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

To: Bearded One who wrote (56153)	5/9/1999 4:21:00 PM
From: Sarmad Y. Hermiz	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 164684

>> Will someone here care to explain why Amazon is worth even 5 billion dollars? If you had 5 billion dollars would you make more money owning ALL of amazon as a privately held corporation, or putting the 5 billion in a treasury bond earning 250 million per year or so? << By this measure, neither is Microsoft worth 500 Million, nor GE worth 300 B. No one can buy them anyway, so the question of buying the whole company never arises. But to answer your question. The speculator isn't asking "if I had 5B, where should I put it ?", the more relevant question is "I have $10k, how can I make $1k tomorrow ?". The answer is never treasury bonds. It is more likely to be either buying or shorting amzn. If you get this answer right a few days in a row, you become very rich very fast. I have not managed this trick, yet. But this is the promise of Amazon. And it has nothing to do with selling books.

To: Bearded One who wrote (56153)	5/9/1999 5:28:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 164684

Will someone here care to explain why Amazon is worth even 5 billion dollars? Bearded One, I haven't seen you on this thread before so pardon me if I am stating the obvious.... the value proposition with Amazon and Dell is that they apply tremendous automation resources to their supply chain and eventually squeeze everybody else out of business 1/2% savings on cos at a time. Eventually it becomes too expensive for anybody else to compete, niche players are eliminated etc. and they own the market. Low profit margin goods are a critical part of the equation, the fact that incremental savings to the bottom line (which is what you get with technology) can make an overall difference, etc. I don't know what amzn is worth at this point, on a relative scale certainly more than $5 bill. as you attest, depending on how far along they are with their infrastructure. But they need to grow into their current mkt cap I agree. Michelle

To: Bearded One who wrote (56153)	5/9/1999 10:39:00 PM
From: Tom Kearney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Here's Abelson's genius(?) this week. He tells us about a friend who lives in Hong Kong and is great at understanding world economic trends, supposedly. But, apparently, he is a lousy investor, because he is always too early, Al says. Yet he tells of one Indonesian Investment that is up by a factor of 4. AMZN is up a factor of 10, yet Al trashes it always, but his friend is brilliant, obviously for this one pick. We don't know how many other times he is wrong, but we should believe Al. His next story, another anecdote about another friend who invests in Russia, goes the same way. AMZN, YHOO, EBAY, AOL, etc are all up 1000% since this investment writer started trashing them, but we're all fools. Let's hear about investing in Russia - THERE's a smart choice! If you're a net investor, you're an idiot. But, if you're Al's friend, you're the best. He can't even conceive that he's wrong, wrong, WRONG! Look farther in into the issue. Check out the story on page 21 about earnings. Here's Abby on earnings "There's a bit of rethinking going on over there." Check out the table of earnings forecasts on the S&P. How's Abby been doing vs Alan? See the story on page 30 of this issue, re: a Fund Manager who's up 89% in '98 and 46% in 99. He likes eBay a lot, another favorite Abelson foil. Alan's gonna be wrong a long time. A lot of guys have increased their wealth many multiples in the last 2 years or so, betting against Al's opinion about AMZN and all the tech stocks. If Alan is smarter and more well informed than all them about investing, then I have a serious misconception about what investing is about. I thought it was about creating wealth. Regards, Tom BTW, as far as all this greater fool business goes, as Keynes said, 'In the long run we're all dead.'