Is face book worth 104 billion

[161488303349]

the subeditor makes the claim in the title which is not supported in the article

subeditors are awesome like that. jejejejeeje (:

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what the newspaper article actual says is the reason it didnt stag was bc the IPO issuers did their jobs properly (for once)

some quotes:

"After finally coming on stream the shares briefly surged by almost 20pc, only to fall back to their $38 initial offer price as a widely expected glut of demand was offset by the weight of those selling."

"Retail investors were among the biggest buyers"

"Analysts suggested the shares might have failed to spark in the same way as previous high-profile tech IPOs because underwriters were too aggressive in pricing the deal."

[Bree Giffen]

I predict the stock price is going down until it gets to the true value of FB and then the stock will do ok.

[Alazarin Mondrian]

On a lighter note:

 

 

I mean, seriously, who cares? Here today, gone tomorrow. In 5 or 10 years everyone will be frittering away their time on some other site and on and on ad infinitum.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

QFT

[Ceka Cianci]

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Anaiya Arnold wrote:

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Ceka Cianci wrote:

they do it with gold and oil and everything on the market..futures..the market is one big game that changes daily..

i don't believe even if it was that there would be a true 104 billion invested in it..

just the way they keep saying what it is worth all the time  to the media  tells me it's being gamed..

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They are not supposed to be allowed to speculate on oil in the US, but someone wrote some "exemption" letters. 

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they do it all the time though..

katrina was a big example of that..so is the war and any time there is some sort of movement..

look at what happened when the U.S. and Iran had that little fling a couple months back..prices jumped in expectation of conflict and rumors of access paths being closed off..

prices now are because of predictions on supply and demand months ago..

ETA: oh i see what you were gettign at now..

yes  i agree hehehe there are always those exempt guys hangin round..that 1% that can do anything they want  hehehe

Your castle up in the sky built on your greed and your lies

Can not protect you from the hate we hold locked inside

The time for talking is past Our numbers growing so fast

We're bent on tearing down all that you had hoped would last

 

Faceless and masked in the crowd Our screaming so F**kiing loud

hold your hands up but now we're in your head Down here we look to the skies Cops can't keep us from the prize Only a matter of time till we bring you down

 

What if I told you that I walk among you and I'm right behind you and I'm just a "suit" like you

 

We stalk your halls of power We'll bring your darkest hour We know not how to relent We are the 99%

 

We are a nation in flames And yet you drink your champaigne

We're going under all the while that you post record gains

Empires laden with lies Bed ridden government ties

And the Fed sells all your hope then hides

 

Locked down the parks from inside The net you stifled with lies

But we're still here hiding in your head Your cronies sweep through the crowd Our hatred takes to the cloud Try to stop it but the fire has begun to spread

 

What if I told you that I walk among you and I'm right behind you and

I'm just a "suit" like you

 

We stalk your halls of power We'll bring your darkest hour We know not how to relent We are the 99%

 

In the end we will bring you down

In the end we will watch you drown

Your time my friends is winding down

It's time to cleanse your filthy crown

 

[Anaiya Arnold]

Yeah, it's certainly screwed up.   The Wall Streeters, at a group level, are scum in my view, and I'm also of the opinion that a bunch of them are also scum on a personal individual level.

[Ceka Cianci]

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Anaiya Arnold wrote:

Yeah, it's certainly screwed up.   The Wall Streeters, at a group level, are scum in my view, and I'm also of the opinion that a bunch of them are also scum on a personal individual level.

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i know a couple of them that used to be traders and ended up actually becoming kind of insain or touched a bit because of the stress involved..

it wore off after awhile from being away from all that..now they work at the plant in town and say they are so content there hehehe

that money and material things are truely not worth the feeling of being content..

 

i asked them if they ever felt like going back to that..i got answers that were on the lines of.

HELL NO!!!

lol

 

 

 

[PeterCanessa Oh]

Yup, I've worked for a few financial institutions and to succeed, especially as a trader/salesman, you need to value exactly one thing: money.  Nothing else is allowed to have any value at all, friends, family, co-workers, truth, ethics, life, sleep (!), art, anything.  These firms buy your soul for large amounts of money and if you don't value money as the only and absolute measure of worth you'll pretty soon get fed up with it.

