver Rush, etc. In all of these, investors shelled out large sums of money for things that had little or no value - and in all of these more investors lost money than made it. I wish you the best with your investments. Thanks, Eric Wells