This question was inspired by a chance exchange I had with Cyclops in the McDar thread -- Posts 1971, 1975 & 1976. My thesis was that with all the problems that Google is having sooner or later the public is going to become aware and the stock prices will come tumbling down. If you think this is an accurate analysis then you should sell the stock short. Cyclops believe that the stock still has strong upward momentum and that it is not time to sell short yet. What do you think? Vote in the poll.
Never short a stock with strong upward momentum. IF you are going to short it, IMO you should wait for it to show major weakness for at least a week. This is a post I made Oct 28th 2004 on seochat, when people were saying they want to short GOOG (it was around $150 at that point): http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?t=14884&page=3 "October 28th, 2004, 02:56 PM - Google is not overvalued IMO. Look at their earnings growth, pretty incredible. Right now the number of companies using PPC is relatively small compared to what it could be. If google plays it right, they literally could become THE marketing giant, period. They have also built incredible brand recognition and loyalty. The fact that google is now commonly used as a verb demonstrates this point well. I've never heard someone say, "I'm not sure, let me go yahoo it...". And whoever it was that pointed out that companies are not valued by trailing P/E was 100% correct. It's all about the combination of past income/revenue growth, room for expansion, and forward P/E." Shorting a stock with as much momentum as Google is an extremely risky endeavor at best. You have to be VERY confident to be able to say, OK, the stock is up 300% in the past 8 months, I'm going to short this baby because it's going to start going down now or very soon. The P/E and P/S are reasonable, the chart is in ramp-up mode. My advice is don't short stock unless you are already a professional, successful full time trader. IMHO only. Very interesting post, I'll be watching the results.
I tend to agree that all the signs are positive, but those things just bring out the contrarian in me. In addition to which I really do think the company is having technical difficulties, and has been for some time. Eventually this will become evident and the public will cool. After all stock prices are really a matter of public opinion and in the end have very little to do with financial performance. The other interesting factor is that it appears that Bill Gates has personally entered the fray and is putting Google down. http://www.seo-news.com/
I dont' think this is a good for shorting google. Never try to catch bottom or top. Follow the trend.
I'd be interested to see results of a 5000 people survey, representative of the overall UK/US population that asks about Google's status/usefulness etc. Us webmasters might be aware of the 'issues' but I highly doubt a lot of average (and the gross bulk in numbers) Googlers have a clue what's going on. Based on what these 'less-informed' believe I think it will go strong for a while. Competition is still miles behind on many of the things Google do as well. Why would these people who don't know the intricate details, who can't see heavy competition and who see a well performing company with well performing stock, not buy?
Rothken Law Firm: California Court Gives Green Light to Lawsuit Against Yahoo!, Google, FindWhat and Other Search Engines for Alleged Illegal Involvement in Internet Gambling Advertising; Plaintiffs' Case to Move Forward In this case and not as usual G couldn't get around the lawsuit among with others.
That's exactly the news that we contrarians love to hear. Does anybody track this stock regularly -- I don't. If someone does would they like to start to post the closing values to this thread and we will see how long the upward momentum lasts. GOOG Jun 3 280.26 -7.64 -2.65% 18,815,956 Geez! look at that we should have sold it short on June 2. I think that is the day this thread started.
From Yahoo (where a stock:GOOG Google search leads to ) They get a knock every so often, I have yet to see it sustain. Not that I follow this a lot...
I watch it almost every day and the trend shows that G will be perhaps up to approx. $427.00 (like an ounce of Gold) by the end of this year.
Yes but, trends are mathematical. it is public opinion that buys stock and the public or institutional traders are fickle. Why did it dip almost 3% on Friday? Could it be because Bill Gates took a shot at it and people started to get nervous? It doesn't take much to start your trend in the opposite direction.
I reckon it takes a BIG lawsuit loss for them to go down or some accounting scandal. 'Naturally' I think they'll be fine for months to come. On paper, it all looks rosey.
Even though I don't have any GOOG stock my opinon is that as of yet "it is still a great buy". Google have had trouble in the webmaster community, but not the public. The public is very unaware of any of the recent problems Google has been having. It is more webmaster elements that have been affected. Majority of Google stockholders are common internet users or surfers, not webmasters. Common internet users still see Google as the top leading search engine (which it is)...and I do not forsee that changing any time soon. As for stockholders things are progressing with Google. Google does not announce many of these backend things which affect webmasters because if they were to announce all that was going wrong with their network it would cause a panic with their stockholders. Imagine if common users knew of all the problems Google has been having...without having hardcore knowledge of the webmaster community, you would think Google is a failure. But instead common users (stockholders) remain worry-free. Its genius IMHO.
