Silicon Valley Could Be Heading For a New Stock Collapse. 200
First time accepted submitter billcarson writes "Even though for most of us the recession is far from over, analysts are worried the technology sector might be near the end of a bubble. Technology stocks are at records highs at the moment. Companies that have no sound business plan have no difficulty in raising capital to fund their crazy dreams. Even Yahoo is again buying companies without real profit (Tumblr). Andreessen Horowitz, a major venture capitalist in Silicon Valley is already pulling up the ladder. Might this be an indicator for more woe to come?"
Market Consolisation (Score:2, Interesting)
Less bubble driven pie in the sky greed and more mature market consolidation. The weakest in the herd are failing behind and will be preyed upon by vulture capitalists like Mittens and that's the ones you really have to watch out for, after the vultures have chewed out the juicy bit's and left it a debt ridden hulk with really 'imaginative' book work, pension funds usually buy them (after those pension fund managers make a visit to an offshore tax haven, to 'er' review their balance sheet with the vulture
Re:Market Consolisation (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, I think you've reached your metaphor quota for today. Thanks for coming out. Anything of substance to share?
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Hows, this then. As always insider's are using their marketing channels to right targeted stories to threaten current stock prices. These insider's are major brokerage firms who use statistics of their own customers to measure overall market debt exposure on puts and shorts to measure whether the market can be pushed into a run. So normal market adjustments for particular over hyped companies (done by the same companies that are trying to market a run on stocks) can be pushed into the broader market via th
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Too bad they made sequels to The Matrix, too.
No they didn't. What are you talking about? There were never any sequels to The Matrix. You must be hallucinating them.
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Who are these people who "have no sound business plan have no difficulty in raising capital to fund their crazy dreams"?
I have awesome dreams, business plans, technical and business abilities, certainly I don't see any rivers of free flowing investment money....
Re:Market Consolisation (Score:5, Interesting)
You kind of have this backwards. It because everybody is looking for return when there is none.
Normally when the central bank prints money this pushes up inflation. During inflation real assets, such as stocks, tend to hold their value which pushes up their prices.
Quantitative easing is not (currently) causing inflation mainly because the economic is so anemic. Take a look at 10 year TIPs and one comes to the conclusion that inflation will be tame. But an anemic economy does not generate great stock returns. Historically the government bond market has real returns of 2% and the stock market a real return of 7% (plus another 3% for inflation.) Now it is closer to 1% to 4%. Pensioners can’t live on these returns.
So anything that can deliver yield from junk bonds to junk stock is being snapped up. Or we are kind of talking about the same thing – a chicken and egg problem – just we place different emphasis on different parts.
not to wish bad things on anyone (Score:5, Interesting)
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Funny, I had a similar thought. In fact lately, I've been wondering what we might be able to do to pop the bubble on purpose. But that it'd be something like: identify the chumps, try to smarten them up... and that's as far as I get. Good luck on that project, eh?
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What killed Loki games was incompetence. Or maybe what they were trying to do was impossible, I dunno. But the games were mostly flaky and don't run on newer versions of Linux, either, just like they wouldn't work properly on many flavors of Linux initially. Loki_Compat is an unreliable solution.
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Hitting their milestones? Too bad having the games work properly at the time (let alone later) wasn't one of them.
Re:not to wish bad things on anyone (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't mind what the the tech bubble popping might do to San Francisco rental prices. [sfgate.com]
It would also reduce commute times on Hwy 101. When the dotcom bubble popped back in 2001, it took 20 minutes off my morning commute.
Re:not to wish bad things on anyone (Score:5, Insightful)
the economy isn't interconnected at all right? it might even reduce your commute to staying your house.
wait for it ... "but i work in the ___ field, so i'm not affected ..." in 3 ... 2 ... 1.
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I tend to work places that have actual income, so no, I don't worry so much about stock scams evaporating.
You want a real economic indicator? Try checking the snark frequency. This is all pretty obvious to people on the ground here: SF Techie Explains Why the World Should Revolve Around Bay Area Techies [sfweekly.com] (via jwz).
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did you know, there's a point in the lifecycle of all tech companies where they didn't make a profit? no tech company comes into existence with a ready to sell product making a profit.
and yeah, the general level of the economy effects everyone, and that's a reflection of the stock market. why? because when people have money, or think they have money, they spend it. they buy houses. that affects the real estate market. they buy cars. they buy tech. they invest, allowing other companies to hire workers puttin
The Real Reason for Self Driving Cars (Score:2)
After reading the article at the link you posted, I finally understand the true urge behind the self-driving car - so that when you park at night to sleep the car can just move itself if it detects cops show up to check it out!
