Feb

4

The gravitational constant, G, is 6.7 x 10^-11 N-MM/kg. Is there a similar G in financial markets for the super hot stocks? It is conventional wisdom that information is analyzed faster and better today than 20 years ago. If that is true, then G has increased. But is it true? Or is the constant really human nature?

An anecdote:

Iomega, the (in)famous disk drive manufacturer that was going to take over the world, ipo-ed in June 1996. It went parabolic. And then flamed out. It took 22 months to trade back at its IPO price before descending into oblivion and a takeover by EMC for about 3$/share in 2008.

GoPro, the hip portable camera manufacturer (with a surfing dude for a CEO) was going to take over the world (and was the next BIG media company), ipo-ed in June 2014. It took 17 months for this stock to trade back at its IPO price amidst a flameout — and with yesterday's news of a loss, is on its way to oblivion — to be acquired by Sony? for about $3/share in about 5 years?

Based on this non-scientific study, the market is indeed moving someone faster. But still plenty slow enough that if you strap a gopro to your forehead and point yourself in the direction of the major slow trend, you'll still make plenty of money (and have a nice video to upload too).

Steve Ellison writes: 

Anecdotally, when I started working at Hewlett Packard in 1992, I worked in a division that manufactured hard disk drives. It was a very dysfunctional organization (that was shut down by the company a few years later because of excessive losses). The production lines were especially dysfunctional. To ensure quality, the drives were tested in a "burn-in" process that took more than 24 hours. Only a minority passed the tests and were shipped; the rest went into a rework queue. The lines prioritized producing new drives over troubleshooting and fixing those that had failed burn-in. This tactic kept revenue flowing, but resulted in ever-growing inventory.

Fast forward to 1995. The division was drowning in red ink. Over a few months, nearly all the manufacturing managers left the company to go to Iomega. Imagining the practices I had seen being implemented at Iomega, I had an idea that Iomega was going down.


Comments

Name

Email

Website

Speak your mind

Archives

Resources & Links

Search