Wednesday, November 28, 2007

GeeDrive

I like that GDrive. I want it. I need it. A couple of years ago, an April Fool's virus trashed my C Drive. Two year's worth of internet porn, gone in a flash. Why should I have to keep all my stuff on my own stupid computer? I'm ready to sign up.

In a way, I'm already getting the service with this blog. Google stores everything I write. I don't have to worry about it. I have had no problems. I do have a question: how long does Google promise to keep my data? Forever? And they're going to do that for everybody's stuff?

Of course, we know they buy PC's by the boxcar. But how many boxcars will it take? How many googol bytes will everybody's stuff require? They probably have some guy in charge of figuring that out. He's probably the guy in charge of buying the boxcars.

Maybe it's not a big problem. Maybe they've worked it out that, by the year 2039, all the content in the world, times 10, will fit in a garage in Trenton.

Or maybe they're going to have to have a purge policy. So what is the rule for throwing people's stuff away? I know that 99 % of it is garbage. But how do you separate the whee from the crap? This is a fundamental question. I read the Terms of Service. It's not in there.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Hard Cash and White Wine

Holding GOOG is easy. Holding CASH is hard. Holding CASH aligns me with shorts and bashers. I don't want to be aligned with shorts and bashers. I don't like them as human beings. But I can't help myself. I want everything that's not GOOG to go down. A lot.

I'm afraid that I will turn into a basher. That I will start posting "SELL THIS BLOATED PIG!!!" on message boards that I don't even care about. And my posts will be filled with special characters like #!?%@!!. And I'll start writing like English is not even my second language.

That's not what I want to do. I want to be one of the gang and be happy when everything goes up, like today. But that's not the way I feel. I feel defeated. I feel out of sync with the universe.

On a day like today, when everything goes up and I'm holding cash, I feel like I'm at a party where everybody is smoking reefer and I'm standing around with a glass of white wine.

More Loathing! More Fear!

Let's get it over with.

Get your tooth pulled. Go shopping with your wife. Visit your mother-in-law. Take Ex-Lax and go on a long bus ride. Get yourself in a real bad mood and let's take this sucker down another 2-3%. That ought to do it.

Otherwise, my cash and I will be left waiting at the altar. Jilted by this fickle market again.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Fear and Loathing in the Afternoon

I'm going to ignore the unpleasantness of the afternoon, after such a fine morning.

Instead, I'm going to meditate about the Yahoo! Message Boards. I have been jumping in, of late, to hawk my wares, and it has been an experience. They say that, on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. On the Yahoo! Message Boards, it's painfully obvious. I include myself among the canines - I have jousted with the best and worst of them. There's nothing wrong with being a dog.

The GOOG Message Board reminds me of the JDSU Board I used to read six years ago, but there's a big difference: GOOG is going up. The GOOG Message Board is a big party. The JDSU Message Board was a wake. As soon as the body was buried, everybody scattered. I looked around for the guy who said, every day, that JDSU was going to 900, but he was gone. Now, all you'll find there are widows with their mite and orphans in the sun.

The Unbearable Lightness of GOOG

If you have owned GOOG for a long time - say, two or three months - then you know what levitation is all about. In those heady days, GOOG floated up of its own accord, free of gravity and the surly bonds of earth. Breathing its own helium, it required no news or press conferences for its buoyancy.

Of course, there was a period of downswooping, but that's the way thermals work. Just a way of seeking out the next updraft. Now, we've found it and it's a warm one.

It's enough to make an old man giddy.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

What Time Was It?

This morning, I'm thinking about time and place - the stuff of memory. They are not the same. We remember places with great precision, but time is elusive.

I may remember going to a place exactly. I'm not in doubt about going there, and I may remember it in great detail. But I'm not sure when. Time is imperfectly recorded in our minds. There is a chonological ordering of our memories, but it is very unreliable. When I have tried to confirm the time of some memory of mine, I have often been way wrong.

Why this is, I don't know. Sunday is a day for questions, not answers.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Stuck Inside of LA with a Hot Stock and No Broker

Back in the sixties, when I was young and stupid, I started walking down to the Merrill Lynch office, every day, on my lunch breaks. I was fascinated by the idea of trading stocks. It seemed a way of getting money without working for it.