[i was headhunted to get a (software) project back on track.  Trader who was primary customer screamed at me - literally, and as soon as I walked in - "If you don't deliver this f**ing system on time I'll f**ing lose £5million.  You're only f**ing worth £120k and I will f**ing kill you". "I understand", I said, "you stand to lose almost £5m more than me and your job but all you can do is swear and threaten.  For £120k I can save your £5m but I get paid the same and move on to my next job whatever happens.  I'm ex-Army and threats just annoy me so unless you want to try bribery shut the f** up and sit the f** down."

Ahhh, what it is to work in a professional atmosphere ^^  Still, they do pay a lot.]

[Anaiya Arnold]

That makes a lot of sense Cekai.

I believe Wall Street, especially at the top end is disproportionately populated by people with narcisstic personality disorder, and similar issues entailing impulse control, dellusions of grandeur and a lack of any genuine understanding of the fact that everyone else is as real as they are.

 

Working in  an environment and imbibing in a culture dominated by narcisstic pathology would not be healthy.

[Boudicca Littlebird]

They have a disorder due to inbreeding, the ones that are products of cousins marrying are the worst, the areas of the brain that have things like empathy have been bred out of them, that's is why they are at the top, they can lie with ease as they show no emotions when lying or stealing, in fact they come across as very pleasant people, not till its to late do you realize they have robbed you, they can tell you they love you as they set you up to clean you out, they are known as psychopaths , there are may documentaries just lately on it, psychopaths make up one percent of the population but they make up 99% of the top 1%, most so called ruling families suffer this as they inter married to keep the wealth in the families.

 

if you want to stop it then you will have to stop inbreeding and these days they use the excuse of religion to justify it, when it is really about keeping money and power within one families hands.

 

some examples, one small group have 80% of the worlds wealth, yet they carry 60% of the world genetic diseases, they may enjoy their wealth but most their children are deformed or diseased in some way. and some very rich isloted ones, most of their children die childless and very ill.

[JackieWinners]

When you say pension funds you make the question harder to answer, if it is up to me I would never buy stocks with pension funds, there are other investing vessels that has a good growth rate and a lot safer than stocks, regarding FB you just need to imagine the billions of people using Facebook from schools kids to presidents, of course you can't realize it's importance if you don't know how they generate money, the difference between FB and other companies is that FB can utilize cash and fold it's profits a lot easier and quicker.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Boudicca Littlebird wrote:

Do you really think the company is worth that.

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No.

I'd say its worth something - but no where near that.

It has immense social value - but its failing advertisers. The one group that is making money hand over fist from it - games - has been valued as worth very little, noting the fallinf price of Zynga stock.

The funny thing is, Zynga is a solid company with an actual business model. Facebook's model is "sell a lot of ads nobody sees and keep selling them until advertisers wake up and realize its not paying out in increased explosure...

- That's a bad scheme... a house of cards that will collapse at some point.

 

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Conifer Dada wrote:

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Dilbert Dilweg wrote:

Lots of advertisers want to put their stuff there. I dont know why because I ignore the ads.

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I ignore internet ads too, and I don't think I've ever been influenced to buy anything by one - not even remotely. 

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Where I work they track from the moment an ad from us is seen by somebody, to the moment the shopping cart checkout hands over their money to us. Comparing that to purchases from just 'out of the blue' with somebody typing in the URL or finding us via google, bing, etc...

- Those internet ads are probably half of the business. a third is probably from folks who meet one our in person reps - judging by the use of 'coupon codes.' The minority is just folks who type in the URL and google the place, or folks who have managed to disable tracking and purposefully avoid one of those promotion codes on the adverts.

But Facebook is almost none of that - unless we target the people who have linked themselves somehow (I don't even have Facebook so this part is a little bit of a mystery to me) - I've been told that we do get a spike when we specifically send specific Facebook folks a special coupon (as opposed to just spamming Facebook in general and hoping the categories place us on the right pages).

 Properly targetted internet advertising works amazingly well. Facespamming your ads, less so.

 If for example, you -are- one of the types of people likely to buy a product from the place I work at - I'd wager 70% odds you already have an advert from us, it is -NOT- in your email spam folder, and only about 1-5% of you will put it into spam on seeing it. But also only about 1-5% of you will respond to it.

