I hope you'll explain it to the rest of us who can't make the talk. It's hard to justify a P/E of over 100, but try this thought experiment: which company is most likely to be around in 50 years? Which has the most sustainable business model and the widest moat? The price doesn't have to be "right" to be telling you something.
It's not "hard" to see the follow-up questions that this research is going to "stimulate." Perhaps they already have the grant money "in hand." Shame on you for making me be the "jerk" who had to point this out. Now I'll just go wash up...
God help you, did you actually short Microsoft? On the basis of a chart like that, would you short AT&T or Verizon? How about Philip Morris? Pfizer? Oracle? In my experience, heavy Apple users and employees are incapable of dispassionately analyzing MSFT the way they would any other business. Why not short the big telcos: didn't Apple just vaporize the (100% gross margin) text messaging business? Aren't iPhone and Android about to dial their ROIs down to the same pain threshhold they did with Sprint? There are plenty of good shorts in today's market, but I don't think MSFT is one of them. As I always say: don't short stocks angry! [Disclosure: long MSFT since April, but also long some utilities and other boring stuff.]
I inferred that you mostly agree with Thiel, possibly from years of reading your posts, and I certainly understand your objection as you've amplified it here. I'm sure I've said less pleasant things after attending one of his lectures. Someday for kicks I may write that nasty essay about the baby boomers--you're too young to be offended, right? On a serious note, to write anything at Thiel's level of ambition that's more than intellectual wallpaper (insert here your least favorite NYT columnist) requires offending someone (or everyone), and I'm always happy to irritate the wound in service of this philosophy.
Really? A couple of paragraphs do not a rant make. It's pretty clear he's not specifically endorsing the legacy of Moses or Brasilia, but rather the intensity of their vision. As for the hippies, I imagine what he meant was that the baby boomer generation took progress for granted, whereas their parents had to fight for it. Furthermore, they defined progress to mean many things that no sane culture would (c.f. Ben and Jerry). This may or may not have been Thiel's point, which would take an entire essay to develop. Regardless, words like 'sad' and 'whack' do not a rebuttal make.
Sounds like you're taking it kind of personally--if you think people on TV generally know what they're talking about, you've been away from CNBC for too long! Besides, why single out the newsreader when the producer is the one who writes the script?
Wake me up when there's a good Newsweek cover. The marginal investors (baby boomers and their pension funds) still haven't dialed realistic expected returns into their savings plan or consumption patterns. They're low on gas and the landing strip is far. The current storyline on CNBC (always a useful signal) is that buy-and-hold may be dead, but the ever-so-helpful guests can help viewers time the market. They'll be peddling "defensive" stocks all the way down the Slope of Hope, until their airtime gets turned over to infomercials for kitchen appliances. See you there and via con Dios!
This is surely a provocative written by an economist who commands the respect of many people who don't generally respect economists. Yet the argument depends crucially on the idea that (non-consumer) private demand will rise to meet the supply created by QE, and secondarily that QE won't create asset bubbles (where arguable it already has). My understanding is that Friedman came to the view that the Fed should directly target the supply of money rather than credit. To a simple non-economist, this would seem to require QE plus monetization. This would be considered treason by the Church of Fractional Reserve Lending, bankers, and central bankers everywhere, since it expose their irrelevance to our severe deflationary circumstances. To the rest of us, QE is merely stupid and reckless, not necessarily a hanging offense.
Reminds me of Bob Woodward's account of Obama's failure to exert authority over his generals when deciding how far to escalate in Afghanistan.
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Brainchild