The math is just not going to add up. The return by any sensible metric of an E-Bay, Amazon, Apple, Cisco compared to a General Electric, Walmart, Target etc. is a no-contest, no brain comparison. The smart money is going to tech. Big retail will ultimately reduce or nearly eliminate cashiers and a proportion of its staff, but they are still stuck with massive infrastructure expenses, rents, taxes etc. for products that demand traditional distribution methods based on their template. The success, increasingly magnified by the Cyber-Monday results shows that brick and mortar, like the early canaries in the coal mine such as record shops, indie book sellers, is going to face a slide, or an about face change of concept for the spaces. Economically, it makes more sense to ship out of some mega warehouse in the backwoods directly into the consumer’s home than geographically saturate a trading zone with stores.
(see link at end)…—Matthew Dow, “Amazon – History Tells Us That Shorts Will Be Rewarded,” Seeking Alpha, December 5, 2012.
Amazon (AMZN) has gained 5.6 percent in the 33 days since Mr. Dow’s smart essay considering the decline of Amazon.
I do not own the shares, and do not cast aspersions toward Mr. Dow, but the Amazonian $40-to-$260 path of persistence from early-Lehman 2009 is awe-inspiring.
I can think of an ample, intelligent set of reasons not to own the shares. I can also put together a brace of reasons to hold and even acquire shares.
—The Washington Post talks to a number of local booksellers, both independents and a Barnes & Noble branch, that have declined to stock the books. To them, the math just doesn’t make sense.
Any brick-and-mortar bookstore can buy the books from wholesalers in much the same way it would buy titles from any other publisher, according to Amazon. The problem is that the list price of the books could be as much as twice what it is on Amazon.
The controversy over stocking her books “just made me very sad,” Pearl tells the Washington Post. It’s interesting that booksellers would balk at Pearl, who cuts such a likable figure and whose “Book Lust” was a bestseller.
It’s parent company Amazon that’s the problem. “I don’t want to stock a book and have Amazon get the money,” Mark LaFramboise, chief buyer at the well-known Politics and Prose bookstore, told the Washington Post. Amazon, he says, wants “nothing other than our total annihilation.”—click image for link…
Fear is obvious in collapse; far less discussed is the fear of success.
That would be the immeasurable courage it takes to persist in the face of something going right.
I won’t tell you to sell, hold or buy Team Jeff Bezos. I will say that the sweat of potential loss is totally different from the sweat of actual gain on the books. Being successful in investment takes real courage backed by foundational beliefs, a core strategy and a set of tactical methods that contain and diminish fear.
Most will stumble; Bezos to the moon. ….Read More:http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-07/bezos-to-the-moon
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