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

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (17046)	9/13/1998 3:03:00 AM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

>>It's real money for me.<< its real money for us too. don't think that the financial world revolves around YOU. it doesn't. we don't move this stock, as should be painfully obvious to the "overvalued at $40" crowd. don't blame us when this stock goes down. we don't blame you when it goes up. contrary opinions are always the most valuable. i want to know the thoughts of those who disagree. sometimes i key in on a point where i'm wrong. i digest it and take appropriate action. i know you bulls are in the minority here (not with those who have cash, though!). it is tough. i find i'm in the minority on most of the threads where i post and i enjoy discussing ISSUES. especially when a dufus stock runs against me and da bulls use that to PROVE i'm wrong. mu was classic. ran to $60 and i was wasting bandwidth b/c the big boys were in the know as dram pricing was tanking. well, a couple months later and a $20 price tag left the bulls, well, talking about another subject ;-) good luck. develop some risk reducing strategies if you are worried about profits. why? being right can make you poor and being wrong can make you rich all too often. good luck.

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (17046)	9/13/1998 4:39:00 AM
From: craig crawford	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

>> This thread should be renamed "Popular Misconceptions and the Delusions of Shorts". << Hmm...I think this thread should be renamed "Popular Misconceptions and the Delusions of Longs and Shorts". To be quite frank, Mr. Harmond, the delusions of longs such as yourself include feeble attempts to justify the insane price of AMZN with arguments about positive fundamentals. People see right through it. Conversely, some of the shorts suffer from delusions when they believe they can convince themselves and others that fundamentals (or lack thereof) have anything to do with the near term performance of the stock price. Longs see right through that as well. They don't care about valuations, they buy AMZN simply because it is going up, with the hope that someone will be along to buy it from them at an even higher price in the future. Simply put, the greater fool theory. This stock is 100% about supply and demand. For most of the time AMZN has been public there has been a small supply of shares coupled with huge demand. The underlying reasons behind that demand don't necessarily include fundamentals affecting the company. The supply and demand is driven by hopes, expectations, greed, fear, and hysteria of the masses. In fact, the entire stock market became detached from fundamentals quite a long time ago. All this bantering back and forth between longs and shorts about fundamentals only serves to kill time while the volatility created by supply/demand imbalances subsides. Stocks like these become so volatile because their fundamental picture is so unclear. There is enormous opportunity, but with corresponding risk. Eventually the price swings so far in one direction that the risks outweigh any reasonable expectation of near-term return. I think that is what the shorts main argument should be. No one knows for certain whether or not AMZN will succeed or not. All you can do is analyze the risk/reward ratio, and then place your bet when it seems to be heavily skewed in your favor. Eventually, when the fundamental picture grows clearer, traders, mo-mo players, shorts, speculators, and such will exit the stock and it will trade based on some degree of fundamentals. One of my contentions is that in this market environment, speculators will afford less risk to highly leveraged companies like AMZN with excessive valuations. If there was a protracted downturn in the economy, strong companies like INTC, M$FT, C$CO, DELL, etc will be able to weather the storm due to their market position and their huge stores of cash. Companies like AMZN with huge debt, little tangible assets, a short track record, mounting competition, in an extremely fast changing industry, are at a much more substantial risk of disappearing altogether. Put simply, AMZN is a bull market stock. It will fare much better in good times, but will underperform in bad times. It is also my contention that the fundamental outlook has became clearer in the last few weeks. Estimates for AMZN losses have widened dramatically, and supply of AMZN shares (as well as other internet shares) has increased as well. The negative sentiment in the market coupled with the steep decline in share price has contributed to a fall-off in demand for AMZN shares. There are other contributing factors as well. (I outlined them in this post) #reply-5569816 Now, explain to me how I am suffering from delusions.

