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

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (134629)	11/11/2001 10:17:17 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Bill, There are so many posts I do not want to take too much time but let's take this one: Message 5453961 "The CUC division of Cendant is the worldwide leader in electronic commerce (online, but principally telephone) with some 60 million members, and CUC spills more business than Amazon enjoys. A couple years ago I listened to Walter Forbes present at a Montgomery conference his view of how the competitive landscape would shake out, and how he believed that his company would lead and keep the lead. He certainly had his chance. More products and services from more vendors in more categories than any company on earth...with a huge established global membership base, 20x the size of Amazon's customer list today. Perhaps their latest accounting fiasco caused them to stumble with execution, but Amazon has taken all the momentum on the web because they have established their brand better. That didn't happen first through word of mouth. That happened first through marketing and promotion. Don't take Jeff's positive comment about word-of-mouth to mean that he doesn't believe his expensive commerce deals aren't worth the cost. He knows they are, and he won't be abandoning them. That would be suicidal. Rule #1 during a land grab is "Don't give up hard-won territory." Word-of-mouth is just one benefit from the law of increasing returns." Message 5444826 "I'll be the first to admit that I don't know where Amazon will trade near term, though I'm encouraged by its intermediate higher lows and highs, and the accumulation evident in on-balance volume. The sense I have is that it will settle down some and work higher over time. There is plenty of potential buying in this brew, and Amazon is a high-visibility issue. Longer term, I think Amazon is a great high-risk high-reward investment, just like it has proven to be to date. I think the best way to deal with this opportunity is to take a small long position, and add to it on weakness." Message 5454617 "I agree. I think Amazon is the core holding e-commerce pure play. Lucent in public switches, Cisco in internetworking, Microsoft in tools, SAP in enterprise applications, Yahoo in directories, Amazon in e-commerce. All of these companies are rare beneficiaries of increasing returns. Their businesses are snowballing. Just look at their charts. What correction? " Message 5320886 Message 5903795 "Sam, David is bullish on Amazon's future. He thinks the company is a winner. The only reason he downgraded it to hold was valuation. We both agree that Amazon is a good business. Rating changes based on valuation are tricky, particularly when interest rates are declining. Like I posted, he downgraded Yahoo based on valuation last year and missed a further 65% advance in the stock until he reinstated his buy rating a few months later. I'm glad I didn't follow his advice then. Amazon actually came down to his intrinsic DCF-based value of $60-70 during the September decline. Apparently the market doesn't think it should trade there because that price range lasted just a couple hours. Amazon bulls share the same problems and circumstances the bears do. We all wish we could see it cheaper! Unfortunately, Mr. Market isn't making it easy, and there are strong institutional hands that don't apparently care about near-term valuation concerns enough to trade it. Every time I review my portfolio I say to myself, "God this is expensive!" But since I want to participate in Amazon's future I have just two choices: sell it and hope to buy it cheaper, or hold on. As the shorts can attest, option #1 is dicey at best. "