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Non-Tech : Tulipomania Blowoff Contest: Why and When will it end? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RockyBalboa who wrote (2595)	1/27/2000 9:34:00 PM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Respond to of 3543

Thought everyone might get a kick out of this Motley Fool article. It contains one of my favorite quotes (from Warren Buffet's friend and partner Charlie Munger): "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.". <Close your eyes and try to create a mental image of this. Very humorous, IMO.> For those not familiar with the applicable meaning of this quote, loosely translated it means that investing is not a one-tool-fits-all-situations proposition. In other words, you can't use a PE ratio to measure the (investment) worthiness of a company that hasn't yet turned a profit, or you can't take the semiconductor industry's Book-to-Bill ratio and then apply what you've derived there to say (at random) GE's prospects for the next quarter. Apples and oranges comparison... fool.com KJC

To: RockyBalboa who wrote (2595)	1/28/2000 4:21:00 PM
From: Mad2	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 3543

What's wrong with this picture???? Mad2 Amazon Lays Off 150 Employees But Says Expansion Will Continue An INTERACTIVE JOURNAL News Roundup SEATTLE -- Amazon.com Inc. plans to lay off about 150 employees because of an internal reorganization, but the online retailer said its rapid expansion will continue. Amazon Agrees to Acquire Stake in Car-Buying Site Greenlight (Jan. 21) Amazon.com Is Creative When Hiring Employees (May 4, 1999) The cuts, announced Thursday night during a company meeting at Amazon's headquarters in Seattle, represent about 2% of the total work force of 7,500, said spokesman Bill Curry. The layoffs aren't the result of post-Christmas letdowns or other seasonal fluctuations, Mr. Curry said. Amazon sales exploded during the holiday season, though the company has also warned of higher-than-expected losses. "We do ongoing organizational reviews to just ensure that we always have the right skills and the right number of people in line with the mission of the company," he said. The company will continue to hire in other parts of the country, and the layoffs don't indicate any shift in strategy, the spokesman said. "The critical thing is that nothing has changed in our overall strategy," Mr. Curry said. "We are continuing on our path to be the leading destination for e-commerce where people can find and discover anything they want to buy on the net, and this doesn't change this one bit." Most of the jobs to be lost are in the Seattle area. The affected employees will receive severance packages and help in finding new jobs, Mr. Curry added. Amazon is expected to announce fourth-quarter earnings Feb. 2. Earlier this month, Amazon said fourth-quarter sales more than doubled to $650 million from $253 million a year earlier but cautioned that those strong numbers won't translate into a narrower loss for the period. Amazon pioneered the business of selling books online five years ago. Since then, its heavily trafficked Web site has expanded to include a wealth of goods -- tools, toys and jewelry among them. In July, the company announced it would open two new full-service "stores" -- one for toys and another for cameras, televisions and other consumer-electronics gear. Amazon kicked off the holiday season in November with the launch of home-improvement, software, video games and gift stores. answer Why a company with 650 mil in sales and 7500 employees is valued at 20 billion dollars, that works out to $87,000 in revenue per employee. New metrics hell, this outfit isn't worth didly according to old metrics. Its amazing that AMZN is resorting to layoffs to ferret out dogs that they hired. Edit-Mean't to add that each employee represents a 2.6mil in market cap.....with AMZN's debt it looks even ugly'ier