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (17046)	9/13/1998 8:36:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

I got fed up with the agenda here. There is no discussion here, just piling-on. It's boring. When Glenn (who has no experience with the principals) came back with that "Let's get an unbiased source," my first impulse was to tell him to f*ck off. It's a waste for me to spend any time here. William, I honestly did not intend to upset you. My comment was only to indicate the MS and Mary Meeker do have a vested interest in AMZN. I know you feel strongly about the positive future of AMZN. It is my opinion the AMZN has no future. Differing views is what makes a market. I do not establish my belief that Amazon has no future by what the analysts or opther medis states. My believe is based solely on the business model as I see it, management's lack of ability to understand retail and looking at the balance and income statements. It's all you can tolerate, but you should be practicing more care. It's real money for me. I can tell you that this is real money for me too and I have a lost a large amount. It is not play money or money I clearly do not need. This thread my frustrate you but my losses frustrate me. I took my short position based on the fundamentals and have been incorrect to this point. I may be foolish but I plan on seeing this through. Candidly, I respect and admire your opinions. I do dissagree with your long term view on AMZN as stated. I cannot say I respect the opinion of Morgan Stanley. Given a choice of a differing opinion bewteen you and Morgan Stanley, I would choose you as being correct any time. Finally, I am not a conspiracy theory pundit. I have have been. Look back at my posts and except for short term bounces, I am consistantly talking about fundamentals. I do apologize for offending you. I mean it even more than Bill Clinton. That last sentence was just to lighten up. Glenn

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (17046)	9/13/1998 9:22:00 AM
From: llamaphlegm	Respond to of 164684

William: 1. I still hope that you stay on the board. 2. Anything pro-amzn is not a lie misconception or conspiracy in my mind, it's simply a myopic point of view that assumes perfect knowledge of the future development of e commerce and amzn's role in it into the stock price. 3. No one is looking for a "hard number" on the valuation -- how about just a broad range with assumptions justifying the range made clear. 4. There is no agenda here. 5. The board could easily be named "popular misconceptions of bulls of amzn, none of whom have done or seem able to do a dcf and a sensitivity analysis" 6. Don't be rude to Glenn -- unlike me and others (bulls and bears) he's almost always polite, to a fault. 7. You seem completely unable to recognize a known fact on wall st. -- just ask ANY banker at ANY bank -- it's not an amzn conspiracy, just a fact, a bank that does a deal for ANY company will always have the most optimistic outlook on that company -- meeker's not an imbecile, it's just that she and the other analysts working at banks who are trying to get amzn's business (more junk, a secondary, M&A work) are balancing interests -- kissing up to the company and maintaining their own credibility -- if you fail to recognize that, then you've got way bigger problems than your analysis of amzn. 8. stop whining about conspiracy theories -- yes, some bears put them out, but so too have 2 theoretically disinterested journalists -- the bearish case is built on fundamentals not conspiracies. 9. You are right -- anyone playing with this toy should be flexible and open-minded and I think that most, in the short term are since no one knows where's it's going near term -- long term, ahhhh that's where the interesting debate begins. LP

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (17046)	9/13/1998 11:46:00 AM
From: 16yearcycle	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 164684

I am a professional investor and have been reading Mr. Harmond's posts for 2 1/2 years. I have never seen anyone consistently call market and specific stock turns as well as him. This recent criticism is most amazing since he posted that things would turn up 30 minutes before the close Thursday, and we have witnessed a 250 point rally since. I first took note of him because he was on the opposite side from me on the nscp vs. msft thread. I have a large investment in MSFT and became curious how a smart guy would want to get in the way of this bulldozer. It became obvious, as he called nearly every major move in NSCP's price that he was making a fortune trading the stock. I gather from the posts here that most of you can't see or won't see the difference between investment and trading. In any case, you may be entirely correct that AMZN won't have a future, but hold onto your wallet if you get on the other side of a trade with Bill. Let me add also that amzn and yhoo have had quite a fall now. If, in yhoo's case as an example, revenue growth continues on pace for 1 more year, yhoo will sell at ~20x revenue this time next year. Does anyone think that is too high? I would be very careful going forward because you guys are juggling with dynamite.