There is one other thing I forgot to mention. An auction market is about buying and selling. Something that is auctioned depends on the theory of supply and demand. P/E's, valuations, and other such metrics are only data to give reasons to the people in the auction to buy/sell. In the auction market for the common stock of Amazon, we have to look at the big picture. There is two men that control nearly 50% of the common stock, that is CEO Jeff and Legg Mason Bill. The rest is controlled by other insiders and various funds. There are very few shares on the open market. In fact, the only way shares have come on the open market was through insider sales and they have been snapped up by Bill and the rest of the fund managers. The financial rags and blogs have called into question the valuation of Amazon. However, these publications might as well be singing to a brick wall. The fate of the common stock rests in the hands of less then 15 men. Bill and Jeff being the two most controlling members. Bill isnt interested in selling and the SEC filings show that he keeps acquiring the stock. Bill only sells his losers and lets the winners run. In fact, as a stock goes up, he acquires more. So what is the logical point in which these 15 or so men will sell their shares? If I were them, I would only sell when the price approaches its all time high.... If you wanted to buy the common stock then I would think that there is less then 10 million shares available to the general public. Maybe even less then 5 million.... In reality, the financial rags telling you to short keep buoying the stock ever higher. Buying to cover is a virtual nightmare with such a short float.
Not a fan of amzn's business model. All though they do get these odd squeezes and rescue surges (like when legg mason almost had a bad yr. on horrible earnings, but lo and behold, amzn magically got added to s&p 500 and the stock surged at the end of the year, promptly tanking on jan earnings report). This is one of the ways they are making money these days. http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/34114 And even with that, the eps growth doesn't show good long term growth. Pull up ebay and plot out eps for two yrs compared to amzn, ebay looks like the much better buy from that perspective. Amzn is extremely volatile in both directions, squeezing shorts unexpectedly one week, then tanking 25% on earnings another. Not worth the volatility risk extremes IMO.
I here you Mike....Bill Miller LM is running a mutual fund and your points are may be valid....His position does not make be go long though......Its been a home rum for him here....You want a game winning gram slam now on a position like amzn? You probably thought that Tiger "had" to make that put at 18th today..He just has to win the tourney... You are a very interesting guy....A guy who leases airplanes, with succinct technical analysis commentary and hero worship of washed up mutual fund managers...You're tough to figure out.....
http://us.samsonite.com/webapp/us/s...d=10001&langId=-1&sku=&productcategory=COL800 I looked around in Manhattan and saw everyone dragging around these bags. At the airports, I saw even more people dragging around these bags. In the last 7 years, when I got on a domestic flight, sometimes they were so undersold that I could take any seat on the plane. The airport is now a madhouse with people everywhere, flights packed. However, the airline companies appear to be unworthy longs due to the horrible energy prices. High oil isnt going to stop people from booking flights. So the not-so-obvious long is not the airlines, but what people take on the airlines and what people are dragging around Manhattan. People demand quality and need something modern. The old bags they used in the 90s are being retired. Now they need some new stuff for their trips. The link above should take you to a worthy long which paid out a 23% dividend this year.
Once ordered a miter saw on amazon, and waited. And waited. And waited some more.........no saw? Finally received an email that it would be delayed4-6 weeks longer!! Needless to say, I cancelled and spent the tax $$ (basically what I was trying to save) at Lowes. I WILL NEVER BUY ANYTHING MORE THAN BOOKS ON AMAZON!! EVER! Besides, I am one that believes consumer discretionary is going in the tank soon. Reading your posts on just about everything else tells me that you do too. So this tells me that you're at the blackjack table playing the buyout card.
when you saw the 114 call, i could only imagine how much you were cringing. don't worry, you're not alone. amzn will be 114 in 4-5 yrs, no sooner. and that will be after another round of greenspan-like rate lowering in reaction to post-china-2008 recession.