I stood in the back of a room with a bunch of old men, watching the electronic tape going by. Over in a corner, there was a complete set of Value Line reports in a big black loose-leaf binder. Most of the pages were unintelligible to me, filled as they were with what looked like columns of hieroglyphs. Each page was dedicated to a single stock and, at the bottom of the page, there was a little report that discussed the stock's chances, going forward. After studying the pages for some time at the Merrill Lynch office, I sent $245 to Value Line for my own subscription. Then I was able to read the pages as much as I wanted to, in the comfort of my own home.

Eventually, I started thinking about buying something. One stock, in particular, struck my fancy - National Homes. Value Line classified it as a Special Situation and rated it as one of their top picks. That was all I needed to know.

I started watching it every day. I noticed that it never traded less than 5 or more than 5 7/8. I watched it for six months. Then, one day, it went by at 6. I had never seen it do that before. So I bought 100 shares at 6. Then, it started trading between 6 and 7.

Right at that time, the first week of June, 1968, I had to go to Los Angeles on business. I was devastated because I wouldn't be able to watch my stock trade during the day, so in LA, every day after work, I got the early edition of the paper, which had the closing New York stock prices in it. By midweek, my National Homes stock had gone up to 8 1/2. I was thrilled.

But in the same paper, that night, there was a headline, saying that mortgage rates were being increased. I didn't know what that meant, exactly, but it didn't sound good for any company with "Homes" in its name. I decided that I needed to sell my 100 shares, quick, before they went down.

The problem was, my 100 shares were back in Atlanta, on account with the Merrill Lynch office there. I had to do something fast, because in LA the stock market opened at 6 AM and I had to be at work at nine. I made a desperate plan.

The next morning, I got up at 4 AM, dressed and shaved, and took a taxi to the local Merrill Lynch office, arriving just after five. Of course, they didn't know me there, but I explained that I had 100 shares of stock sitting in their Atlanta office that I wanted to sell at the open. Without benefit of computers, they called Atlanta with my ID and confirmed that I was legit. They put the order in.

I went to work, wondering all morning what price I had gotten. At lunchtime, I called the Merrill guy and he said I got 8 1/2. I was ecstatic. I asked him where it was trading, right then. He said, "9." I asked him to check it again. I explained that the mortgage rates were going up and that was going to make housing stocks go down. He said, "It's still 9." By the end of the week, when I flew home, it was 11.

I was crushed. I got a measly 41% profit, when it could have been 80%! I should have stood in bed. Literally. I thought about buying back in at 11, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Within two months, it reached 54. I was inconsolable. I stopped checking the price after that.

A year later, I decided to check it again. It was back to 6.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Thanksgiving Eve

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day.

Nothing will be open. The mail won't come. On TV, there will be parades and sports contests for those who are thankful for such things.

In our house, Thanskgiving has to be negotiated each year. This is because our children married other people's children, and all those people expect their children to come over to their house on Thanksgiving. This year, my wife and daughter spent much time on the phone, coming to an agreement. The upshot was, we had our children over to our house for Thanksgiving dinner, two weeks ago. And when the time came for Boompa (that's me) to say a few words for the occasion, I praised wife and daughter for their resourcefulness and coolness aforethought.

And that's why, tomorrow, my wife and I will be having a quiet dinner, by ourselves, with a small, standing rib roast where the turkey ought to be. And we'll be thankful for it.

But the truth is, I have a small problem with the whole idea of thanksgiving. It puts us in the position of giving thanks for being lucky. Lucky to have a family, and a house and a turkey.

But what about the guy who doesn't have all those things? Who doesn't have our wealth, privilege and sense of self-importance?

He may be thankful he's not us.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The Thrill Has Come Back

After today, I'm not studying pain no more. Any expression of misery from me, today, would be punctuated with small outbursts of glee. Clearly suspect.

So, I sold my SPY that I bought yesterday - to do anything else would be patently insincere.

Back to fundamentals - GOOG and cash.

Ain't Nobody Feelin' No Pain

GOOG: up twenty-five...

Let us give thanks.

Monday, November 19, 2007

I Want to Feel Your Pain

Today was a day of gloom, horror and panic. Everything started out bad and then deteriorated. That's what I heard on the Stock Channel. Personally, I didn't feel it myself, being mostly in cash and Google. All I felt was lonely.

I wanted to be in the company of all that misery. I wanted to feel my gut wrench. But all I felt was - OK. And there was no one I could talk to about it.

