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

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (30471)	12/18/1998 6:57:00 PM
From: KeepItSimple	Respond to of 164684

> Problem is, that was my theory a year ago too. Never in the modern history of the equities market has there been such an incredible runup in a specific sector in such a short period of time. The Biotechs don't even come close. Jan 4 is the day people will wake up from the drunken party and try to cash in their chips. And on that subject, at least the Biotech companies had patents on most of the drugs they were developing. So even though 95% of those companies were failures and dropped back to earth, at least there were SOME winners that became spectacularly profitable because all that R&D money had patents to protect the little guys from the bigger competitors. Amazon and the other e-tailer's have no patents on anything- it's kinda hard when everything is based on an open standard developed with government funding. The biotech failures will seem small in comparison when investors feel the pain from the looming collapse of netstocks. While the first time newbie to the net may think a web page with "HTML" and the magical ability to process credit cards is an incredibly complex task that requires a giant company to create, the simple truth is that 2 or 3 guys in a small office can do it in a weekend. I know, because my company did it. Most newbie users can barely figure out which button to press to read their email, so it is understandable that they are in awe of websites. At least a biotech company requires specialists with advanced degrees in chemistry and medicine and engineering and tons of cash. Huge barriers to entry. Internet retailing requires no special knowledge of any kind. Hell, Bezos wasnt a bookseller or even a programmer before he started Amazon. He worked on wall street- but I guess he made the realization that the market doesnt give a rat's ass about the fundamentals of internet companies, just the amount of hype they can spin to the investment community. And he has done that extremely well. But as I've said before, none of this will sink into the minds of the newbie investor who lucked out and made 100% on their Amazon investment over the last 2 months. There is only one thing that will finally convince them that they've been played for a fool- and that one thing is for them to lose their entire investment before they realize what is happening. Nothing less.