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Always amazes me how many billions of dollars people have to throw away on hype and hope, but I guess if you aren't trading your own money who really cares. Apparently the current revenue per user for facebook is $4.50, but at $100 billion in market cap the implied revenue per user shoots all the way up to $120. Good luck with that. I mean most 'growth' stocks only get 10x sales which would mean a $40 billion or so valuation. At least there you'd have a chance of doubling your investment at some point in the future.
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Feb 2, 2012 21:21
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MrBigglesworth posted:Im pretty sure I don't wanna go to jail. Personally I don't give out stock tips about the MEGACORP I work for because the market invariably has better info than I do, and I'd end up looking like an idiot all the time.
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Feb 2, 2012 21:57
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Why can't Bernanke just say "The economy is looking really good and the Federal Reserve has high expectations in the coming year". It would probably have much more of a positive effect on the economy than his current stance of "things kind of look good, but they COULD GO BAD AT ANY MOMENT and could result in enacting random monetary policy!" The amount of cash on everyone's balance sheets tells me that there is a bit of a confidence problem in a lot of companies right now. If he would stop being a Debbie Downer and constantly making these fuzzy and hard to interpret statements I am sure it would help matters tremendously.
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Feb 2, 2012 22:42
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Facebook has been out since 2004 and the most popular social networking site for years. In that time they've managed to bring in revenue by integrating ads and by deploying 'facebook credits' for popular games. Note that Facebook didn't bring any of the innovation for the apps, that was other companies. So after years of hiring engineers they haven't innovated at all, aside from revisions of the user pages. Why would you buy Facebook? Many previous companies have failed to monetize their users before, the only difference here is the sheer size of the company. Google is also a massive tech company but it has innovations all over the place. A lot of them fail and are euthanized, but this is a good thing to see. It shows that they are thinking, trying new things, trying to enter markets, and being innovative. How many projects have you seen come out of Facebook? Facebook has a massive collection of media from users, yet no where on my photos page can I find any link driving me to an affiliate for photo printing. Flickr has been doing that for years, Facebook can't even steal an obvious idea. I work in science and when we start out we start coming up with ideas, throwing them against the wall, and seeing what sticks. Generally one in ten will work out and be able to sustain funding. When I don't see anything coming out of a company I get concerned, even failed ventures are not necessarily a negative sign. Regardless of the numbers, it seems to me that Facebook is a terrible purchase. They are a company that got huge by being in the right place at the right time (in a similar way to RIM). Huge company, tons of employees, no vision. RIM coasted on the face that they had a user lock in the corporate sector, but eventually the corporate sector changed and they were left behind. Facebook is coasting on the fact that it has a user lock, but what users want from a social site is going to eventually change, and if Facebook isn't the one selling the new version of what users want they are going to be left behind (and it's not facebook timeline). cowofwar fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Feb 2, 2012 |
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Feb 2, 2012 23:15
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I thought Facebook's big thing now was selling information to other companies about it's users?
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Feb 3, 2012 01:20
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Cheesemaster200 posted:Why can't Bernanke just say "The economy is looking really good and the Federal Reserve has high expectations in the coming year". It would probably have much more of a positive effect on the economy than his current stance of "things kind of look good, but they COULD GO BAD AT ANY MOMENT and could result in enacting random monetary policy!" But how is he supposed to have the economy in the palm of his hand if he starts acting like things are getting better?!
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Feb 3, 2012 03:51
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Josh Lyman posted:You almost surely mean solvency? http://mashable.com/2010/09/16/facebook-users-interact-brands/ Here, this isn't exactly what I thought it was, I suppose, but still some good insights.