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I wouldn't mind what the the tech bubble popping might do to San Francisco rental prices. [sfgate.com]
It would also reduce commute times on Hwy 101. When the dotcom bubble popped back in 2001, it took 20 minutes off my morning commute.
Because you could collect your unemployment check from home?
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Yes, that's exactly it. It clearly has nothing to do with proximity to family and friends, or stability for kids in their schools, or just not wanting to turn your entire life upside down for the sake of an extra few K a year. Those factors can't be relevant, because there's no column for them in the productivity spreadsheet.
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The USA is a massive food exporter. It also has large domestic energy supplies. Manufacturing sucks in the USA but the USA has technical know-how and large supplies of natural resources.
The days of... (Score:2)
It could well be, but (Score:5, Funny)
Remember that bears have predicted 60 of the last 3 stock market crashes.
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It's still a better record than MSNBC.
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You go out in the woods and ask him, and if he is too scared to come out and tell you what to buy, then sell sell sell.
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Well, it's not in the woods, but yes.
Yahooblr (Score:5, Insightful)
Yahoo's recent desperate moves (e.e. buying Tumblr) are hardly indicative of the industry, but rather one company that really shouldn't be as big as it is. Silicon Valley as a whole is a lot more healthy than Yahoo.
Re:Yahooblr (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I would not be at all sad to see fewer smart people wasting their lives trying to find new ways to get me to click on ads or analyze my behavior to sell me shit, (and there's a disturbing amount of brainpower going down the toilet on just that problem at the moment); but the trouble with a big wave of easy, dumb, money is that, while the crest is a blast, it can easily take down even solid people and ideas when the VCs eventually get spooked.
Just remember how much fun the economy of more or less the entire developed world managed to have, just because some banks were gambling on US real estate. Barely any connection to whether the economy of people who actually do and make things was stupid or brilliant, doing well, or doing ill; but down it came...
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yahoo is still big, of course they can throw some money at a (presumably strategic) acquisition. It tells us nothing about their overall competence, and even if they suck that doesn't mean it is a bad purchase; and if they're normally great, it doesn't mean it is a great purchase.
Also whatever they do and however they do or don't suck, it is not at all instructive about startups and VC. And an anecdotal reference to 1 VC isn't much better. Maybe he's "pulling up the ladder" because he made a bad call recen
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Tumblr has 30-50m highly active users. It has 110m registered accounts who sometimes use the network. Tumblr has another 200m people who browse the service but haven't bothered to create accounts. To put that in perspective 108m people watched the Superbowl the most watched show.
NCIS is the number one show with about 20m regular viewers, trailing slightly behind is Sunday Night Football and the BigBang theory. By way of analogy Yahoo is a network buying all rights to a show (Tumblr) that huge number o
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Facebook IPO, Twitter IPO. Need I say more?
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Facebook is currently at $47.66 the IPO price was $38 2 years ago. That's a very good return even for an IPO that was considered to be priced too high.
Yes you need to say more.
Re:Yahooblr (Score:5, Informative)
You know Yahoo has positive earnings, right? It's net was more than a billion (EBITDA) last quarter.
In July it overtook Google as the most visited US web property and remains #1 to date (comScore)?
Desperate moves?
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In July it overtook Google as the most visited US web property and remains #1 to date (comScore)?
Really? Who visits Yahoo? Maybe I'm just out of touch, but I don't know anybody who regularly visits Yahoo, and didn't know anybody back when I still used it for everything years ago (back when Google was the newcomer).
I'd also be interested in how things are measured. I rarely type "google.com" in my browser, but I use Google all the time.
Systemic debt (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is a *debt* bubble. Either the debt is extinguished in a bubble collapse - housing, stock market, student loans, tech stock, etc., or it becomes inflationary. As long as debt is above a sustainable level there *has* to be one bubble or another.
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I wonder if Snowden might not be a bubble popper? I sure would hate to have a ton of debt in cloud infrastructure here in the US right at the moment.
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I wonder if Snowden might not be a bubble popper?
The economy will continue running. Governments will continue spying. The most Snowden can hope for is to stay alive, out of prison and snag a few bucks from a remote interview in a decade or two by an infotainment company doing a "where are they now" piece.
