The Stock Market

Most of Google's revenue comes from small text ads that Google sells on its own site, as well as the Web pages of other companies. Advertisers bid for the right to have ads appear each time a user searches for certain keywords or those words appear on the Web site of a Google partner. Across the search industry, advertisers agree to pay an average of roughly 40 cents each time a user clicks on an ad. Rates for some much sought-after terms can go much higher: Google caps them at $50. It says it has more than 150,000 advertisers to such services, ranging from Ford Motor Co. to online retailer drugstore.com Inc.

The advertising is lucrative. Google began selling the ads in 2000, adapting a practice commercialized by Overture Services Inc., now part of Yahoo Inc. Google quickly grabbed a commanding position in search ad sales because of the popularity of its search engine. As a result, the company has been profitable since 2001, company executives say.

Advertisers spent $2.5 billion on ads targeting key search words in 2003, nearly triple the $927 million of ads sold the year before, estimates eMarketer Inc., a New York research firm. Analysts and Web moguls are optimistic about the future of these online ads, because they're focused on users interested in a subject, and so are considered much more effective than banner ads, which are strips of ads appearing alongside the content of Web pages not tied to a specific search.

But many of these same analysts have been wrong before. In the late 1990s, they predicted exponential growth in online advertising, centered on those very banner ads. Instead, amid a broad downturn in ad spending, advertisers turned against banners because of declining consumer response. Online advertising plunged to $6 billion in 2002, from $8.2 billion in 2000, according to eMarketer

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/bizfinance/columns/bottomline/n_10178//index.html

(basically, what broheems said)

(Disclaimer: All I know about the Motley Fool is that I tried to get a job there last year.)

I really like Ken Kurson's book. I think it was the first book I read on the subject. Although it's, what, a good 6 years old now. I don't know if it's been revised or anything. But it's a good intro to a lot of financial type stuff (also has lots of info on home-buying and so forth), written in a style definitely geared towards young people without being patronizing.

And of course, the Peter Lynch books are widely regarded as investing classics, though I've never read them.

Brilliant.

jesus christ, the era of 24-hour news and twitchily updated newspaper 'front pages' online has really found its level with this crash. a couple of hours ago the guardian main story was "FTSE rebounds after blah blah blah". i went to the opticians, came back, and now its "FTSE dips in red". what is the fucking point of this minute-by-minute analysis, especially for a non-specialist paper.

Surely there's more point in minute-by-minute analysis for things that are acutely time-sensitive like this? As opposed to, say, 'factory blows up in Stoke, police still don't know anything'.

Not that the Guardian website would exactly be the first point of call for anyone seeking up to date financial information but still...

So tits up or not?

well now it says:

"Markets brace for more turmoil
Last updated 11 minutes ago
Investors and pensions holders should prepare for further stock market volatility, traders warn."

i think the 'volatility'-ness of it is the clue that the headline should be 'volatile market is volatile' until it can be called.

Making a song and dance about everything and anything is what the meeja's all about these days

word on the street is there's a RECESSION on the horizon (this sib-prime thing being the straw breaking the camel's back) and d!ck all we can do about it...

sub-prime

i'd like it very much if prime-rib caused recessions ...

also, urgent & key -- DON'T PAY ANY MIND TO 24/7 FINANCIAL JOURNALISM. it's even more useless than 24/7 political journalism or even celebrity journalism!

word on the street is there's a RECESSION on the horizon (this sib-prime thing being the straw breaking the camel's back) and d!ck all we can do about it...

-- CarsmileSteve, Friday, August 17, 2007 12:33 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

indeed. who could have seen it coming?

There's always a recession somewhere...usually when you are trying to find a good new job or ask for a pay rise.

I like how the government has said absolutely dick all so far.

Not much they can do about it... or say about it

yeah, brown needs to put on some wellies, get over to threadneedle street, and burn some of mopes responsible.

ooh! ooh!

Markets surge after US cuts key interest rate
Last updated four minutes ago
Federal Reserve steps in to calm world stock market jitters.

pfft, they already effectively did that by releasing all of those reserves over the past week.

it won't save anything, IMHO.

We're doomed to fuck.

but pete the guardian says 'markets surge' four minutes ago! what could possibly go wrong?

and they're OFFFFFFFFF -- nasdaq opened up over 2%, s&p and the dow over 1%.

this shit is kinda like watching crackheads smoking it up.

Seems to me that the Fed is rly nervous

tripping over its words, knocking things over. buck up, fed!

i'm actually kinda pissed off about this -- if they make the deposit to my 401(k) today (as they should), then i'm buying HIGH ;_;

what's funny is that one day the dow does well, the papers all go "economy is great! ignore the naysayers!", then the next day it plunges 300 points and it's "1987 all over again??!?!??" then the next day it surges, etc. etc. etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder

what's funny is that one day the dow does well, the papers all go "economy is great! ignore the naysayers!", then the next day it plunges 300 points and it's "1987 all over again??!?!??" then the next day it surges, etc. etc. etc.