Most people don't like schadenfreude, mainly because they don't know what it means. I feel guilty because I do.

So, I decided to buy 350 shares of SPY today. The S&P 500 chart is on the verge of breaking down. I hope it does. I want to join the crowd. I want to tell you about my pain. And I want to hear about yours.

You Do Have a Counting House, Don't You?

The market is trying to price in a recession. We need Sagan back to put it in perspective for us: "Trillions and trillions..."

Slow day for GOOG owners. No news. The stock will probably dither for a while.

Good day to kick back and count your shares, like they had Cleveland's picture on them.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Hewing to the Old Ways

Sunday is a time for simplifying your life, for stepping back from the networked world to everything. The old ways are slower, and that is better.

It's always been there. It hasn't gone away. I haven't forgotten how to do it. I opened the Sunday paper and found the business section, turning the pages until I saw "NASDAQ National Market". Section G was in the middle of the page. I scanned the tiny lines until I saw it:

*Google 663.63 -30.34.

Small, definitive and true. An eternal verity. It didn't change when I looked at it again.

In the inset box, "Stock Tables Explained", I learned that the star means that the stock "traded more than 6 percent of its total shares outstanding."

It was all that I needed to know.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Barron's in my Driveway

My wife came to me, a while back, with one of those lists of magazines to subscribe to. She told me that I had to pick at least one from the list or our grandchildren would never be accepted at Yale.

I looked over the list, even though I knew what my choices were: Field and Stream, Psychology Today, Architectural Review and others even more depressing. The last time I had been near a field or a stream was in 1952. And I'm sure that Psychology Today is the same as it was yesterday and the day before.

My wife said, "How about Smart Money?"

I gave her a look. But then I noticed something I had never seen before in such a list: Barron's! Now that was a possibility - a humor magazine. I like humor. And besides, the guys on Cramer's web site are always talking about the cute pictures on the cover and I'm always feeling left out. I decided that I would subscribe to Barron's. I mean, where else can I find out what Fred Hickey is doing?

Now, every Saturday, the latest edition of Barron's appears in my driveway as if by magic. This morning, I heard it slap against the pavement and so I looked out to see who had delivered it. I saw a grown man, with a sack over his shoulder, pedaling down the street on a bicycle. He looked a lot like Michael Santoli.

Anyway, I'm enjoying my subscription. It takes me about five minutes to read. First, Abelson and Santoli. Then, a quick check of the company index for any references to Google. Finally, Eric Savitz, Market Watch and any other tidbits I can glean from a quick skim. And, of course, the cartoons.

When I started getting my copies every Saturday, I figured that now I would get some respect whenever I clicked on Barron's Online. In the past, I was always denied access because I wasn't a subscriber. Imagine my dismay when I tried to get in recently and was again denied. Barron's needs to get its act together.

I thought about calling Murdoch, but I figured he was busy. He'll probably get around to fixing it when he gets a chance.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Sad Sack Syndrome

Breathes there a trader
with confidence so great
that he never has said,
"I have now made the trade,
So it surely will crater"?

Thursday, November 15, 2007

No more bitchin'

Of interest only to me, is the fact that, today, I bought back the 48 GOOG (plus three) that I sold a few weeks ago. The price was 628.42. My profit in the transaction is small, but measurable. Nevertheless, I am glad to have my whole complement of shares again (plus three).

I ended the day up a bit from there, so now my only uncertainty is whether I will be humiliated by further declines tomorrow, or somewhere down the line.

Of course, if GOOG had rolled over when I told it to, at 650, and then dropped 15%, I would be buying it back now at 550, and you would never hear me whine again.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Three hopes of a googoptimist

We hope that our vision is clear and true.

We hope that our faith, loyalty and steadfastness will be rewarded, some day.

And we hope that, when the time comes, we'll know when to get out.

googoptimist club

I recently admitted to being a googoptimist.

A googoptimist is a person who owns one or more shares of GOOG and believes fervently that GOOG will increase in value beyond everyone's wildest dreams. Googoptimists base their belief, not on hopes and dreams, but on empirical intuition.

Googoptimists are considered naive and gullible by some, but they don't care. They're a clubby bunch.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Off the Dial

On our way to "750 and beyond", we had a hundred-dollar misunderstanding, but we got that straight, today.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program: eight-hunnert, nine hunnert... Dare I say it... A thundo!

