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

To: Keith J who wrote (1421)	1/29/1998 11:13:00 PM
From: Candle stick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Oh I wish all it took to justify a large companys' valuation was a good story to tell. Such a good story, good company,I even buy books from AMZN, well, once anyway. But STOCK valuation has NOTHING to do with how good a company is! Remember 'Discovery Zone'? What a great idea, what a great place to take your kids. Everyone, (and I mean everyone I knew with kids) went there...I seem to remember the stock went from 30 to 3, then chapter 11....... I had a stock in the mid eighties, can't seem to remember the name of it, but anyway, they were the wave of the future. They had really invented the "Dick Tracy wristwatch radio"....seriously.....they were deploying a network of stations to broadcast across the country and you would be able to stay in touch wherever you were with a wristwatch "radio" pager....stock flew to the moon, based on their vision and "FUTURE" prospects. Of course, one day Motorola announced they were going to launch 14 or 15 satelites and create a huge cellular beeper and phone network and of course the Dick Tracy wristwatch radio pager was dead in the water...what was the name of that company anyway? Anyone remember? Well, you get the point. AMZN has to justify its valuation TODAY.....not with pie in the sky projections of the future, because the future is ever changing and who knows what will be. Just five years ago if I told you I would be posting this message to a Virtual bulletin board for millions to read you would have looked at me dumbfounded and said "Interwhat?" My point is that AMZN is already priced as if it has 1 billion in sales and is actually making money. You are assuming that the market is static and won't change. It will change. And most likely for AMZN for the worse. Since all the "good" potential news is well priced in, what if they don't make it? Or what if competition slows them down a bit? Or what if someone else finds a better way to buy and sell books? What if another company lets you download text of an entire novel for a buck and it only takes 1 minute to do it? Don't laugh, it will be possible in the not so distant future. Or, what if there were a virtual library where we could borrow anybook we wanted for 10 cents and read it online or print it out chapter by chapter in a few seconds? These things are coming, as well as things we cant even imagine yet. So why should I pay for the "future of AMZN" when in all likelyhood there may be no future at all..........just some food for thought..... Remember, at 60 dollars AMZN is selling at about 15 times last years sales and has tremendous losses, and will continue to have losses in 1998......those are outrageously expensive numbers. Just look at all the high tech companies that were flying high 3 months ago and forcasts were as rosey as could be for growth in 1998, and then came ASIA. Who could know that would happen?......Stocks were cut in half or MORE in less than a month, many are still declining. And these were PROFITABLE companies..........enough for one night. Be long AMZN if you dare, but don't be surprised to wake up one morning and find that the market has "repriced" AMZN due to 'changing market conditions', and it opens 30 points lower................;^)