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

To: 16yearcycle who wrote (102169)	4/25/2000 10:04:00 PM
From: BGR	Respond to of 164684

Eugene, That was an excellent question. Ask any so-called value investor what value means - objectively speaking - and they will fumble around for a while before giving up. Value, essentially, is best determined by a free and liquid market. From that perspective, BO's claim that nothing is supporting the price of a certain equity is just plain ridiculous. -BGR.

To: 16yearcycle who wrote (102169)	4/26/2000 8:22:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Ballmer must know the law too<G> nytimes.com

To: 16yearcycle who wrote (102169)	4/26/2000 9:49:00 AM
From: Bearded One	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

It's just that I hate responding to someone who misreads my response. One last time: Person A sells a stock to Person B. That is a zero-sum game if you treat person A and person B as a group. The value within the group has not changed, no matter what price the transaction. Speaking of all investors as a group, stock price fluctuations within that group are a zero-sum game. The only time the sum is increased is if the companies inject money into the group either from a buyback or a dividend, or at least show an increase in asset value (not stock value).

To: 16yearcycle who wrote (102169)	4/27/2000 7:53:00 AM
From: Paul Merriwether	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

<< Tell me a company that has something "supporting" it's price. That would be a good place to start. How about KO? Berkshire? If you are looking for companies selling below book, isn't their book value dependent on arbitrary values placed on items by human beings? How do we arrive at the appropriate value of anything? >> I will let BO answer your post in detail. IMO the way to assess the value of a company is to look at the future earnings and discounting them based on the interest rate. The investor assumes that the company will disburse that money using dividends or a stock buyback(preferred for its tax efficiency). There are some companies with wads of cash(MSFT for example) that can finance a major stockbuyback to reduce eps(and float). Others, such as GMST are doing just that. AMZN is in _no_ danger of financing a buyback(/dividends) now or in the forseeable future(10 years?). Even if they play some creative accounting games to show "operational profits" in a subsegment of their business, the reality is that their debt servicing would hamper their profitability. Furthermore, their _extremely_ large potential float would keep their eps low. At this point, imho, AMZN is fully priced. -PWM ps: No positions in AMZN at this time(waiting for the numbers and the open).