Earlier quoted context omitted.
The simple answer is that a share price is the present price to pay for the future cash flows of the company. Just because they aren't making money now doesn't mean that will always be the case. If twitter starts making billions of dollars soon, and starts paying that out to investors, then everyone makes money. They "eventually foot the bill" if twitter doesn't make money. Your cynicism reflects the fact that many c…
> Just because they aren't making money now doesn't mean that will always be the case. This is dangerous speculation.
TWTR
131–140 of 349 posts
Re: TWTR
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
If twitter never makes money, you're mostly right. If twitter eventually makes enough money to justify its share price, you're wrong.
In 2013Q3, Twitter made $168M of revenue ( not profit). How do you think, how long is it going to take them to cover their current market capitalization of $24670M? After that, they will start making profit for the shareholders.
If you're making an argument that their revenue growth has plateaued, that's a separate argument. But their current growth curve is impressive.
Re: TWTR
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Homo economicus" is still really important for macroeconomics. The reason for this is pretty simple: designing rich, large models is still hard to do and the practical limitations introduced by basing your assumptions on the idea that people act irrationally instead of rationally can make things too complicated to be of practical use. So in microeconomics or small models, people can practically accept and implement…
The issue is not just that models are hard. The claim of some economists is that while people behave irrationally, not everyone behaves irrationally all the time, so the issue is self-correcting as long as you have enough liquidity and participants in the market. It's like the law of large numbers; while a single transaction may have a completely wrong price, a sufficiently large number will average the irrationaliti…
The truth is not so - people get irrationally exuberant or are afraid to cut their losses, etc. These are problems of statistical bias of their estimations - and the opposite is assumed in many (most?) economic models.
Re: TWTR
#134Can someone with more clue please tell me that the following cynical thought I keep having is wrong and laughably misinformed (and then explain why)? Twitter's investors (who have plowed hundreds of millions in to a loss making company) decide to sell some of their stock at $26/share (after consulting with banks to arrive at this price). This will make right the losses they've experienced so far and pass the problem…
The simple answer is that a share price is the present price to pay for the future cash flows of the company. Just because they aren't making money now doesn't mean that will always be the case. If twitter starts making billions of dollars soon, and starts paying that out to investors, then everyone makes money. They "eventually foot the bill" if twitter doesn't make money. Your cynicism reflects the fact that many c…
Re: TWTR
#135Can someone with more clue please tell me that the following cynical thought I keep having is wrong and laughably misinformed (and then explain why)? Twitter's investors (who have plowed hundreds of millions in to a loss making company) decide to sell some of their stock at $26/share (after consulting with banks to arrive at this price). This will make right the losses they've experienced so far and pass the problem…
I think you accurately described the Greater Fool and the nature of this tech IPO climate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory How else could companies with no revenue go public?
Re: TWTR
#136Income statements: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&fstype=ii&ei=TL... About $553 million in revenue in the last year, with spending of $668 million.
Re: TWTR
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
The simple answer is that a share price is the present price to pay for the future cash flows of the company. Just because they aren't making money now doesn't mean that will always be the case. If twitter starts making billions of dollars soon, and starts paying that out to investors, then everyone makes money. They "eventually foot the bill" if twitter doesn't make money. Your cynicism reflects the fact that many c…
> Just because they aren't making money now doesn't mean that will always be the case. This is dangerous speculation.
Re: TWTR
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't take this as snark but I wouldn't recommend shorting anything if you are so inexperienced that you don't have a trading account or don't know which one to use. Shorting stocks is extremely risky and should only be done by traders with lots of experience. If you really want to bank on Twitter going south, you can try buying puts when they're available. If you're not sure what puts are, leave this whole id…
i run a bootstrapped company that i founded in 2006, and i have some extra money i am totally comfortable of losing entirely. i view this as an experiment. i am looking for a serious practical advice.
Re: TWTR
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand what you mean by "they lost out a fair bit of money". However, that is not exactly true. They have failed to gain that (admittedly huge) chunk of dollars but they have lost nothing: the have the same money they started with and they never had any more than that . You only lose when you start with X and end up with X-Y, for positive Y. They have probably missed the opportunity to gain more but that is the…
Well, two days ago, they owned n shares of assets that were sellable for $46 a share. Now they have n * 26. They lost out, just as if I took your $20k new car and gave you $10k, you'd have lost out even though you have more cash.
What happens is that they did not guess (and this is an important term, there is no inherent value in a guess) TODAY'S market's expectations correctly. But that has little to do with true monetary loss or gain.
Of course, their expectations today might be crushed. But personal expectations and hopes are not valuable as shares are.