by ilene - May 19th, 2011 11:06 pm
Courtesy of Mish
In Mania is Back: LinkedIn IPO Soars as Much as 173% in One Day, I discussed the mania over the LinkedIn IPO.
I have a few more comments that I also added as an addendum to the above post. ….
Addendum:
People chased the IPO as high as 122.70. After hours the price is down to $92.40. Those who just "had to have it" at any price are now down 24.7%
I suspect insiders will be bailing like mad as soon as the restricted lock-up period is over.
Reflections on LinkedIn
LinkedIn has 100 million accounts. How many are active? How often? For what purpose other than everyone being "linked in" to everyone else?
The key questions are:
- How will the growing number of accounts translate into actual earnings?
- What valuations will investors place on that growth?
It’s fair to point out just because I have little use for LinkedIn at the present time, does not mean others feel the same. Indeed, I may even change my mind and find a use later on.
Merging Profiles
I setup a LinkedIn account primarily because hundreds have asked me to be "Linked In", not because I had a particular need.
In fact, I have two LinkedIn accounts, both in my name, one under an email account I no longer have. I do not know my password for that account. I would like to merge the profiles because people find the wrong (inactive) "Mike Shedlock" profile all the time.
Unfortunately LinkedIn offers no convenient way to merge profiles. Worse yet, I get invites all the time with no real way to reply to them. It is a mess.
People have been bitching about this for something like forever as a search for merging linked in profiles shows.
LinkedIn has a cumbersome solution that involves inviting everyone from one group to another.
Log into your old account and click on My Contacts.
Scroll down to the bottom of that page and click on Export Connections
On the next page make sure that "Microsoft Outlook (.CSV File)" is selected from the drop down menu and then click on Export.
In the pop up window select "Save to Disk" then click on Ok.
Make sure that the file was saved to your computer
Log into your new account and click on "Add Connections" with the green button in
…

Tags: greater fool, Linked In IPO, mania, Mish, stock bubble
Posted in Phil's Favorites | No Comments »
by ilene - August 12th, 2009 3:33 am
Throw out the economic models and prepare for the next panic. And welcome to Tim at Psy-Fi Blog!
Courtesy of Tim at Psy-Fi Blog
Economic Stability Is Not The Norm
The exceptional market conditions of the last couple of years are a reminder that we should regard stable markets as a pleasant interlude rather than the normal state of affairs. In general, of course, people tend to expect tomorrow to be much the same as yesterday and to behave as such. It’s little wonder, then, that when everything goes wrong people start to panic, assuming the world is coming to an end.
Of course, so far, the world hasn’t come to an end – although a lot of people have lost lots of money in the meantime. What we can see from history is not that market panics are exceptional but that they’re the norm.
Kindleberger on Economic History
Every investor should read and re-read Charles Kindleberger’s seminal “Manias, Panics and Crashes’ which details the course of market disasters over a near three hundred year period. Kindleberger was an economist of a different hue to many we’ve met before: an economic historian who relied not on mathematical models – about which he was enjoyably and pointedly vague – but on historical incident and anecdote. At the very least, he argued, the various competing economic schools have to explain the happenings of the markets rather than either ignoring them, or simply claiming that they shouldn’t happen so they’re going to stick their fingers in their ears and go “tra-la-la” until they go away.
Underpinning the concept is a simple idea – people are irrational, they do the irrational things which it suits them to do and the consequences are often very nasty. What he set out to show was that the mental behaviour of market participants that we’ve recently witnessed is a perfectly normal state of affairs. Indeed, based on the historical records one ends up wondering how anything ever works at all in the markets. Everything going wrong is what happens, all the time, it seems.
The Fallacy Of Composition
However, it’s not simple irrationality that drives the market. Underlying this is a sneaky human behavioural failing known as the fallacy of composition – a trait that sees every individual acting in their own self interests yet, at the same time, acting in a
…

Tags: boom and bust cycles, Crashes, economic stability, Economy, Hyman Minsky, mania, market disasters, Minsky Moment, panic
Posted in Phil's Favorites | No Comments »