Grundy Market

Back in the old days, a couple of years ago, markets would correct and stay there for a while and then they would correct a little more, like a Slinky going downstairs.

Nowadays, stocks go up like crazy in the morning, correct in the afternoon, and then go crazy again the next morning. Support and resistance are superimposed.

I may have to think of something else to do with the proceeds from my recent GOOG sale.

AEO, anyone?

Monday, November 12, 2007

We're Smarter Than They Are

Any idea about what catalyzed the props getting knocked out from under GOOG, today? There was no news of any substance, no downgrades. Was it just time? Or could it have been the news about Google going after the schlocky content producer, Simon Fuller? Let's see...

CONTENT?! Are they nuts? Don't they know that they're the distributors? Don't they realize that content providers are schmucks? That every shlub with a blog out in the long tail is a content provider?

Well, you would think. Unless Larry and Sergey, who like to smile for the camera in hot tubs, are really idiots, after all.

Naa. It was just time. AAPL and RIMM took worse chops today, and we know they're not schmucks.

Discipline, Patience and Balls

For me, today is the best of both worlds: a holiday from work, but the markets are open. I get to consider my chances at leisure. So far, there's not much going on for a guy who has thrown his full resources behind Google and cash. The market is up, but GOOG is down.

GOOG being down is not all bad for me, as I have money that's burning a hole in my money market fund, waiting for GOOG to move below 650. As I live and blog, it's there now. I can now buy back the 48 shares I recently sold, and put a two-dollar profit in my pocket! But not so fast. My target to buy is the region below 610. Why? Don't ask me. Ask the seat of my pants.

If you have read this rag before, then you know that I am not a pundit with credibility. Nevertheless, when I have the opportunity, I'm as prone to sermonizing as the next guy. Especially on a holiday, following a Sunday.

My text, this week, is Discipline, Patience and Balls.

For the long distance runner in Google, discipline is nothing. Discipline is going to bed at night and getting up in the morning. So much for discipline.

Balls is what has led some of us to put 20% of our net worth into GOOG, a single stock.

Patience is what I am studying now. When GOOG shot up to 747, I thought, I'll never see 650 again. But I bought patience. Now, Lafayette, we are here. But more patience is required.

Discipline, Patience and Balls. But the greatest of these is Patience.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

GOOG is too much with us

Getting and spending. That's all we think about. Surely, there are other things in life, more satisfying, enjoyable, uplifting and inspiring. The problem is, all those things require getting and spending. But that's all it is - a means to an end.

Who among us has the fortitude to forget about GOOG for three years? Forsake the Google Message Board, shun the Stock Channel, avoid the closing prices in the Wall Street Journal, turn away from any mention of money, and its derivatives. Get thee behind me, Cramer.

In 1986, I didn't know where the Dow Jones average was. The greatest secular bull run in history was underway, and I didn't know about it, or care. Those were the halcyon days, not three weeks ago, when GOOG was still fab.

My wife's step-mother was given 10 shares of JNJ in 1950. She never gave it another thought. Fifty years later, it was worth a million-six. A homily for the poor greedy man.

A singular experience it would be to wake up in three years to find that your GOOG was worth a million-six.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Madness!

I retired from the Federal Government in 2004 with the best pension on the planet. I can almost live on it. As a Federal employee, I also put a little money into the Government Thrift Savings Plan, with several investment vehicles to choose from: money market, bond, S&P 500, Small Cap or International.

I kept my shares in the C Fund (S&P 500). When I retired, I was no longer allowed to make contributions, so the number of shares I had was frozen. My bottom line, then, was at the mercy of the market. Not good enough for the likes of me.

I decided to game the C Fund. My method was to shuttle the money, back and forth, from the C Fund to the G fund (money market) and back again, with the objective of increasing, over time, the number of C Fund shares I had.

I didn't try to hedge my bets. Moving half was not my style - it was all or nothing, roll the dice.

It was an exercise in market timing. I found that it was extraordinarily difficult to do, but over the past three years I have been successful at it. I have gone to cash and back six times and I increased my shares on all but one of those moves. At present, I have 11% more shares than I had when I retired.

I have courted disaster more than once. The last time was on September 17, when the thing I thought the Fed was least likely to do, it did. When the announcement came the next day, I was dead - hoist by my own petard in the G Fund, accruing a rapidly diminishing, pitiful rate of return, while, according to the Stock Channel, the greatest bull run in history had commenced.

