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

To: KeepItSimple who wrote (54638)	5/2/1999 7:03:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Incorrect. Assume a hypothetical company who's entire business was to increase their stock price. Operations are irrelevant. Profits and losses are irrelevant. Expenses are irrelevant. KIS, You really do not expect me to debate you ont his issue. You know my feeling about Amazon, the management, the VCs, etc. It has bee my opinion for 18 months now this is a sure failure and all they doo is prop up the stock price. We do not disagree. You do not owe me dinner either:-) Soneone else does<VBG> Glenn

To: KeepItSimple who wrote (54638)	5/3/1999 7:53:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

Stocks overpriced - U.S. investor Warren Buffett By Andrew Stern OMAHA, Neb., May 2 (Reuters) - Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, warming up before his investment company's annual meeting, said on Sunday there were few companies now that met his test of being a good business whose stock sold at an "intelligent" price. "We never had a view on the stock market. We do try to buy businesses at intelligent prices. We find very few things that meet that test," Buffett, the second-wealthiest American, behind Microsoft founder Bill Gates, told reporters at a news conference a day before the annual meeting of his multifaceted conglomerate, Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. <BRKa.N> "But that is not a market prediction. Those valuations could continue for many years. They could go higher, for that matter," he said. Buffett, nicknamed the "Oracle of Omaha," and his business partner Charlie Munger dispensed broad investment advice sprinkled with homespun adages over more than two hours of questioning. Buffett remained vague on comments he made in Britain last month about plans to invest in a British blue-chip company -- comments that triggered feverish speculation about which company it might be. Among the companies British bookmakers were taking bets on were retailer Marks and Spencer Plc. <MKS.L>, British Airways <BAY.L> and Cadbury Schweppes Plc. <CBRY.L> "It starts with the letter A through Z. ... It's not a bombshell," Buffett said. "We've said more than we intended to say." Buffett said he was more familiar with British-based companies than French or German ones but basically believed that all industrialized countries had a few excellent firms large enough to absorb a Berkshire Hathaway investment foray. "In some cases, the prices look more reasonable over there than they do over here," he added, but he cautioned that few met his criteria at the moment. So-called "emerging markets" rarely had companies large enough to handle Berkshire's usual minimum investment of $500 million, Buffett said. He said he was beaten to the punch by a quicker investor after he disclosed plans last year to buy into a still-unnamed Japanese company. Buffett said one thing he possessed was patience when it came to investing, though he admitted to having made mistakes of omission in not pulling the trigger on certain moves. Part of his job, he said, was investing the huge amount of capital accumulated by Berkshire, whose current cash position is estimated by observers at $15 billion. "Buying stocks is the best game in the world. It's a no-strike game. If the ball comes right down the middle and you don't swing, you don't get a called third strike," he said. "But it's hard when your fans are telling you to 'swing, you idiot.' We are structurally immune from that pressure, and the trick is to be psychologically immune as well." Buffett said he was "suspicious" of sharp rises in the U.S. stock market, a repeated pattern that "leads to excesses." "It's safe to say we really don't like the go-go periods where you get waves upon waves of irrational buying," Munger added. "There's a long history of (investment) bubbles, yet we keep having them," Munger said. "I must say, it's kind of irritating when the mania is widespread," he noted.. Munger said he was going out on a limb but responded in the affirmative when asked whether his words applied to the meteoric rise in so-called Internet stocks. Buffett reiterated that he did not "understand" Internet stocks and so refrained from investing in them. Besides Berkshire's long-held profitable investments in such giants as Coca Cola Co. <KO.N>, Gillette Co. <G.N>, American Express Co. <AXP.N>, Walt Disney Co. <DIS.N> and Wells Fargo and Co. <WFC.N>, Berkshire owns auto insurer GEICO Co., a few real estate investment trusts and some smaller operations like a candy company. Buffett said he expected the profits of personal auto insurers like GEICO ...