You're not wrong but it depends on the platform and campaign. If the ads are bought click-optimized then yes... if conversion optimized then the algorithms will learn to avoid zealous clickers.
Yeah, that's what I wasn't sure about. Shorting is fine but it's also difficult to time right. And yeah guessing when it's the actual bottom is also not that self evident (at least for me).
So I'm kind of curious to hear any anecdotes from users here profiting in 2008...
By investing in the entire market continuously, and squeezing every spare penny to invest even more when there's blood on the streets.
You don't have to time anything right or pick any winners with this strategy, because you'll invest all the way down and all the way back up. You might not have made money from Jan 1 2008 through Dec 31 2008, but that money would have made a killing subsequently.
Of course if you were out of work in 2008 that is easier said than done.
OTOH If you try to make a killing by shorting, there's an infinite number of ways to end up broke by getting the timing wrong. If you bet everything on picking bottom, you can miss the boat or miss the bottom. Not nearly as risky as shorting, but certainly not as reliable as staying the course.
I never invested in direct stocks until 2008. Markets were going up just before the crash and a investing friend suggested why not buy stocks. But my demat account got delayed and when i received it markets were going down hard. I ended up investing very small amount. But i got nearly 4 times the return(I did wait few years)
Timing is very difficult, I've been told over and over again. I personally think it's easier to time the top rather than the bottom. The reason: the fall is always preceded by lots and lots of people forecasting doom and gloom. I got out of Sun Microsystems stock (and some others) at the end of 1999 for that reason. Sold at $150+. Months later it was at $5. Now, I'm no prognosticator. I was looking to buy a house in the future and knew I needed to convert to cash at some point. So, I was sort of hyper aware of what was going on and at the end of 1999 I just couldn't take it anymore.
I'd love to hear how people timed the upswing from 2008.
Got in close to the bottom with the QQQ in 2009. Chickened out and thought we'd reached a top in 2013 and cashed out. Was sitting in cash for 2 years.
Now I believe we're going down. I'm shorting through options to get some bigger action. 3x from SQQQ not good enough- so buying 6-12 month puts on Cloud companies and QQQ. Didn't get in it at the top - started at about 10% below the top.
It was a joke mostly because Bitcoin is legitimately innovative and Linkedin is yet-another-social-media-platform-except-for-Serious-Business. No one gripes about investing in stocks even though they (they being one of the biggest companies) can obviously tank 50% in one year. However, every post even remotely related to cryptocurrency will have, guaranteed, a comment or 10 about how "No one will ever invest in this because it is too volatile." It's just an observation of mine.
Tesla is huge in Norway because of a number of large tax advantages from income tax deductions, to free registration, etc.
That being said, they obviously wouldn't sell if they didn't work but I wouldn't look at the popularity there as endorsement of cold weather performance, other factors are at play.
>Wow. So tens of thousands of highly educated people in a cold climate country aren't a good enough indicator?
Educated people are the types of people that do a cost analysis taking into account tax incentives and choose the best value, even if cheap.
For example, Nissan Leafs are awful compared to other cars at the same sticker price and can hardly make it back and forth to work for a long commute. However, lots of people in the bay have them because:
* massive tax credits make it cheap
* it gets employees better parking at many offices
To be fair he has a bit of point. If you where choosing between a $200k car that's great all year round and a $120k car that was just as good (or better) during the summer month, but worse during the winter month, how much worse would the car have to be before you decided to go for $200k car?
Educated people make choices based on all the available information, not a single facet. For example, I imagine the massive[1][2] tax breaks in Norway for Tesla vehicles might sway quite a few people.
There are at least two plausible reasons Norwegians might not be a good indicator of how cold affects Tesla performance.
1. Almost 20% of the population of Norway is in the Oslo urban area. There could be a fairly large number of people who could get by reasonably without ever having to drive outside that area, and so would be OK with it if their car's range was reduced by cold.
2. The next half dozen or so largest population centers in Norway are also in the southern part of the country, as is Oslo. It looks like the Supercharger coverage is sufficient that any trip between the top several urban areas would have access to one every 70-100 miles. This could make reduced range due to cold acceptable for many people.