100% of what the financial presses say is designed to sell papers. Maybe 20% of this overlaps with what's actually useful and/or accurate.

And that's not even to mention the way the non-financial press covers the economy.

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/crack-15.jpg

I only have 401ks and IRAs. I'm not going to see that money for 40 years.

Tech's had a really bad week. Telling myself it'll bounce back next week

This is pretty freaky:
https://www.ft.com/content/2542af81-9e93-4d05-a0b9-26c0f6aab6f3

Apparently you can just amass positions equivalent to 5 or 10% of a company's stock via swaps and never report it? And major investment banks are fine with giving you tons of leverage to do it, until it blows up and a single hedge fund's implosion causes 30% drops in multiple large stocks?

Stock market is totally having a normal one right now

What the hell? https://t.co/92RWejK16A pic.twitter.com/hgzLMhrpN4

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) April 15, 2021

there is something very weird going on with that one that is probably not at all indicative of the wider market. I don't know if it is a form of money laundering or what, but I can't imagine it's a bunch of retail investors running up the price. It trades less than 400 shares per day.

lol this is one of my favorite stock descriptions ever

Hometown International, Inc., through its subsidiary, Your Hometown Deli Limited Liability Company, operates a delicatessen store under the Your Hometown Deli brand name in the United States. Its Your Hometown Deli store provides sandwiches; soups; salads, including made-to-order green salads, prepared pasta, potato, chicken, and various wet salads; deli meats/cheeses; hot/cold drinks; fresh breads/rolls; breakfast products, such as pastries, bagels, and toast; yogurt; and small retail items for cooking, baking, and home use, as well as coffee, tea, and other hot and cold beverages. The company was incorporated in 2014 and is based in Woodstown, New Jersey.

Please do not think for one minute this reflects badly on the security of those stock mutual funds in your 401K. Pretty please. With sugar on top.

sounds like a mafia front posing as a public company

xp, Oh certainly not -- but there are dozens of SPACs that are like 60% as ridiculous as that. I think the point is more that there isn't a lot of evidence of oversight.

What do you guys think of something like VIAC, which had it price destroyed to one hedge fund dumping it?
The business hasn't really changed much, meaning it's seriously undervalued right now or it's still pumped too high due to current market exuberance. Still higher than it was in Jan/Feb '20. The company has remained profitable regardless.

FWIW, I just listened to this: https://open.spotify.com/show/1te7oSFyRVekxMBJUSethH?si=sbeWrWYnR4iZo_apx0LkUw which was v interesting on greensill, credit suisse, and archegos among other things, and the guy made a pretty good case for VIAC being a slowly dying business.

There are usually a lot of profits to be squeezed from a slowly dying business. Look at what vulture capitalists are doing to the newspaper industry. The question is whether those remaining profits can translate into a higher share price. Probably not.

link between price and profits seems a lot more tenuous these days anyway, so it's about a good a dice roll as a lot of other things.

How to get rich in 3 easy steps:
1) Steal hotel soap
2) Invest savings in S&P
3) Become millionaire pic.twitter.com/GSQBsopb6z

— TikTok Investors (@TikTokInvestors) May 17, 2021

very good account

oh, fintok.

it did turn out that GME was a safehaven stock.

I got out on AMC months ago... if I illogically held, I would've quadrupled+ my money! Too late to get back in now.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/2/22465198/amc-meme-stock-popcorn-wsb

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22555337/E24_NrSWYAAhODE.jpg

The thing that interests me about the meme stocks (so far) is that they are companies in a consumer-friendly line of business. Yes there's speculative mania or whatever but why shouldn't individual investors with money to splash around go long on video game retailers, movie theaters, and a fairly stable big box survivor? Why not get people to bet in favor of like, normal companies that sell normal products that people like to normal people? Nobody's gonna meme Exxon.

BB is kind of a weird one (maybe it's the ticker), but the rest were way shorted. BBBY ran last time to almost $60 that one friday in Jan. It's all the same tickers again.

what a time 2 b alive pic.twitter.com/UxIa5lIv7Q

— Liz Franczak (@liz_franczak) June 2, 2021

Just the voice of uneducated, frustrated disgust: if the stock market managed a baseball team, they'd pinch-hit for Mike Trout in the 4th inning because he grounded out in the 2nd.

("Uneducated" as in illiterate about monetary matters.)

Oof, those meme stocks a few posts up, then vs. now. ^^

Everything I hate about the stock market summed up in a single headline on CNN today: "Stocks tumble after better-than-expected jobs report."

I understand the dynamic: more jobs = inflation = stocks tumble. It's still intuitively bizarre.

https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/zfj761/recently_discovered_the_majority_of_my_parents/