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I think he's in for a rather unfortunate future. The Russians will have had all the PR and spy info out of him that can be got in a year or so and when he's of no further use to them, what then? He could be stuck in Russia for years, decades even, under a state even more corrupt and considerably less free than the one he left.
Re:Systemic debt (Score:4, Insightful)
For the moment, but the race to the bottom is on and the US is catching up quickly.
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As always, choosing martyrdom is a career-limiting move.
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Re:Systemic debt (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is a *debt* bubble.
A stock bubble is not a debt bubble, since cash is usually paid for stock (and even when not margin is limited to 50%). Neither the bursting of a stock bubble or a debt bubble is much fun, but the debt bubble is much worse. If stocks crash people say "dagnabbit, lost a bunch of money", but they're not left in debt. When a debt bubble like real estate crashes, you're not just poor, you're also in debt. That makes it extremely difficult to get the economy running gain, as so much of people's money is being sucked up by loan payments.
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The problem is a *debt* bubble.
A stock bubble is not a debt bubble,
Tell that to 1929.
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1929 wasn't that bad - try the banking crisis starting in 1931.
http://www.epips.com/djia/1930s-great-depression.html [epips.com]
There was a major rebound in 1930, and people thought the stock market had settled on more realistic prices. If the banks had been solid, the Great Depression wouldn't have been so great. Note that the stock market didn't really go to hell until 1931.
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You know, this could easily be remedied by distributing responsibility for debt more evenly between the debtor and the debtee. Right now it all rests on the debtee, who's options are to pay it all o
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There is a system in the USA which allows debtors who are unable to pay their debts to meet with their financiers and discuss a modified repayment program. That's called Bankruptcy Chapter 13. What you are asking for already exists. There is no need to threaten anyone with jail. Contracts, including debt contracts, are enforced by courts. Making them unenforceable or changes the enforcement system works fine.
Obviously people didn't understand the agreements they entered into on homes. Informed custome
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No, it doesn't. Bankruptcy sides with the debtor by default while I'm talking about siding with the debtee by default. Basically, I'm suggesting that in order for the debtor to get a single penny they'd need to prove that the debtee's circumstances have changed and this was the
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Nice to know the US hasn't thrown everything it learned in the Great Depression in the trash. In the 1920's you could buy w/ 10% down. I think no margin buying should be allowed, but anything that allows less than 50% down is insane.
I see other crashes looming first .... (Score:5, Interesting)
Could tech be at the end of another bubble? Sure, I suppose. But it seems to me the college tuition situation is more clearly ripe to burst? And how about govt. treasury bonds?
At least with tech, I think quite a few of the highly valued companies are truly successful. (Apple, as a prime example.) For every one of these questionable Tumblr type purchases of some web-based service, therre are dozens of others who nobody seems to be interested in buying at all. I'd say most investors are being fairly selective, even if they do gamble a bit on the occasional "high profile" site that's not yet making a profit.
College = good bargain? huh? (Score:3)
How do you figure that a college education is a good bargain? Tuition prices have vastly outpaced inflation, mainly due to permissive government loan programs (throw money into a system, watch prices rise, economics at work). Meanwhile, because a college degree is the new high school diploma, the college offerings in - let's be blunt - useless fields have expanded. Here is some data from DOE: [ed.gov]
Degrees with, um, limited employment prospects, change since 1985
- Visual and performing arts: up 150%
- Interdiscipli
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Nonsense. The supply of education is not fixed. Increase demand and the supply increases rather easily. Tuition prices have tracked wages. What's happened with education is that unlike many other things the production hasn't gotten more efficient. The same thing has happened wit
Define woe (Score:3, Insightful)
Overpriced assets need to come down sometime.
FB will be dead soon. Twitter IPO overpriced (but still not that bad). Most Silly Valley stocks are based on insane projections for the most part.
I used to do tech IPOs. My money's in broad S&P 500 low cost index funds now.
(yes, I made lots of money from the tech IPOs, and the other IPOs)
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Why S&P 500 instead of total market?
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Why S&P 500 instead of total market?
Educated guess. It's actually a mix of 90 pct S&P 500 index (0.04 pct cost), 5 pct total bonds (0.12 pct cost), 5 pct total stock market (0.07 pct cost), without rebalancing but with reinvestment.
Total market exposes you to risk stocks during excessive churn. Climate change means excessive churn.