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Feb 3, 2012 05:30
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cowofwar posted:Facebook has been out since 2004 and the most popular social networking site for years. In that time they've managed to bring in revenue by integrating ads and by deploying 'facebook credits' for popular games. Note that Facebook didn't bring any of the innovation for the apps, that was other companies. So after years of hiring engineers they haven't innovated at all, aside from revisions of the user pages. Why would you buy Facebook? Many previous companies have failed to monetize their users before, the only difference here is the sheer size of the company. I kind of agree with you. But. Their massive engineering hiring spree has been really going on in earnest for less than a year. It's possible all those people are working on great stuff, but none of it has seen the light of day yet. Maybe. Also the network effect is a huge reason why the comparison to Rim doesn't make sense. If another company shows up tomorrow with a much better social networking product, they are still almost certainly going to get crushed under the fact that all my friends are already on facebook. Even google+ with a solid product and extremely high visibility didn't even really make a dent. Of course I thought the same thing about myspace but facebook is way farther out in front now than myspace was.
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Feb 3, 2012 05:50
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cowofwar posted:Facebook has been out since 2004 and the most popular social networking site for years. In that time they've managed to bring in revenue by integrating ads and by deploying 'facebook credits' for popular games. Note that Facebook didn't bring any of the innovation for the apps, that was other companies. So after years of hiring engineers they haven't innovated at all, aside from revisions of the user pages. Why would you buy Facebook? Many previous companies have failed to monetize their users before, the only difference here is the sheer size of the company. A great deal of this post doesn't make sense to me and so I wonder if I'm delusional, stupid or a happy mixture of both. Facebook has a pretty small staff- something like 3200 worldwide. Their engineering team has done impressive work over the years: Cassandra, Thrift, HipHop, Hive, they freaking open-sourced their data centers. That doesn't compare too poorly to what Google accomplished at a similar stage. I do not think that ordering hard copies of pictures counts as a lack of innovation and that's an odd thing to call out. Everyone I know who uses Facebook, including my grandparents when they were alive, knows how to turn pictures on a computer screen into pictures you hold. It's pretty cool that you work in "science." That must give you a unique perspective on things! At least compared to people running a company that is in the top 0.5% of computer utilization on the planet but don't use science. Also, Facebook has a program with regular meetings where engineers discuss ideas, demonstrate their solutions and implementation, then get feedback from their peers. At subsequent meetings those peers talk about what they found using methods described in previous meetings. Not really sure where they got the inspiration for this program but maybe you could help them using your science background? Look, I hate Facebook. Or at least I think I hate it. They don't produce anything of value. People aren't going to buy pictures of tractors forever. Their ads suck. It's going to be "overvalued" when it goes public. None of that matter when you're talking about trading stocks. The stock is worth what people will pay for it and there's going to be a tiny float with huge demand. Two years from now you can talk about multiples but when it goes out it's going to be big. The thing is, it actually looks like a fairly well-run company. They can't do much to control the hype about their IPO (other than what they're doing and keeping the float small). I'm not going to buy on the open market but if my broker had shares would I take them? gently caress yah. And I'll also be happy to sell you puts. tl;dr: I loving hate Facebook and can't believe I'm defending them on the Internet. Also science rules.
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Feb 3, 2012 05:51
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I'm in my office and literally said "What? WHAT?!" when I heard the number on CNBC. 
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Feb 3, 2012 14:31
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Every successive headline I've read speculating on the value of facebook for the last year or so has just made me want to own it more, and I'm going to buy some the second I can on my crappy little Zecco account. I'm no expert in any of this stuff, but for some reason reading the seeming majority of people screaming that it's overvalued makes me even more confident. Don't people realize that this website is exceptional? Do you even need stats to realize how many more person-hours are wasted on FB than any other website in history? Just walk around a college library or something. They've really nailed the "get people to stay on our site" thing. How many other stupid websites have all your relatives blabbing non-stop at every family gathering? The inside of a loving container of blueberries I bought the other day had a Facebook logo on it. It's quickly becoming the most ubiquitous company ever, if it isn't already. Also, I really don't think their ad product sucks. If anything it's currently expensive, probably prohibitively costly, but that can be changed. And the potential is HUGE in my opinion. If I'm selling toothpicks in Boston I can advertise to people that "like" toothpicks and live within 100 miles of Boston. You can target much more specific demographics than Google allows. The have a lot of potential to overtake Google on things like local search. Also, even though the biggest drawback is the cost per click, this can be somewhat offset if you do something like advertise your facebook page, so when someone likes it it then shows up on their feed and you can get extra free clicks. Their future may be in their platform, but I wouldn't doubt that they could go toe to toe with Google for the top spot in internet advertising. I think they still aren't trying to make money yet. Yeah, they've done some sort of obvious stuff like stick some ads on a few pages and charge huge fees for payment processing, but there's plenty of room for creativity in this area if you're Facebook. I'd be pretty surprised if the company never reaches 200B in market value.