But I exercised patience. When you're dead, patience comes easy. And sure enough, fear, uncertainty and doubt - the three witches of Wall Street - reared their beautiful heads and the market headed south. On Thursday last, in the midst of building pandemonium, I calmly stood in the breach with my finger poised over the Reload button. But there was a catch.

In the Thrift Savings Plan, you can easily move from one fund to another, but you have to make the decision before noon to get the closing price at the end of the day - a heinous rule that makes it virtually impossible to time moves with any precision. But I wasn't worried: Thursday morning, panic was beginning to set in. The likelihood that the bottom would drop out in the afternoon seemed a cider house cinch to me. Just before noon, I pushed the button to go back to the S&P 500.

In the early afternoon, I was thrilled to see that we were down big. The S&P 500 was being slaughtered. I came home early to watch the last hour on TV. There, my thrill turned to thrombosis as the market turned around and came roaring back. By the close, the S&P was flat on the day and my advantage had been wiped out. I got back in at the closing price and ended with a paltry 21 more shares than I had before. Then, on Friday, the market turned back around and resumed the slaughter.

But I didn't care. I rejoiced that I survived the debacle without a loss of shares. In fact, I was up a Jackson. I had dodged a bullet. I thought about Churchill's eloquent observation: "Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." Even if it's only me, shooting at my own foot.

When Bananas Split

Google Guy: "What's a share of GOOG worth?"

Idiot: "Nothing."

Google Guy: "$700?"

Idiot: "No way."

Google Guy: "$300?"

Idiot: "Dream on."

Google Guy: "How about $66.397 at Friday's close?"

Idiot: "Maybe."

Google Guy: "It could be arranged."

Making Progress

I have resolved to read "The Google Story".

So far, this morning, I have looked at all the photographs and seen Sergey and Larry together in a hot tub, smiling. It is amazing how much those guys resemble each other.

Friday, November 9, 2007

Shoulda Oughta

The weekend is nigh. A time for reflecting on ways and means. Saturday is for shoulda. Sunday is for oughta.

"The Google Story"

I was already a GOOG shareholder when David Vise's "The Google Story" was published in the fall of 2005. I let it be known that I wouldn't mind getting it for Christmas.

And so it turned up under my tree. That was two years ago. I still haven't read the book.

It would do me a lot of good, I'm sure, if I did read it. For one thing, it would make it less likely that I might embarrass myself in these pages by speculating about something that was clearly explained in the stupid book.

I wonder how many GOOG shareholders have read it.

You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch

OK, enough fooling around. It's time to assess the damage, you in your way and me in mine.

We thought we were going to get away with a puny 8-point decline, but 40 points (with another 14 in the futures this morning) is a little more bracing. So, how low will it go? You can consult your charts, but in my view the only reason for studying the charts is that everybody else is studying them. I consult the seat of my pants. A 20-percent decline is not unusual for GOOG - that would take us back to 600, more or less. I will start looking for my "buy" button if it goes below 650. I don't have a "sell" button anymore.

The more interesting situation, to me personally, is my other investment vehicle - cash. I continue to watch and wait.

Meanwhile, GOOG is at 668, which backs us up about three weeks, as the crow flies.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Lindsay Lohan, call home

The Wall Street Journal Online reported today that Microsoft CEO, Ballmer, ripped Google. And RIM Chief, Lazaridis, ripped Apple. Meanwhile, RIM's other CEO, Balsillie, ripped Microsoft. Apple CEO, Jobs, could not be reached and was presumed ripped.

Priorities

"The Google Opinion" is a sideline for me. I have a day job, but on a day like today I am going to knock off early and go home. I want to be near my money, so I can kiss it good-bye.

Similarities between me and Larry Page

Similarities:

Same first name.

Both went to Stanford as graduate students.

Both got M.A.'s and left Stanford before getting a Ph.D.

Differences:

About a zillion bucks.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

DON'T PANIC

GOOG ended with a loss, today.

Let me explain: a loss in GOOG means that, at the close of trading, the shares were selling for less than they were at the close of the previous day. A loss in GOOG is just like the gains that you are familiar with, except that the direction is down, rather than up. This is represented by a minus sign (-) in front of the number that indicates the magnitude of the change. If the number is small, you're probably OK. But, if it's big, you may be screwed.

If GOOG ends with a loss on several days in succession, that is called a "downturn" or "correction". This is usually when most traders begin to think that they are screwed.