Re:Define woe (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not convinced that Facebook is going away anytime soon. Like it or not, they've entrenched themselves pretty deeply in the internet. One of the best moves they did was push for their service to be used as a general login platform for other sites. Hell, you can even use your facebook account to log into MySpace. Even Twitter seems to have a ton of staying power, simply because it's so widely used by certain types of people to disseminate opinions. Fortunately for Twitter, those types of people have a hell of a lot of influence, like politicians, game designers, actors, and media personalities. They'll figure out a way to bring ads to the service, just like Facebook has, which is about the only thing that matters anymore when it comes to running a tech company these days.
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Besides which, while everyone in the news talks about "the disaterous FB IPO" while speculating about Twitter's upcoming IPO...they all conveniently ignore that FB is currently trading around $50. so sure, the day traders who wanted to make a quick buck lost out, and thats what the news media focuses on....
But when people started dumping shares as the price plummetted, others like me, who were willing to wait a little while, started picking up a few, cautiously at first, and then a couple more, particularly
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While you are still holding the shares you haven't won anything, except on paper.
Re:Define woe (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me translate this for you:
I used to do tech IPOs. My money's in broad S&P 500 low cost index funds now.
(yes, I made lots of money from the tech IPOs, and the other IPOs)
Translation from Douche to English:
I made piles and piles of cash during the dot-com bubble. Enough to afford a Tesla and a $1.5m 1500sqft home in Cupertino. However, now that I have all this money, I can afford to diversify. If I didn't have all this IPO cash, then I'd never have the money necessary to send my kids to $20k/yr kindergarten, Challenger Elementary School and then either St. Francis or Bellermine High Schools.
I'm really just writing this to flaunt about how lucky I was to have invested during the dot-com bubble and now I'm telling you to follow my lead, however, you can't since the dot-com bubble is over, so you'll have to get used to taking low digit yr/yr gains of the broader stock market.
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No, I wouldn't say that. S&P 500 has been double digit yr/yr gains actually.
I've been investing since I was 16. You can do what you want, but my gut feel is usually right.
The best investment is an education, actually.
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Return on the S&P 500 has been about 6% over the last 10 years, and about 7% over the last 20 years. The whole double-digit growth thing made a whole lot more sense in the prospectuses they sent out in the late 90s...
They have a business plan (Score:2)
Its something along the lines of "social media, blah blah, make lots of noise about it, mobile app, get bought by Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Yahoo"
Not seeing the same trends (Score:4, Insightful)
The Dotcom crash happened mostly because there was a massive gold rush to throw money at any startup that said they were going to do cool things on the web. But there was way too much money being spent on Aeron chairs and expensive digs and nothing being spent on figuring out if the idea was good. This comes from having been to a lot of bankruptcy auctions. Hell, the CEO of one company spent investor dollars on a powered paraglider. Da fuq? I also wonder if Y2K was something of a catalyst. In the 90s, companies were spending gobs of money to prepare for Y2K. When that came and went without a hitch, all that money evaporating and may have caused investors to question their other high risk ventures.
The housing bubble was could be seen a mile away by anyone who wasn't living in a utopian stupor. You can't force banks to issue sub-prime mortgages knowing full well that most of those buyers couldn't keep up with the payments without the lenders passing the hot potato to the next sucker. BTW, CDOs and mortgage-backed securities had been around for 20+ years without a problem. Again, the gold rush of house flipping was eventually going to crash when the music stopped in the form of enough people saying "You want HOW MUCH for this P.O.S house?! Nope."
Honestly, I don't really see the same scope of bullsh*t in Silicon Valley. Social networking companies are at risk because they don't have a tangible product just as dotcom companies didn't in 2000. But the hardware companies aren't going away. Will other companies get injured as a few collapse? Sure, but that would be panic selling and hence a good buying opportunity.
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Social networking companies are at risk because they don't have a tangible product just as dotcom companies didn't in 2000.
Social networking companies do have a product: advertising.
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Social networking companies do have a product: advertising.
he said "tangible". that all the buzz about targeted advertising is actually worth the money is still speculation.
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What do you mean, then? Are you going by the strict "it can be touched" meaning of tangible? I was going by the looser "it can be perceived" meaning. Either way, advertisements are more tangible than software but less tangible than houses.
Where have I heard this before? (Score:5, Insightful)
While unemployment generally may be high, in the tech sector it is very low.
