Amazon Reports First Quarterly Loss in 4 Years

Re:Amazon Reports First Quarterly Loss in 4 Years by confluence on Thursday October 25, 2012 @10:44PM (#4700600)

Enron didn't look like a good idea. They ran a commodity business at insane valuations with huge revenue run up during a bubble.

Stating that Enron was a good idea was like stating Groupon was a good idea. Commodity companies that buy revenue (includes WorldCom and MCI) are always bad investments. Once again - had you invested in them you would be a moron.

It'd be fair to state that diversification protects against stupidity.

However, it does not reduce risk in the way people assume.

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Re:Amazon Reports First Quarterly Loss in 4 Years by jlgreco on Thursday October 25, 2012 @11:21PM (#4700707)

Put it this way, from the outside they looked a lot better than they really were. Looking as bad as Groupon and actually going as sour as Enron did are two wildly different things.

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Re:Amazon Reports First Quarterly Loss in 4 Years by confluence on Thursday October 25, 2012 @11:36PM (#4700747)

I fully expect Groupon to go bankrupt.

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Re:Amazon Reports First Quarterly Loss in 4 Years by jlgreco on Thursday October 25, 2012 @11:41PM (#4700764)

I wouldn't say Enron merely went bankrupt...

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Re:Amazon Reports First Quarterly Loss in 4 Years by jamesaguilar on Friday October 26, 2012 @03:47AM (#4701264)

Man with that 20/20 hindsight you'd be a perfect historian. Can't say it does you much credit as a stock analyst though.

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Re:Amazon Reports First Quarterly Loss in 4 Years by confluence on Friday October 26, 2012 @04:17AM (#4701327)

Well here's my forward looking projection - Groupon, Zynga and Pandora will go bankrupt within the next 3 years.

It really isn't that bloody hard to see shit for what it was - if you aren't making any money, if you are buying revenue, and if your service is commodity then you will be both a bad investment and eventually go bankrupt. Enron, WorldCom, MCI, Zynga, Groupon, Pandora fit these cases and hence will fail.

It irritates me saying "Ohh who could've predicted the GFC, or Enron or WorldCom or the DotCom bubble or whatever". Just because you don't see the asteroid coming before it crashes - it does not follow that it was a black swan. Grab a telescope and you'd have seen it coming 30 years out.

If you aren't making money and your business model is neither defensible nor proprietary - you will go out of business.

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