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Feb 3, 2012 14:48
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So what's to stop me from buying a shitload of 1-day calls on AAPL every morning and selling at some point in the day? I feel like if I do this every day, and considering their stock is up more than it is down and has a 12 month target of like 620 by S&P I could stand to make some decent money... Edit: Apparently I'm an idiot and short dated options only go up on friday, it just looks like they are daily because I am looking at last weeks on a friday. idolmind86 fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Feb 3, 2012 |
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Feb 3, 2012 14:57
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Ok so I was dabbling with covered calls, and I have a question. So I bought 500 shares of vale at 22.93 and sold Feb 24s to match. So now basically my profit is "capped" at like 800 bucks or so, whether I let them expire and more than likely assign, or buy them back and keep the stock. Profit is profit and that's great, but, how could I have done this less gay? Sold a more OTM call? Bought back the calls earlier? Some sort of buy those back and sell something further out? I honestly expected the stock to jump and chillax, not rise like 30% in a few weeks. \/\/\/\/ I don't even remote get the joke. 
Turkeybone fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Feb 3, 2012 |
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Feb 3, 2012 15:22
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Turkeybone posted:Ok so I was dabbling with covered calls, and I have a question. You should have done it while having sex with a woman instead of a man HTH (assuming you are a guy)
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Feb 3, 2012 15:27
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Josh Lyman posted:I'm in my office and literally said "What? WHAT?!" when I heard the number on CNBC. was it made more dramatic by the numbers that the talking heads were guessing at ? It seems 150k was the consensus. So 250k and a 8.2% unemployment number were way above expectations right? Even Rick Santelli had nothing negative to say. And what did one of the guests say? if we keep adding 200k a month , the Unemployment number will be 7.9 in November...Good luck spinning that republicans.
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Feb 3, 2012 17:31
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Why can't we go back to the days when the real unemployment number is used? It is my understanding that this current one "dismisses or ignores" those who "quit" looking for work. Those people are still unemployed, aren't they? Would not the number be 1 to 1.5% higher?
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Feb 3, 2012 17:45
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MrBigglesworth posted:Why can't we go back to the days when the real unemployment number is used? It is my understanding that this current one "dismisses or ignores" those who "quit" looking for work. Those people are still unemployed, aren't they? Would not the number be 1 to 1.5% higher? That's tough to do. How do you include the people that have given up? Do you ask them "if a job fell in your lap would you do it?" Do you weight that response equally with people who are actively looking for work?
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Feb 3, 2012 17:58
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I know it would be tough. But if you have a guy in field of work that cant find it, and you stop counting him after 6 months, he is still unemployed.
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Feb 3, 2012 18:09
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MrBigglesworth posted:I know it would be tough. But if you have a guy in field of work that cant find it, and you stop counting him after 6 months, he is still unemployed. You just have to go with what the standard metric is, I guess. I'm sure that's one of the few routes that Republicans can go with this. I mean whether Obama has anything to do with cyclical recovery or not, this will ultimately just be icing on the dead-osama-and-crazy-rear end-republican-candidates cake.
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Feb 3, 2012 18:36
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The point of having a standardized metric is so you can compare it from period to period and establish trends and performance. Dismissing it at will when you don't like the outcome kind of defeats that purpose. Everyone knows that the "real" unemployment is probably much different, but if we can use a common metric you can make conclusion on how the labor market is performing.
