Technical analysis doesn't have any science backing it up. However, as most pop books are some form of swing, candlestick, Bollinger bands, mean reversion, it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you're going to play the markets, it's quantitative analysis or go broke. And that is a literal go broke!
In the same tone, there's a stock XYZ at $1. I think it will go to $10 in the next year, so instead of buying in at $1, I buy at $8? Wow. On Wall street, this is called "dumb money".
This is also called the "efficient market hypothesis", and is a cornerstone of basic equity valuation. The idea is that if you have information that a company's stock is sure to rise in the future, it is rational for you to pay any amount up to the point at which you believe it will be valued in the future to acquire it now. And so the stock price will instantly reflect all public information about the future prospects of the stock.
You may call it "dumb money", but if so, then all money is dumb.
Grandparent mentions "greater fool theory", which is perhaps a clearer counterpoint to your (quite correct) point.
It's also worth saying that upside risk is typically coupled with downside risk (which is something you're hinting at) -- the wider market has the probability of failure built into its current pricing. So, somewhat perversely, even if you don't think it'll have a billion dollar valuation with probability exceeding that of the market, it can become a better investment simply by increasing the probability of > $0 outcomes (by reducing that downside risk). Demonstrating that with a pivot seems like actually good evidence.
I wouldn't make the same investment, but there are a couple angles to discuss here.
there is a lot of uncertainty in valuing a startup. Conditional on this uncertainty, if I think it is worth 10, then absolutely, I should buy every share I can at 10 or below. The question is, is my valuation method correct. On average, since it is known that VC underperform the market, especially, the larger funds - the answer is probably, not quite :)
Remember, Moto was the first company to release an Android phone. And due to Google aquisition it got a lot more balls and had the guts to release again fantastic phones like Moto X and Moto G. Also the Nexus 6.
Lenovo would be stupid to kill the name ( like MS did with Nokia). Hell, I bet the Lenovo guys will stop selling any phones under Lenovo name, and put all the money on Moto brand.
HTC released the first Android phone, but that's a minor point.
I think bubblemachine3k has a point. Motorola is competing in a tough market with a lot of other Android phone makers. At the end of the day, they're all producing basically the same thing: a variety of Android phones, some good, some less good. There's little loyalty to Motorola, unlike iOS's closed ecosystem. If, next year or two, HTC's phones are the best and Motorola's are so-so, then you're going to get an HTC.
> It just goes to show you that even if you're at the top in a huge market, you could be forgotten about within an instant.
I mentioned Microsoft because they were at the top. How did Windows 8 go? From all the delayed orders for Windows 7 I keep seeing in shops, how do you think Windows 10 is going to go? Here's another example - how many people do you know a) use a Microsoft phone as their primary driver and b) actually love the experience and c) aren't waiting for their contract to expire so they can jump ship to Android/iOS?
They are slowly becoming irrelevant, more so as we move further online and our machines turn into simple dumb terminals.
Yeah, it is interesting reading these comments from young people. Maybe they first tried linux in the early 2000 and that's why they only remember Ubuntu.
Distributions like Linux-Mandrake, Corel Linux, Connectiva strived to make Linux a "user friendly" experience, well back before Ubuntu came to the light.
The reason why Ubuntu was a game changer was mainly because it was backed by Mark Shuttleworth, a millionary that was willing to pour a lot of money on his own Linux distribution.
I know Mandrake Linux, and I used it for some time as my main distribution. Like Ubuntu they were striving for a user-friendly distribution, but they never got the the level of consistency Ubuntu had.
Why? Because they chose KDE at the beginning, but they didn't stick with their choice and did what every other distribution did: let users choose between KDE and Gnome. And spent time to have all their tools look "kinda OK" in both desktops with cross Qt-Gtk themes, and Gnome users got a not so great experience but they kept shouting that Gnome users were just as important to them as KDE users, etc.
So in short they thought of themselves a "Linux distribution", a way to install Linux and related software. On the other hand, Ubuntu considers itself an OS, and upstream software is just a way for them to achieve the degree of quality they want.
You see that also when Ubuntu releases Unity: they want their OS to work this way, while Mandrake always focused on (1) the installer and (2) the control panel where you configure stuff, thinking "the desktop is Gnome/KDE's job, let's just ship what they make".
There was other reasons why Ubuntu worked better than Mandrake: one is that they used the superior dpkg while Mandrake was using RPM. (RPM got better recently, but back in the day it was a huge pain). Honestly I felt for many years that a user-friendly distribution based on dpkg would bring the best of both worlds, and that's what Ubuntu was.
Also Ubuntu arrived as the right time, when it was possible to have a fully plug-and-play distribution if your hardware is standard enough. I don't think they could have achieve that in the 90's.
And of course marketing. Ubuntu have been very good at marketing, and that's a good thing.
or RHEL Workstation, SUSE, etc... but point kind of stands since Ubuntu was, for some reason or the other, highly visible. Maybe those free CDs had something to do with it.
I've had a play with Ubuntu on the Nexus 5. I don't think it's a daily driver for me yet, but I'm excited and they look like they are working hard to get there. Can't wait.