How about some actual, you know, statistics.
Tech companies, led by Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, are lobbying Congress to relax immigration rules so they can hire more foreign talent because they believe domestic talent has gotten too scarce and too expensive.
And that's evidence of a shortage? They've been pushing for more of this crap for 20 years, rain or shine.
I also notice that almost the entire article is about Silicon Valley, which despite its pretenses of being cosmopolitan, or even "globalized" (whatever the hell that means), is one of the most provincial places there is. Here's a clue: there are parts of the US outside of the Bay Area. Amazing but true! Some of those places are tech hubs with lower salaries. Having trouble finding people at a reasonable price? Branch out. It's hardly a new business strategy. The geniuses who claim to have destroyed the barriers to long distance communication don't want to take advantage of it (except to India of course). I know that denizens of the valley are afraid to get on a plane to someplace like, say Pittsburgh, where they have a dreaded thing called "snow", but you can tough it out. Look on the bright side - the plane trip is much shorter than across the Pacific. You can even use Google maps to find this place called "Pittsburgh" [google.com].
Re:Where have I heard this before? (Score:4, Informative)
Tech unemployment for the third quarter is at about 3.9%
http://marketing.dice.com/pdf/2013-q3_TechTrends_Report.pdf [dice.com]
Re:Where have I heard this before? (Score:5, Informative)
About the same as the average of all people w/ a bachelor's or higher: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm [bls.gov]
Definitely no indication of a "shortage", unless there is a shortage of people for all types of work that require a college education. If anyone actually believes that, then I've got a bridge to sell them. Silicon Valley BS debunked once again by the actual statistics.
Even companies with real profits are overvalued (Score:3, Insightful)
Google, Apple, and a few others are overvalued right now as well.
But the stock market is all about gambling, not real value. Most of the big players treat it like monopoly money, because it's not coming out of their own pockets. :(
That's a problem with the stock market overall, though, not just tech stocks.
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Google, Apple, and a few others are overvalued right now as well.
How is Apple overvalued? Their p/e ratio is 13.25.
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Their market share is sliding, not growing. Profitability will therefore come down.
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You clearly have no understanding of the stock market and I recommend you don't invest money in it because you will your clock cleaned. Market share has little to do with their stock price. Apple sells more iPhones and iPads now than they ever have in the past. The reason is that the market is growing so there's LOTS of room for more than one winner. It's not a zero sum game. What does matter is margins and they have been shrinking for Apple but are starting to stabilize. That said, nothing really big
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Apple is overrated. They're a fad. In all respects.
Sooner or later a new shiny will take over people's fanatacism in the North American market. It's already happened overseas.
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First off, you seem to be under the impression I'm some kind of Apple fanboy. I'm not. I use a Samsung phone (two, in fact). Your hatred for the company makes you incapable of making good investment decisions so I would suggest you not come on here and spout crap that you know nothing about. Just a thought. Anyone who has loyalty to a company or technology is an idiot. This is even more true in the world of stocks.
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There are certain brands that maintain brand appeal and price by being exclusive. Apple is not exclusive; they're a mass marketer. Therefore their aura of exclusivity and "specialness" will disappear in due time. You can't have it both ways -- either you're an exclusive up-scale marketer, or you're a mass market commodity. You can't be both for long at all.
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That's not to say I expect Apple to disappear as a company, but I think they're *way* overvalued because they won't be able to maintain their high margins as the "exclusivity" of the brand wears off.
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that could be said of any company and becomes advice any investment of any kind, period.
the GP is right: you know nothing Jon Snow.
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*against any /. were a stock, it's stock would double just from adding a frigging EDIT BUTTON!!!)
(seriosuly, if
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Their market share is sliding, not growing. Profitability will therefore come down.
Simply untrue, since market share is merely one of many factors that can affect profitability, and it doesn't actually matter very much for Apple, since they don't play in the low-margins-high-volume game at the low end of the market where having a bigger share is the most important thing.
First off, I agree that their market share is decreasing, as is their profit share in both the smartphone and tablet markets. That said, their sales volume has continued to increase at a quick rate (though slower than that
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Uh, what? Apple's P/E is famously low (around 13) compared to their competitors in the tech industry (which average around 20), indicating that they are undervalued by quite a bit. Google's is around 30 right now, so the claim that they're overvalued may have merit, however (which isn't to say that they're not a valuable company, mind you, merely that the stock price may be out of touch with just how valuable they actually are).