The tech and talent at Etsy would bring quite a bit of value to any company that were to acquire them. Their tech culture is top notch. I've followed their blog (https://codeascraft.com/) for a couple years now and have gained a ton of knowledge from it.
Neither of them have marketplaces for custom made goods (for the most part at least compared to etsy) and both are in competition with each other to expand their marketplaces to as far as they can go.
Seems like it would be a good fit to me. I'm not sure how it ultimately gets integrated it (maybe it doesn't?).
I didn't even know about that and neither did my wife who is obsessed with etsy. I'm not sure Amazon by itself is going to draw in the huge amount of users etsy as brought in; I could easily see etsy augmenting their existing offering.
What hasn't been mentioned yet is that employees hold Common Stock, whereas the investors generally hold preferred stock. The preferred stock is worth more than the common stock because of special protections/provisions/voting rights/etc.
It's perfectly reasonable that the price would be lower on a buyback program. On the other hand controlling the equity is pretty important and it's not surprising they won't let it go to open market.
Welcome to the wonderful world of being a minority shareholder.
>top class negotiating skills exhibited by the sellers
Certainly a nice premium but not clear if this is a result of negotiating prowess or necessity given the large fractured institutional holdings. 30% is a pretty typical change of control premium for public companies and until the offer OPEN was under its 90 and 120-day moving averages.
It was under its averages, but still at a frothy valuation (75 P/E before the announcement). The majority of their revenue comes from bookings and that's going to be hard to continue milking quarter after quarter. A great move to sell out for a very high sum.
If you're buying something comparable it's not $3k/month, it's $5k/month + $900/month in property taxes + all maintenance and expenses + the lost opportunity cost of investing all that money in diversified assets.
I have to call bullshit on that. You're not renting in SF what's equivalent to a $1.5M home (which is roughly what 6k a month in mortgage + taxes + etc will get you) for 3k a month.
This excess for investing doesn't exist. Its in fact cheaper to buy in SF every month then it is to rent.
Trulia has a really cool tool where you can mess with the numbers yourself
You're welcome to call bullshit but it's not and here's why.
First $6k/month will not get you a $1.5MM home unless you had a down payment of $500k and even then it would not cover your taxes and other expenses. A general rule of thumb for someone with good credit is a monthly payment of $3k will let you borrow $500k on a 30-year fixed mortgage. You can check this yourself here: http://www.mortgagecalculator.org/ (or use Trulia's).
The problem with Trulia's "really cool tool" is unless you use the advanced version all the inputs are wrong. For example, its tax assumptions are less than half of real cost for SF. A more sophisticated tool is available from the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calcula...).
Of course getting an apples to apples comparison is pretty hard unless you're talking about buying a condo vs. renting a condo in the same building. Yes, it would be cheaper to buy a 1 bedroom in Bayview then rent a 3 bedroom in Pacific Heights. If you're looking at starter homes in a decent area, say, Noe Valley and compare those costs to renting something similar in the same area renting is generally cheaper.
The "excess for investing" DOES exist, at a minimum in the form of the down payment you did not spend. The good news for home buyers is that you get leverage on that return if the market keeps going up. The bad news is that it's illiquid and we don't know whether that's a better investment than the stock market or one of the companies we see on the front page everyday. In short, if you're never moving again buying is likely cheaper. Otherwise, it's complicated.
TLDR: It's complicated, and most calculations downplay other buyer costs and ignore other renter opportunities.
Rent for my loft at 11th and Folsom was raised in 2012 to $2650. My wife and I moved across the bay to Oakland and now pay $2725 a month all for a house. The loft was then rented for $3300 after we moved out.
1000 sqft loft: $3300
1150 sqft house w/ 40x50 yard and 1 car garage: $2725
But, that isn't in san francisco, but it is within a similar commute distance.
This totally explains why everyone is moving to Oakland but, as you say, not a fair comparison.
Out of curiosity, how much would you estimate it costs to buy the house? Some quick math will let us figure out the rent vs. buy for your neighborhood.
Yeah, that's the kicker for buying. You have to have something for a down payment.
My place was $470k and we paid about $72k in closing costs. Our loan is 3.625% for $417k.