When G started "experts" estimated that the price will go down below the $50.00 mark. This was also a kind of a public opinion. And now, one should not underestimate the powerful supporters G has. It was G that changed the internet scene for good. This can be considered as a longlasting bonus. Some interruptions from outside are just like harmless mosquito bites.
Most recent: - Google network down for almost 2 hours (search, adsense, adwords, gmail, etc.) - PR disappears & Cached Server Down for days - Google Gmail, Froogle, & Adsense down - 302 Redirect - Internal Server & Datacenter Issues - Google Sandbox That's what the webmaster community is faced with...this is what the public sees? - Google realease Movie operator - Google releases Google Maps - Google releases Google Sitemaps - Google releases Google Desktop Search - Google release RSS Feeds for Adsense - Google acquires Urchin - Google acquires ZipDash - Google acquires Dodgeball - Google acquires Picasa - Google acquires Keyhole - Google Announces Q1 2005 Financial Results All in all I think Google knows the importance of its webmasters and recently I have seen a real effort from Google to reach out to the webmasters and deliver better results to web searches. All of these hiccups that Google has been through the past few weeks is just bumps in the road for preparation of something big. They will soon smooth out and Google will make everyone happy, once again.
Also remember that some of those are "features", not "bugs"... and whether some of the rest would be considered "problems" is perhaps debatable...
My 2 cents worth: 1. Know yourself (Part One): Be very clear in your own mind as to why you want to short GOOG. Is it because you “hate†GOOG; perhaps because it is sandboxing one of your sites? (bad reason) Or, because you want to make money? (good reason) Check your ego and emotions at the door, before you enter any order. 2. Know yourself (Part Two): What $$ amount can you tolerate losing if you are wrong, before you feel angry or guilty? 3. What is your best guess as to the Risk/Reward (actually Reward/Risk) ratio? I have put up a chart here (click to expand, I hope it works!), with some simple technical indicators. Right or wrong, my pure guess at a reasonable shortish term price target for a Short of GOOG is about $230. This would be about -$56, or 19% lower than Friday’s close. If you are right, on average, only 50% of the time (and that’s actually better than most) over the long run …you should think about a Buy Stop order at about $28 ($56/-$28 = 2:1, Reward/Risk) higher than where we are now, e.g., approximately $314. 4. Position size according to your assessment of (2) and (3) above. If your circumstances are very comfortable, and you could loose, say, $500 on a trade without batting an eye; or getting into a huge row with your spouse about why you didn’t add the $500 you have just lost to the kids’ College Savings Accounts, then your position size would be about: $500/$28 = 18 shares [No need to worry here about the odd-lot short sale rule, as GOOG is traded on NASDAQ, not the NYSE] Feel somehow diminished about trading “only†18 shares? Forget that crepe; the market neither knows nor cares what you do. If it is “right†for you that you only risk $500, $100, or $10,000 - then stick to the appropriate number of shares and to hell with what your broker may think. 5. Miscellaneous points: a) “Window dressing†– some fund managers like to go in to the end of a Quarter, showing that the Fund they manage owns a position in a stock which has done phenomenally well. Realize this and, absent negative news on GOOG, be prepared to be patient until after 6/30. b) Generally, it is a bad idea to “fight the marketâ€, and this is what a Short of GOOG would be presently. You might want to start small, and scale-in your short position, waiting for apparent confirmation that your judgment is correct before adding to the short position, even though minimum commissions will make this tactic expensive. The recent change to the up-tick rule is quite helpful here. c) With great respect to Minstrel, market makers are better judges of human psychology than anyone on this planet – they have to be to continue to be able to afford their Bentleys. Try not to set a Stop limit at a round number, e.g., $314.59 may be better than $315 or $310. Market makers “have been known†to run a stock’s price up to a round number, ping it, elect all the stop orders that are clustered there, and then run it back down again. I don’t currently have a position either way in GOOG, and I don’t expect to open one.
Absolutely! When Google's overall popularity is starting to sink, then it might be time to start selling. At this point I don't see that happening ...
Please don't forget that the business opportunity G opened up for the world community is still young and growing, - so why should ther be any downward trend?