I hope that this has been helpful to you in this time of doubt, uncertainty and fear.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Excuuuse me!

I'm still steamed about the capitalization issue: the argument that Google is too big. I don't get it. The price is not out of whack. It is reasonably tethered to the earnings by a modest PE. So the argument boils down to: Google makes too much money!

Idiot and Google Guy

Idiot: "Google's too expensive."

Google Guy: "What do you mean?"

Idiot: "The price is too high."

Google Guy: "A lot of companies have higher ones."

Idiot: "It's the capitalization."

Google Guy: "Yeah."

Idiot: "Google will be bigger than Microsoft soon."

Google Guy: "Yeah."

Idiot: "It will be bigger than Exxon."

Google Guy: "Yeah."

Idiot: "If it keeps going for 20 years, its capitalization will be a trillion!"

Google Guy: "Yeah."

Idiot:

Google Guy: "What's your point?"

Family Values

We love our children. We want them to do well. We buy them footballs, hockey sticks and clarinets. We go to their performances, ready to confront anyone who disputes their budding genius, but secretly we agonize for them. And it's not at all because we hope they will support us in our old age. Not at all.

Go, Google! - our child.

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Standing in line at the QuikTrip, thinking

On Sunday, some people go to church. I go to the QuikTrip. Gas for my car and the Sunday New York Times for my mental and spiritual edification.

This morning, paper in hand, I stood in line behind a man who was buying a package of Red Man chewing tobacco and thirty dollars worth of lottery tickets. There are lots of different kinds of tickets and it takes time to decide. I didn't mind - Sunday is a time for unhurried reflection.

I have never bought a lottery ticket in my life, because there's a small, but measurable, chance that I might win. I believe that overwhelming wealth, if you're not born to it, will ruin your chances for happiness. For one thing, it means that you'll be picking up the lunch tab for the rest of your life.

Why, then, did I buy 263 tickets for the Google lottery? Good question. The truth is, I'm not against money. I would like to have more of it. Just not too much more.

I don't need a lot of money. I live modestly and like it that way. But, investing in the Google lottery gives me something to do every day. It's fun.

And, someday, it may get me into a better class of nursing home.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Naysayers

Years ago, I used to read the JDSU message board obsessively. The JDSU board was full of fanatical cheerleaders for JDSU.

I remember one guy who always wrote that JDSU would be $900 by the end of the following year, guaranteed. He gave a long rationale for his thesis that mentioned "Fiber to the Curb". I wonder what happened to that guy.

Of course, the JDSU board had naysayers, too, who roped you in with clever hooks and then hit you with their message, which always boiled down to: "Don't be a chump - SELL THIS BLOATED PIG!!!"

Meanwhile, on the Stock Channel, analysts were saying, "Maybe it's normal, today, to have a PE of a thousand."

The sobering thought is, in the case of JDSU, the naysayers were right. I should have taken their advice. I should have sold the bloated pig.

And the day will surely come when the naysayers are right about GOOG. When it will be a bloated pig. When everybody is living on Google Earth and GOOG's PE is a thousand. When pigs fly.

Friday, November 2, 2007

Top of GOOG

Topping, toppy, topped. I'm hearing that a lot, now, in the Google message board and on the Stock Channel. But I'm not concerned about that. Until I can see the top of Google, I'm not going to worry about the top of GOOG.

Sober Reflection

I had two theories about GOOG, near term. It's beginning to appear that one of those theories is correct: "750 and beyond". The current troubling of the broader market may qualify this assessment a bit, but GOOG has, so far, been unsusceptible to such troubles. And why should it be? Contrary to the popular surmise, advertising goes up in bad times, not down. "What, GOOG worry?"

As I blog, GOOG is up a point. The broad market is tanking again. But it's early yet. My guess is, we weather this rough spot and resume chugging again.

Which is not to say that a day of reckoning has been declared illegal in this stock. But it will come from its own excesses and not those of others. Chastened by my premature profit-taking at 650, I will not be quick again to dilute that precious resource that is my GOOG position if it achieves anything as piddling as "fair value".

Over 800, I will think about lightening some more, but not before. In this respect, I am fearless.

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Due Superstition

There are those who say that we mustn't get giddy now, else it might signal a top - pride goeth before a crushing.

How many MSFT shareowners were giddy in 1995?

A question for Altucher to research.