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Feb 3, 2012 19:09
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http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm There are 6 levels of unemployment according the BLS. Personally I think labor pool was over supplied anyway. I could argue that we had an economy heavily tilted toward servicing debt. Many households had 2 or more adults working to service this debt. Now that we are seeing households reduce debt, there is not a need for as many working adults in every household. People can go back to school, or as in my case my wife got preggers, and was able to quit her job and focus full time on being a mom. GO CSCO go, up 10% from 52 weeks ago.
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Feb 3, 2012 20:15
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imabmf posted:GO CSCO go, up 10% from 52 weeks ago. The internal investment mailing list is exploding with a few optimistic people and a lot of thrice-burned long time employees. Earnings next week, and the dreaded conference call. Every time Johnny C opened his mouth last year we dropped hard. Earning sneak peeks look good, we're back in black Q/Q for a few quarters now, and we've beaten estimates for a full year. Hopefully Chambers is a little more positive this time around.
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Feb 3, 2012 21:07
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Amun posted:That's tough to do. How do you include the people that have given up? Do you ask them "if a job fell in your lap would you do it?" Do you weight that response equally with people who are actively looking for work? That is why you use this number, the labor force participation rate:  Helloooooooo 1980's! edit: plus the BLS does still report the "real" unemployment number. It is U-6 on their chart, is labeled, "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force," and was 15.1% in January. No news ever reports that number though because you generally don't want to piss off the government. I think this actually used to be the official number at one point, but switched in the 90s. abagofcheetos fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Feb 3, 2012 |
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Feb 3, 2012 21:47
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So where do you search to find the companies that are going to obtain shares of Facebook during the IPO?
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Feb 3, 2012 23:54
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Morgan Stanley's IOIs
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Feb 4, 2012 06:27
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Not sure if this is the right thread to ask, but about how long should it take to receive tax info from a broker? I have two mutual funds through Wells Fargo Advisors (previously Wachovia (previously AG Edwards)) and it always take until mid-February to get my 1099-DIV and I'm getting fed up. Do other brokerage firms take this long or is WFA just exceptionally slow?
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Feb 5, 2012 03:13
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Feb 15 for some.
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Feb 5, 2012 03:59
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I'm expecting to wait until mid March before I get all my tax docs in.
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Feb 5, 2012 07:11
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To buy Vanguard ETFs, is there a minimum required quantity or dollar amount to be able to purchase? I Placed a valid order on Zecco with plenty of cash to cover the transaction and it was the first time I've ever received a "rejected" status on my order when I woke up.
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Feb 6, 2012 22:22
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How exactly do fractional shares work? I set up some investments with dividend reinvestment, and now I have a bunch of not-quite shares. Can I sell these normally, or can I only sell whole shares? Does the dividend reinvestment count it as a fractional share, or ignore it for the nest payout?
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Feb 6, 2012 23:09
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I'm not 100% sure about dividends but I think they will provide payouts. If you have 100.123 shares you want to sell, your tell your broker to sell 100 and they'll eventually compensate you for the remaining .123. You can't buy/sell fractional shares directly.
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Feb 6, 2012 23:29
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So I know BBY was brought up a few pages back and a lot of people are writing about the inevitable decrease in the stock price, but the Insider Transactions are nuts. Lots of straight up acquisitions at $31 a year back, and around $24.xx in the last several months. A lot of people putting a lot of money to it, and it can't just be blind faith in the company, I'm curious of what they know. Am I missing something obvious here, are they idiots? I'm pretty sure Acquisition means "Bought close to market price", even though the actual price per share isn't recorded. Thoughts?
