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Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price

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Re: Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price

#91

Post by woah »

JonFish85 wrote: post #44
dantillberg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, yes. I don't own a home, but I would like to someday, so I'm always confused how news about falling home prices is treated as "bad" in general in the media. For me, I celebrate the news. I want housing prices to go kaboom so I can afford one.

The problem with that though is that housing prices are tightly tied to surrounding economic factors. You could go to some crappy neighborhood in a depressed area of the USA and get a great house for "nothing" (relative to, say, CA). If housing prices go kaboom, it's likely because there aren't as many people moving there, and people aren't moving there because there aren't jobs that can support people. And be carefu…

It is nice to have somewhere to live though

Re: Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price

#92

Post by smrtinsert »

dantillberg wrote: post #21
boomzilla wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for some people, myself included, the not-going-so-well recent IPOs (Square, Box, etc.) would help deflate the pressure on housing prices in SF/BA. I feel for the workers at these company, but it's becoming impossible to raise a family here when the rent/mortgage is creeping up to more than half of most people's salary.

Ha, yes. I don't own a home, but I would like to someday, so I'm always confused how news about falling home prices is treated as "bad" in general in the media. For me, I celebrate the news. I want housing prices to go kaboom so I can afford one.

You buy the neighborhood with the price of a home (in theory). Invested neighbors keep appearances up, elect good leaders, push for better schools etc. Once the value starts dropping, none of that is necessarily a given. In my area once gorgeous suburbs became gang centers just a decade or two later. Not exactly a great thing given the recommended home stay for a starter home is about 5-7 years in order for you to "make your money back" should it even go up.

Not to mention a lot of consumers view home ownership as the single largest investment they make, so they are sitting on their retirement.

Re: Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price

#93

Post by pfarnsworth »

boomzilla wrote: post #19
dantillberg wrote: post #7

Well, the NASDAQ[0] and DJIA[1] are both off 3% for the day right now, along with every other index around the world. Or, to talk about price movements that are probably a bit more noteworthy, crude oil futures on NYMEX[2] are down ~7%. It's been kind of a (minor) bloodbath so far in the markets today. So, a 10% drop for a young, growth-oriented company is not terribly surprising on a day like today, I'd think. 0: ht…

Well, for some people, myself included, the not-going-so-well recent IPOs (Square, Box, etc.) would help deflate the pressure on housing prices in SF/BA. I feel for the workers at these company, but it's becoming impossible to raise a family here when the rent/mortgage is creeping up to more than half of most people's salary.

It already happened starting in December. House prices are down and competition has dropped. We'll see if this trend continues in January but my bet is that price houses will continue downward. The only problem is that interest rates continue to be low, so some people will always have the ability to outbid others.

Re: Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price

#94

Post by dang »

pc86 wrote: post #85
dang wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The positive uses of new accounts (described by foldor and myth_buster) add more value than the negative ones destroy. Being open to trolls is annoying, but it's a price worth paying for having an open forum. It's particularly valuable when a knowledgeable person—often the creator of a project or the author of an article—is inspired to make an account and comment on the story they know about.

I know you're right but I don't have to like it :)

I bet you'd like it if we made a page of comments by new accounts who turned out to be experts on the story.

Re: Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price

#96

Post by randomsearch »

strictnein wrote: post #24
marrone12 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big competitors are Shopkeep and Revel. However, neither of them are public and likely aren't going to soon given the state of the industry.

PayPal is in this market as well: https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/credit-card-reader

> PayPal is in this market as well:

This reminds me of Peter Thiel's thoughts on monopolies.

Square are in competition with every payment method of every kind. They are not in some tiny "niche" category of payment that will somehow remain invulnerable to competition from banks, Apple Pay, Android Pay, Stripe, etc. etc.

I don't see how they can possibly survive in the long-term.

Re: Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price

#97

Post by bkjelden »

sakopov wrote: post #23

Does this have anything to do with Square? Everything looks bad right now. I'm surprised MSFT hasn't tanked like all other Tech stocks.

$MSFT is still down ~12% from late December: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=msft

It's not doing too poorly today, but it's not been immune to the larger macro trends of the last month.

Re: Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price

#98

Post by crucialfelix »

tyingq wrote: post #16

For comparison, Paypal is down 5%, Capital One is down 5.24%, Intuit down 2.24%, Visa down 3%, Amazon down 4.4%. Not to say that a 10% drop isn't notable, but the whole market is taking a beating today.

and Twitter spiked 8% from the lows, currently up 5.5% on large volume.

Re: Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price

#99

Post by woah »

pound wrote: post #51
boomzilla wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for some people, myself included, the not-going-so-well recent IPOs (Square, Box, etc.) would help deflate the pressure on housing prices in SF/BA. I feel for the workers at these company, but it's becoming impossible to raise a family here when the rent/mortgage is creeping up to more than half of most people's salary.

Sorry to tell that but no, it will not really help with raising a family here. Sadly current prices are new normal and deflated pressure will just let them to not grow further up in near future. (5%-10% drop is nothing for affordability). On another hand looking at what it became I don't even feel sorry for it's future. SF is over and to hell with it. Just a whole bunch of douches.

The real douches are the millionaire homeowners who pushed for restrictive zoning laws for so many years. They've made their fortunes, at the cost of SF mostly only being affordable for the rich.

Re: Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price

#100

Post by floppydisk »

eldavido wrote: post #82
ryanSrich wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with that though is that housing prices are tightly tied to surrounding economic factors I really question what those economic factors are though. For SF it's clearly the availability of high paying jobs. However in Portland, OR (where I live) there are little to no high paying tech jobs available, and yet the housing prices are sky rocketing to levels never seen before. Given my basic understanding of…

> The concept of savings or retirement for millennial might as well not even exist. Probably not a popular view, but I think there's some truth to it. Check out the Harvard JCHS article [1], more households are paying 30, 40, and even 50% of their salaries for rent than ever before. Major shifts like this can only be explained by culture, IMO. Maybe the US is undergoing a major shift toward wanting to live in city ce…

Tangentially, the cost of paying a mortgage is comparable to or cheaper than paying rent in the metro areas I've priced. The problem is getting enough of a % downpayment saved to "unlock" the house purchase option.

People I've known who bought houses look at it as locking a "rent rate" in for 30 years and assuming the burden of maintenance rather than riding the fluctuating markets. Right now, they're locked in at lower rates than other people I know are paying in rent to live in a similar area.

I willing to wager part of the problem is the lockdown on lending after 07/08 and more people got pushed into the rent market because they couldn't get the loans to purchase a house which has led to the inversion of the cost of owning vs renting. Historically, owning has been more expensive than renting in most places

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