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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (33032)	3/12/2001 7:59:51 AM
From: thames_sider	Respond to of 65232

Meanwhile, who's to blame...? This article concludes, well, pretty much most of us. Anyone remember this report, from 1998? Merrill ranking Amazon a sell? Amazon, he claimed, was "too expensive." It was valued in the stock market at $4 billion, more than twice the market capitalization of Barnes & Noble, a physical bookseller that boasted both vastly greater revenues and (unlike Amazon) actual profits. And while Amazon had jumped into the lead in Internet book sales, Cohen observed that bookselling, regardless of the medium, "is an inherently competitive and low-margin business." He further observed that although Internet retailing was certainly efficient, "such an activity should not be seen as highly proprietary." Ultimately, as competitors appeared, Amazon's business would suffer "commoditization." LOL, I remember arguing that at the time. But still being persuaded otherwise, since it's hard to argue with the market... Compared with previous bubbles -- say, junk bonds in the '80s -- the dotcom fiasco owed relatively less to Wall Street's lack of ethics and relatively more to willing contagion by the public itself. ... Of course, the financial press -- CNBC in particular -- fanned the flames, but faulting it or any other group misses the epidemic nature of the contagion, which naturally infected the whole of society without distinction. Most investors may be said, even in ordinary times, to harbor competing spirits within themselves -- one part that is patient and considered, another part reckless and rash. What happened in 1999 was that, under the influence of Wall Street's self-serving frenzy, and absent warnings from potential guardians, the average investor fell completely captive to the speculative side of his nature. ecompany.com Nice read.