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Feb 7, 2012 04:58
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I'm still new to making predictions on the way things will go, so I'm curious how the thread would interpret this article regarding BKS: http://www.derekhaines.ch/vandal/2012/02/self-publishing-now-its-war/ Other info: Indie e-book publishers on average make substantially more selling with Amazon than B&N. I see this, and I think "If I was long on BKS right now, I'd be rushing to dump it as quick as humanly possible". The price collapsed around new years, and has been steadily but slowly rising, though it hasn't quite recovered. With the attitude they are taking, including the fact they're trying to sell off the Nook, I am expecting them to fall apart entirely soon enough - and that without a day trader level of reflexes and market access, I couldn't possibly stand to make any sort of profit sticking with them. Am I wrong, and if so, why? I don't have a penny in BKS, I'm just reading and learning. this catte fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Feb 7, 2012 |
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Feb 7, 2012 05:51
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To the above poster about B&N- everyone knows their prospects are lovely. That's why their market cap is $800mm when they have $1.8b in assets. All of what you said and more has been priced in, for the most part.
Nifty fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Feb 7, 2012 |
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Feb 7, 2012 07:23
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Could someone clear this up for me: If I buy 100 shares through an online broker at $8.00 a share, then sold those 100 shares when the share price of a company was at $14.14, I would make a profit of $1,414 - $800 = $614, minus whatever the commission was? In this case, one would gain about 75% on top of what they invested. With that in mind, it appears that a company that is unlikely to go under in the next 12-24 months that has a historically low share price, should eventually return some kind of profit on investment? I appreciate the above example is bad/atypical due to the fact that this company was recently offered and associated hype surrounding Facebook- but it makes investing look quite risk free as long as you hold out for a decent return (say 10-20%) on a "stable" company. In this way it appears like a good way to generate extra cash here and there for an individual provided they are patient? I'm not looking to buy any stocks or invest my money at this time, I'm just interested in learning about how the market works since I know absolutely nothing about it; please forgive any ignorant assumptions I've made.
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Feb 7, 2012 14:26
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oiseaux morts 1994 posted:Could someone clear this up for me: If I buy 100 shares through an online broker at $8.00 a share, then sold those 100 shares when the share price of a company was at $14.14, I would make a profit of $1,414 - $800 = $614, minus whatever the commission was? In this case, one would gain about 75% on top of what they invested. This is what is called value investing, analyzing companies that for one reason or another are cheaply valued in terms of stock price, but have good fundamentals and a strong infrastructure. I like Toyota for this example, look at their stock in Nov 2011, shortly after the crazy flooding in Asia. But we all knew that Toyota makes awesome cars and has a lot of loyalty and strong infrastructure, so smart people saw it was undervalued and are now riding on 25% gains. Edit: oh yes, and look at Microsoft over the past ten years to see another direction a company can go. The problem? Well sometimes a company isn't as stable as you thought, or the economy as a whole goes in the shitter(for example look at any company in august 2011, and companies people thought were stable before the 08/09 meltdown). Crazyweasel fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Feb 7, 2012 |
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Feb 7, 2012 14:39
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Okay, gotcha. So what about a scenario like this: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSEAMEX:MGT In the last two months, MGT's share price has fluctuated between $0.04 and $0.08. Why would you avoid buying shares in this company when you can double your investment in such a short period of time? I imagine a company with such a low share price can't doing that well, and I suppose people aren't buying or selling in any great capacity. o.m. 94 fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Feb 7, 2012 |
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Feb 7, 2012 16:55
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oiseaux morts 1994 posted:Okay, gotcha. So what about a scenario like this: Because nothing guarantees it will stay there. 6 months ago that stock traded at .18, a year ago .4. Yes, you could double your money, you could also lose 90% overnight.
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Feb 7, 2012 17:04
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oiseaux morts 1994 posted:Historically, there has been a premium for high book-to-market stocks, but I don't know if anyone has looked at it recently. We do know that for a couple years, small stocks, which have historically outperformed large stocks, have actually trailed, but it looks like the small stock premium has now returned.
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Feb 7, 2012 18:01
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STVI everyone (the Are You Interested? app)... its part of the facebook frenzy, assuming they eventually reign in their marketing expenses (it seems like thats the long term plan) I really think .20 EPS is a modest estimate... its showing some consolidation right now, earnings are in a few weeks... in the meantime, I see a similar movement last year maybe its a valentines day trade?
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Feb 7, 2012 18:12
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