Replies

>>Is it just me or does it appear to everyone else that your average FReeper pays little attention to these market Threads. It's like many FReepers have an economic/political disconnect.<< I'm lurking. I worked, in early 2000, for a dot com trying to get to it's ipo. In the few weeks I was their (seven, as a consultant hired literally on a day-to-day basis) I was promoted to the point where I was responsible for everyone doing the page content, design AND ASP coding, and my experience is strictly MAINFRAME programming and project manangement (that's COBOL DB2 and IMS for those of you in west palm beach). The reason I left was that the more I knew about what was going on and what had been accomplished in the year before I arrived, the more I knew they didn't have a clue what they were doing, even though there were some extremely bright people there (one had written books on project management and design). I realised the whole dot com thing was a sham in those seven weeks. Yeah, those of us that thought it was crazy to by Yahoo et al when it first came out were right, eventually. But we didn't anticipate the "tulip bulb" feeding frenzy that would happen first. Some really did make out like bandits. Those days are over, much like the late '20's are over.

Yep....and lo and behold today this thread has over 350 hits so far.

My take on the Net market was always to buy the "highway versus the stuff that traveled on it". I think with the exception of EBAY, this was reasonable. I did trade IPO pops on every dotcom they rolled out and usually I tagged a few teenies or even dollars here and there and closed out the day stockless. ELoan ate my lunch on IPO opening day. The volume was so heavy that my ECN froze up and by the time I could execute a sell order, the stock had fallen off the bridge. I lost mid 5 figures in about 90 seconds that day. It was the pivotal moment that caused my wife to eventually shut me down. She was afraid to be widowed so young....she was right. I make about the same return position trading with my pro as I did daytrading but damn it was so much fun. The most fun I've had in my professional life since I owned cargo ships. Building and managing warehouses and storage facilities like I do nearly fulltime now is boring and dull and a bitch to deal with zoning and planning commissions and codes but my children and grandchildren will be grateful...lol

I suppose history has proven largely that while subscriber lists and projections can hint at a company's value that they surely cannot stand alone. Got to have a bit more bricks and mortar to the mix.