You can still find nice places at that price point, but rates have gone up. So that's another reason why it isn't a fair comparison. But it's an option, and it isn't far away like other east bay places. And like I said, commute times are similar (35 minutes for me).
What exactly is "disgusting" about the idea that the FCC is hesitating to implement something that was struck down by a federal court, and is inconsistent with Congress's regulatory agenda for telecom, and amounts to telling companies what they can['t] do with their private property?
I can understand believing that net neutrality is, on the balance, the most beneficial regulatory solution. But dismissing the opposition as "disgusting" shows nothing more than small-mindedness.
Because these private companies have monopolies on their infrastructures and use protectionist measures to keep it that way. And on top of that, companies like Comcast have created a huge conflict of interest by owning content providers like NBC. Is it fair if the only high speed internet in an area is Comcast, and they make CBS video load slow because it is a competitor? I run a VoIP company. Should comcast be allowed to charge me so my clients get quality phone service since Comcast offers its own VoIP service? The Internet should be treated as a utility. If you want to be an ISP, you have to treat all sites equally.
> Because these private companies have monopolies on their infrastructures and use protectionist measures to keep it that way.
Cable companies are not legally monopolies almost anywhere. Any franchise renegotiated since 1992 must be non-exclusive under federal law. And if you dig into it, it's cities that kill competition deals, not cable companies. Houses have FIOS in the shadow of Comcast Center in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, San Francisco blocked U-Verse expansion because AT&T's cabinets were ugly. Who exactly is at fault of perpetuating the lack of competition?
> The Internet should be treated as a utility.
That's how we got in this mess in the first place, monopolies and all. Cable companies were treated as public utility monopolies. Capital investment stagnated, because public utilities have little financial incentive to do anything other than simply keep infrastructure (barely) functional. The 1992 reform to deregulate cable and make exclusive franchises illegal wasn't a total success, but look at what happened to cable technology and investment since then relative to DSL (which remained relatively more regulated).
I think that's FUD, first of all, and unlikely to come about. Also, if there was QoS, etc, I wouldn't mind having a dedicated "Netflix ISP." The streaming experience still sucks compared to flipping a cable channel, and co-location and integration of the software stack could make such a service better. Heck, I'd love it if this was Apple's play after an iTV. Vertical integration can lead to a marvelous user experience, as Apple has shown.
What irks me about this is that services like edX are going to be affected. I didn't want MIT et al. being charged for the free video lectures they provide. Now people who used to provide high quality material for free are disincentived doing such things.
I don't love the internet because of Hulu or Netflix or iTunes or whatever else, I love it because of Wikipedia and edX, and countless other stuff that's put there by everyday people. That's what's in danger.
I honestly don't think it would happen. The cable companies have no incentive to go after sites like that. They don't use much bandwidth, wouldn't pay much before just shutting down, and are very sympathetic. There's nothing but downside for a cable company to go after such a site. It'd be irrational. They're going after Netflix because their site is responsible for a ton of bandwidth on their network and Netflix makes a lot of money leveraging their network.
No, they are going after Netflix because Netflix streaming video service competes directly with the cable companies own TV and streaming video services. It's a straight up toll to compete.
All I can think of at your response is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_. A few years ago I would have thought it to be be simply unthinkable that FCC would be considering such a proposition. Now, I'm all but certain that this would be the natural next step.
> They don't use much bandwidth, wouldn't pay much before just shutting down, and are very sympathetic.
Wikipedia consumes a lot of bandwidth. Okay, not as much as Netflix, but what about the Wikipedia of tomorrow - which houses lots of high-quality media? It feels like there might not be one if net neutrality is beaten. Or the future of education that's video lectures for the masses. Etc.
What is disgustingly necessary, and currently only being done by the opponents of net netruality, is breaking out the check books and purchasing some elected representatives.
There is a petition to remove Tom Wheeler from the FCC. Here is how it starts:
"Before he became Chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler was a lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry, which the FCC is supposed to regulate."
Very sorry to see them go and it was a beautiful product. However, this is no surprise at all. More surprising is that they were able to raise money for a business model that is fundamentally unsustainable (negative gross margins).