 

 

[161488303349]

is mostly bc zynga revenues are closely tied to facebook at the moment

about 60% of total revenue comes from only 3 facebook games. facebook can murder them anytime they want to after the current agreement runs out. many analysts think they will and look to partner only with game companies that will use fb credits exclusively. something that zynga has always resisted doing (exclusively)

also zynga are a lot like linden in revenue source. they both have lots of registered user accounts but the bulk of the revenue comes from only a small proportion of those accounts. WSJ calls them whales. companies that depend on whales for the bulk of their revenues make market analysts nervous

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zynga also got hammered by both market pros and retail investors at the same time on the same day

the retail investors who are on fb and play zynga games. when they finally got the chance to buy fb itself. they sold out of zynga and bought fb with the money

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ordinary people who bought into fb did it mostly bc they actual use fb. if you a regular and passionate user of something and you get a chance to own a bit of it then most people do that if they can afford it. is not an investment really from a strict investment pov

is the same thinking with SL really. if linden ever decide to go public then i will buy some shares. just bc really. dont really much care if it goes broke one day some day maybe. just be happy to know that about 1 or 2 pixels of my parcel i actual own for reals. i probably even make a sign pointing at them (: 

 

 

[Boudicca Littlebird]

I See face book has dropped more than 10%, seems the banks that supported were the first to sell, I was right as goldmans was involved so they all went short.

[Conifer Dada]

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Conifer Dada wrote:

I find it difficult to see what makes a free social networking site worth $104 billion other than the potential profits to be made if it ceases to be free.  

My prediction is the share price will rise for a short time after the floatation and then start dropping.

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Quoting myself there!  I got something right for once!

[Boudicca Littlebird]

Well its dropped 18%, that means a lot of people have lost 18 billion in less than a week, it could be a lot worst by Friday, I hear law suits are flying around, a few people are saying that they were prevented from selling or canceling orders some were delayed hours and lost a fortune, seems that all the big banks were tasting blood and jumping in for a feed, hence a lot of the law suits, but as they own the politicians I don't see much happening.

[Melita Magic]

No idea about pension funds but if people will steal and kill for 20 bucks what would they do for over a hundred billion?

[161488303349]

no one lost 18 billion dollars. is a ledger entry

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the only people who lost money were those who jumped into with their few 1000s (some 10s 1000s even) on opening day trying to make a quick fast buck on it stagging off the backs of others peoples hard work. when it didnt stag they got done over. now they bawwing about it

good job. couldnt have happened to a worse bunch of people

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dont know what they bawwing about anyways. if they were actual investors then they wouldve understood what 79% of market analysts were saying last thursday:

this IPO is not going to stag. on the fundamentals and with an optimistic projection for potential growth the value of the company paper is in the $28-30 per share range from our POV

some of the more conservative brokerages and funds who work only on fundamentals had put it at $15-17 before they would look at buying it themselves for their funds and clients

was all in the papers and journals all of this. if anyone looking to invest cared enough to read

so if you an proper investor best to wait until the mud settles if you not have any shares already. and is many investor investors doing exactly that. waiting. unlike sentimental fb user investors and fast buck merchants

they are quite unsentimental are market analysts. is the punters who are sentimental

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you keep going on about underwriters. they havent made anything out of this. they will be lucky to get out with only a mild scalping

is a thing which happens in some IPOs (not all) that some call the 'green pool' which is separate from the main pool. the green pool is for when shares stag so as the underwriter you can keep feeding the market (and get a market bonus on top of your fee). the underwriters have to buy the green pool off the company at a fixed price

seems like the underwriters werent able to unload the green pool on opening day and got caught with it. so they now feeding it into the market since and cutting their losses

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the only people who are happy and have every right to be are: the fb founders and investors and fb staff who believed in the company right from the start and have worked really hard over the years to make it the successful social network that it is

was acknowledgement day, bonus day and pension day all rolled up into one for them was last Friday. good for them. the astute ones will have unloaded some on opening day (thanks JP Morgan and others who underwrote it giving them a guarantee) and are now today happily buying them back for less

so all them founders and investors and staff able to, who did that, end up with a cash bonus and get to keep all their shares as well. courtesy of JPMorgan and other underwriters

and the bawbags. had it stagged then those same people would now be wooting about their awesome and how everyone else is a donk. bawbags are like that

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as for all founders/investors/staff and such who havent/didnt sell any of their shares then they havent lost anything either. last Thursday their shares were worth $0 on the public market

if they cash them out for $30 or even only $10 someday oneday for their retirement or to buy a home for their families or whatever then thats still a whole lot more than $0

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ps: if you want to point the finger at anyone about the price. point it at the dude who turned up on Wall Street in a hoodie. after he wandered into the meet, the starting price went up from what the underwriters themselves were recommending. is not just a pretty face under that hoodie

that hoodie dude plays hard ball. he is def a big game player

 

 

 

 

 

[Boudicca Littlebird]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/9284832/Facebook-founder-Mark-Zuckerberg-sued-by-shareholders-over-IPO.html

[Anaiya Arnold]

In an ideal world, every capital investment would be profitable.  No investment would lose or be sour, and all investments would return maximally.  That would be a zero waste game where due to what was being invested in, the economic growth, the real material wealth of humanity, increased to its maximum potential.  A world where because every investment is a good one, humans are not wasting their effots and resources on projects that fail to add or even retain the value of the input. 

