Forum Moderators: goodroi
[marketwatch.com...]
I have seen many companies make the mistake of too much,too fast thinking they are "untouchable"
Could this be a sign of caution here are are you still with the brokers that forecast $500/600?
MM
S&P downgrading, and CNBC making the downgrade a headliner, are going to drive several flocks of sheep away from the stock. Expect it to drop several percent today alone, especially with the panic selling going on in the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which is making people skittish.
A couple of amusing antedotes about how I predicted the top for Qualcomm and the top for the 2000 bubble to the day...
- I was working for a chip manufacturer here in San Diego. QCOM was soaring after a famous stock guru predicted it would go to $800, and sure enough it did. I had a co-worker who some QCOM stock from her previous employment at QCOM. The subject came up, and I asked her if she thought QCOM was getting a bit pricey, and if she was planning on selling some.
She replied "no - there's a drug dealer that lives next door to me. I want to wait until the stock goes up enough so that I can afford to make an offer for the house next door big enough that he will have to accept, and get him out of the neighborhood."
I decided that was the day QCOM was done. It was.
Clue #1: shareholders seeing their holdings as money in the bank, with no thought that it would ever drop significantly in value.
That was the day QCOM topped-out.
- I was working for a hardware/software startup, in the field of a promising wireless technology. One day, as I walked past a row of cubicles, EVERY CUBICLE displayed an online broker's web page on it's screen. We're talking like 10 cubicles.
That was the day the 2000 bubble topped-out.
Clue #2: Nobody left to sell to. Everybody is in the game.
Further, it was clear from the ever-increasing salaries paid to incoming employees and the inordinate time EVERYONE spent interviewing people (I mean, I was a CONTRACTOR, and they had me interviewing prospective employees), the poor quality of incoming workers, and the mandate we had to make a hiring decision BEFORE APPLICANTS LEFT THE BUILDING that something had to give. This was going on across the industry - money was just being thrown at making it appear that something was going on, but in fact, under-qualified people were just sitting there watching their stock portfolios.
Wall Street was bringing in piles of cash in the door, and ways were found to quickly spend it and give the appearance of progress.
To bring this back to relevance... I wonder how much of what was happening in 2000 on a macro level is now happening again in more focused areas?
Now may well be the time to reduce risk to stocks likely to be seen as "related" by investors ..
it is, but Standard & Poors has google on sell too (I'm looking at their report on Fidelity.)
