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Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#91

Post by Keyframe »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #51
ChrisClark wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all subjective but I love the new Gmail interfaces, Hangouts is much better than Talk and keeps getting better. Google+ photos is so much better than Picasa, I love how I can search for 'blue cars' in my photos and it returns them even though I've never tagged any of them. Android has seen enormous improvements, I love stock 4.3 and Google Now. Chrome's new 'native' apps wrapper-like thing is neat. Even Youtube…

The Hangouts experience on Android is an abomination. Its why I disabled (yes, fully disabled) Hangouts and switched to Whatsapp. Its that bad.

At least you have hangouts.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#92

Post by nostrademons »

90002 wrote: post #67
dragontamer wrote: post #27

The value of a company is not measured in its individual stock price, but instead measured in its market cap. The real headline should be: Google hits $330 Billion market cap, making it the 3rd most valuable company in the world.

Agreed. Surprised to see so many financially-minded people fail to understand how the market cap is a better indicator value, not individual stock price. Granted, this is still a great feat for $GOOG, and it appears they will continue to innovate and sustain such growth.

I think it's a second-order, behavior-finance oriented line of thinking. I know that stock price is basically arbitrary and market cap is a much better measure of value. (And arguably, earnings and growth rate are even better than market cap.) However, I also know that many people consider $1000/share to be an important psychological milestone, and that it will command news headlines when the stock makes it. And so, understanding that the stock market is to some extent a beauty contest and other peoples' perception of a stock's momentum influences the stock price, it's rational for me to believe that when it hits $1000 it will go up, at least in the short term. It's also rational for me to feed into and cheerlead that perspective, because as a Google shareholder, I benefit when other people believe Google stock is going up.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#93

Post by r0h1n »

lawdawg wrote: post #11
JonSkeptic wrote: post #3

I think this is interesting because it matches my user experience with Google products in a very inverted way. Google search has gotten worse and worse lately, forcing me on to other search engines with worse UIs just so that I can get useful results. Youtube UI gets worse every time they update it. They cancelled the RSS reader. The email UI keeps getting worse and featuring more ads. But the stock value hit $1000.…

This is because Google has started optimizing for the 99% use case, which most HN'ers usually don't fall under. They originally optimized for what most Googlers like (who are generally the 1%) and have since learned that you can't run a business just pleasing the elite and whiny ones.

Surely it can't be the case that Google was serving the 1% till recently. Their products - Gmail, YouTube, Android, Search, Maps etc. - are all leaders in their categories. So the 1%-to-99% argument doesn't quite hold.

I personally think Google held itself back from OTT monetization strategies all these years as it waited for (a) its individual products to become undisputed market leaders, and (b) a unified privacy/social glue across all its products.

Now that the majority of users are locked in to Google - to specific products and across their entire suite of products - they are lifting their self-imposed restraints on privacy/aesthetics/advertising.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#94

Post by ketralnis »

trevmckendrick wrote: post #44

Share price is relatively meaningless. It needs to be paired to total shares outstanding. It's arbitrary by itself because it's a function of shares outstanding and total market value, one of which the company can (relatively easily) control via stock splits.

Nobody is denying this. It's an all-time high for this company. Where do you see people claiming that the $1k number is meaningful on its own?

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#95

Post by nostrademons »

AtTheLast wrote: post #88
pyrrhotech wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or the 900 calls last night

I wish I would have bought some calls. Google always seems to smash earnings and jump up a nice percentage.

...except for the last two quarters, where it missed earnings and the stock took a huge tumble after they came out. GOOG tumbled from $813 -> $774 in April when earnings came out, and from $923 -> $882 in July. That's probably why calls were affordable this earnings season; after the last couple quarters, the street didn't expect Google to blow out earnings.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#96

Post by orblivion »

Semaphor wrote: post #78
wtvanhest wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which products specifically have gotten better?

Android and the play store. The DFP API (their only API I'm using)

Oh man, quite some room for disagreement. In my opinion Android's UI is a complete joke. Maybe they're doing their research after all.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#97

Post by nostrademons »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #37
Theodores wrote: post #18

Advertising sales is a good indicator as to how well the economy is doing - if times are good then people advertise, if everyone is screaming recession then there is not so much money around to advertise. Hence, if Google does well does that mean the economy as a whole is doing well? Is the Google share price a good indicator, perhaps a better indicator than conventional metrics such as employment level or the FTSE?

No, GDP growth and unemployment are better measures.

Grandparent poster is looking for leading indicators, since that's where you make your money. GDP growth, by definition, tracks how the economy is doing today. Unemployment is a lagging indicator, tracking how the economy did a few months ago, because it takes businesses time to hire. Bond yields and stock market prices are considered leading indicators, because traders try to anticipate how the economy will do in the future.

To beat the market you need reliable indicators that are more leading than the stock market. Some of the ones people look at are advertising spending (companies only advertise when they expect consumers will have money to spend in the near future), capital investment (companies invest in new productive capacity when they expect demand will be higher in the future), and R&D spending (companies can only afford to spend on speculative goals when they have cash burning a hole in their bottom line).

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#98

Post by pslam »

ketralnis wrote: post #94
trevmckendrick wrote: post #44

Share price is relatively meaningless. It needs to be paired to total shares outstanding. It's arbitrary by itself because it's a function of shares outstanding and total market value, one of which the company can (relatively easily) control via stock splits.

Nobody is denying this. It's an all-time high for this company . Where do you see people claiming that the $1k number is meaningful on its own?

$1000 is meaningful on its own but not for the reasons most of these comments think: it's an awkwardly large amount to pay for a single share, and an even more awkwardly large amount to pay for a standard option.

Standard options are contracts of 100 shares, so that's $100,000 covered by a single option, which at current prices are about $2,500 each. This puts it out of the realm of small time investors, which is why GOOG is one of the few options available as "mini": 10 share contracts. Even at mini it's damn expensive per option.

I wouldn't be surprised if they split the stock at some point soon.

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#99

Post by nonchalance »

astrodust wrote: post #55
nonchalance wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1000/sh seems like a more momentous headline than $330B market cap. On the other hand, It's more likely that we see the headline "$1T company" than "$3030.30/sh"

They could've hit this years ago by doing a 10:1 stock consolidation. Fetishizing over share prices is meaningless. What if they had only six shares? Market cap is what matters.

Berkshire Hathaway class A is current 175821/sh :) extreme example.

But my point was that, while market cap is all that matters, people still fixate on round numbers

Re: Google shares hit $1,000 after strong earnings

#100

Post by Semaphor »

orblivion wrote: post #96
Semaphor wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android and the play store. The DFP API (their only API I'm using)

Oh man, quite some room for disagreement. In my opinion Android's UI is a complete joke. Maybe they're doing their research after all.

> Oh man, quite some room for disagreement.

Yeah, even the rather homogeneous group of HN readers seems to have very different opinions of what got better and what got worse :)

But with Android I was talking features. The UI is not bad but (without ever having used Win mobile) MS seems to have the better UI. And Apple the worst (again, without having used them).

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