 

Conversely all instances where investments lose are a net lose for the human race as a whole. 

[Ceka Cianci]

i watched the second part of this move  a couple of months back ..so before i saw that one i had to watch this one...

i always wondered why people were using the phrase greed is good  over the years..after seeing  this i understood where they got it from hehehe

[161488303349]

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Anaiya Arnold wrote:

In an ideal world, every capital investment would be profitable.  No investment would lose or be sour, and further all investments would return maximally.  That would be a zero waste game where due to what was being invested in, the economic growth, the real material wealth of humanity, increased to its maximum potential.  A world where because every investment is a good one, humans are not wasting their effots and resources on projects that fail to add or even retain the value of the input. 

 Conversely all instances where investments lose are a net lose for the human race as a whole. 

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i am not disagree with this sentiment

while our societal institutions: laws, justice, workplace, education, trade, etc continue to reinforce the adverserial way then we stuck in a endless loop of the winners and losers game

some people argue that this is the natural order. that we are built this way. that we just animals with a base urge to compete. that survival of the fittest is how the rewards are best distributed and all that

we also got minds tho with which we can think and we have the capacity to exercise self-control if we want to. like we dont have to play the winners and losers game on either an individual or even a societal level. is the ability to exercise self-contro,l and equally important able to adapt our environment, that makes humans the number 1 animal on the planet

other animals not able to adapt their environment on the scale that we can. is why they still act like animals and follow their base urges. is a point that quite a few people who into the whole human animal survivalist thing kinda miss seems like

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ps

i just write what i did about all this earlier above bc i try to understand how the stock market game is played and why it goes like it does. also i dont like market speculators, big or small, who try cash in on other peoples hard work after the work has all been done. so when they get buried in a stock market game of their own design then to bad and i not cry for them ever

 

[Anaiya Arnold]

I don't see how you can blame people who work hard for trying to get ahead of where their labour can get them.  A person can slog it out working multiple jobs at minimum wage, barely with enough time to scratch together a roof over their head, transport to their jobs and food for their bellies, with no way out through what their labour can earn.  At the same time the message people are told is that if they are savy and smart with their money they will invest and reap the rewards.  At the same time the world increasingly sends  the message not only that there is a danger of spending  lives on scrabbling to survive with no relief in sight, but that it is morally worthless to not make the dosh.   There is tremendous pressure out that there to not "miss opportunities" and goodness knows some people have little of those that they are capable of capitalizing on in this day and age with the devaluation of so called "unskilled" labour.

A lot of people just want to have a good life and lead the dream they were brought up to believe was realistic, which is to do better than their parents and to set their children up to do the same.  After all, for generations this was the prevailing trend in the OECD and came to be seen as the norm.  People are not sent the message that playing the markets is making money on someone else's work, but rather that it is praise worthy economic activity that is meritous because it generates capital that generates wealth and jobs, and that it's the kind of activity the smart, savy, modern economic participant, the worthy person more or less, does as part of their ordinary "financial strategies".  Meanwhile being broke or barely making it is more or less deemed proof of not only economic worthlessness, but is more and more often characterized as being the result and proof of moral shortcomings too (laziness, lack of initiative, sense of entitlment, being underskilled, uneducated, not bothering to make something of themselves....etc).

 

A lot of those folk who lost out were probably just confused, overwhelmed, stressed out people who work really hard for the little they can save and were desperate to not be the worthless shmuck who missed the golden egg and so went on to live a hard life, never getting ahead only to have a retirement spent in poverty, watching their children struggle while not being able to help them, all the while regretting that time they could have got in on the golden egg but didn't. 

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Anaiya Arnold wrote:

In an ideal world, every capital investment would be profitable.  No investment would lose or be sour, and all investments would return maximally.

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Since Creation, biolions and billions of years ago; nothing - no matter or energy - has been created or destroyed. That's science, basic physics.

We're in a closed system - nothing new.

There really is no such thing as profit. Only conversion. To make a buck, you've got to destroy something somewhere in a cost. Economists used to understand this. Many still do. But the greed crowd conceals it in their quest to destroy those under them for personal gain.