As for companies treating it like monopoly money, companies that sacrifice their
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Just because a companies P/E is low does not mean they are undervalued. It could mean the market expects that future earnings (you know, the ones that actually count if you are buying a stock) are going to be lower than they have been.
That again! (Score:2)
Oh dear..... This is not going to end well is it.
Impact (Score:2)
Eh, maybe (Score:2)
I think any bubbles and their bursts will be moderate in size and effect until a lot of people
You can't time the markets (poem) (Score:2)
It's a cliche that you can't time the market.
There's a reason for that.
It's true.
Now that's all well and good Mr. Market
But tell me
What should I do?
Very good question, now listen with care
Bend over, and lend me your ear
When talk is of bubbles
The alarms's set for troubles
Next month
Or maybe next year
Shifting Sands (Score:3)
I suspect that with the types of devices using computer chips and software and the proliferation of OSs it is a risky bet to put money into the computer or electronic device industry. We can see this in the smart phone segment where companies jockey for position without knowing if a brand or new enterprise might suddenly sweep up the market. Although risk might yield a lot of earnings second guessing the computer industry is just far too difficult.
complete bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
While unemployment generally may be high, in the tech sector it is very low.
Tech companies, led by Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, are lobbying Congress to relax immigration rules so they can hire more foreign talent because they believe domestic talent has gotten too scarce and too expensive. It's driving up wages bills like crazy. Matt Allen, a tech recruiter at Vertical Move, told me recently:
of course he told you that, he's a recruiter! the truth is that the tech sector jobs are either offering insultingly low wages or out-sourcing to save a buck, the bigger the pool, the more control they can screw people over, especially if you are under the threat of being deported if they fire you. The whole rent-a-coder thing went awry because people offer to work for wages below minimum wage because in their country, $3/hr is a good wage and tax free by keeping it in paypal.
You don't see every tech person driving around in beamers.
Tumblr and Instgram (Score:2)
Social networks like Tumblr don't have to be profitable. Google. Facebook, Yahoo are themselves profitable. What they are buying are user bases not the business. As far as record highs:
Cisco P/E 12
Apple P/E 13 (and that's x-cash, including cash it is much lower)
Microsoft P/E 13.5 (also x-cash)
Google P/E 28 (high but still rapidly growing)
HP is losing money but the stock is cut in half
I don't see a bubble.
Re:Bullshit from statists. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's getting harder and harder to figure out whether a post is real or a parody.
Re:Bullshit from statists. (Score:5, Informative)
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the only one that is productive is technology
Social media is productive? Hey, it's not like we're talking real tech here.
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I make pretty good money in medicine.
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I guess you do not live in California. That's the problem.
Re:Well, "if" it does.. (Score:5, Interesting)
"California" is NOT just the SF Bay area, and your extreme myopia is showing...
Guess where you can buy a 1,500sq.ft. house on half an acre for $30,000?
Answer: California
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It's the factory workers, and other non technology people buying/using your product that provide YOU with a job, not the other way around.
It's both, and neither. Both "tech" and factories are productive parts of the economy. All productive sectors add something.
Gee. I'm a factory worker, and I bought a house recently. So have other people I have known. Look outside your insular bubble.
A lot of people from areas where housing is very expensive (like where I live) don't realize that housing is much more affordable elsewhere. I'm just glad I bought before the bubble went nuts. I don't think I could afford my own house today, even after prices have dropped a bit, and I assure you my house is nothing fancy.
P.S. Glad to know there are still some people working in factorie
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It's not just in California where housing is insanely priced. Go to Northern Ohio or Detroit and see what life is like there. Perhaps these two areas are the only extremes in the country? I doubt it, I have read similar stories about Pennsylvania, Georgia, etc.. Nobody is doing well on average, but technology markets have been doing better than others.
I also agree that numerous segments are holding each other up. That said, 20 years ago you could not have moved the auto industry without collapsing a who
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It's not just in California where housing is insanely priced.
I live on Long Island. Cheaper than SV, but about the same as San Diego. It's nuts.
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I come from Detroit where Factory jobs if they still exist make less than 15 bucks an hour on average, but nice try. How about Ohio where all of those factory jobs.. oh wait, they have mostly closed and been shipped overseas. I know, the steel workers in factories making.. Fuck not that either!
Look, I get that there are a few decent paying jobs in production. That said, the majority of the factory jobs are no longer in the USA.