A Facebook World

• Tweet
• Pin It

In light of the Facebook IPO deflation, the question needs to be asked: “Is ‘market value’ becoming a contradiction in terms?”

Does it not seem as if we have returned to the days of Blow-Up.com?

Or, did they never leave?

Is--or was—Facebook worth $38 a share at its IPO?

Looks like that’s a definite…‘No’.

The lead underwriters like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs certainly didn’t think so; they lowered their revenue targets the closer they got to the IPO date…

Not that you or I heard about it…

And Morgan Stanley had their doubts about Facebook’s value during the road show before the IPO as well…

Apparently, it was no secret to those who should know, and who underwrote the offering…

As opposed to those such as you and I who were supposed to buy the shares as they dumped theirs.

Hustling your friends

And now, they–the insiders--are under investigation by FINRA, the securities regulatory body, and are being sued by various states and investment firms…

But at $100 billion opening, you can bet that the cost of defending the IPO was built into the price, as was the reward, of course.

Hustling the world in the new millennium is expensive and complicated, so you know it helps to have a little help from your friends…all 900 million of them…

And you know the old saying--if you can’t hustle your best friends, who can you hustle?

There still remains the basic question, however, of how we define value in the market…

Because one of the key problems with the Facebook “value equation” was how will the company turn 900 million users into paying customers?

Certainly the advertising revenue has definite value, but how much?

GM, Facebook’s largest ad client, pulled its ads…

Why would they do that?

Because GM said their ads on Facebook were not worth the price…that they didn’t work.

One would presume that savvy GM marketing analysts came to that conclusion…

If that’s true, and other advertisers follow GM, where would Facebook go for future revenue?

Is GM right? I don’t know…but they think they are…

It must look like a game of charades to them to be so vocal about it…Or else they got a peek behind the curtain and quickly left the show before the credits rolled.

But hey, I like magic tricks as much as the next guy…

Following the walnut under the coconut shells has always been a crowd pleaser…

And if you’re the betting sort, or believe in the hype of having friends across the world that you’ll never meet and never really know…

Just be sure to put your money on the right coconut…if there is one.

Investor confidence game

That’s the dream of Facebook, isn’t it? A world community?

But if the whole world is a community, then there is no community…not really.

Hell, I don’t even know my next-door neighbor… How am I going to hit up someone from far away to help me trim the hedge?

But Mark Zuckerberg--God bless him--found the key to the American dream and turned it in a heartbeat…And man, did he turn it! A hundred billion dollars on the other side of that door…

Of course, there was probably more than one analyst behind that door, too…ones who could see the forest for the trees and so were bound and gagged no doubt.

Still, a hun-bil is real dough…I don’t care how shallow the greenback feels, try making that kind of jack working for a living…

But did you buy it? Because if you did, then you really bought it, didn’t you?
Where’s it gonna end? Again, I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s good sign for the market, do you?

Market psychologists will tell you that the market is all about investor confidence…

Facebook bag holders might amend that slightly…Perhaps toward the market being an investor confidence game, but really, it’s a matter of interpretation, isn’t it?

What’s one more word? Or even one more letter?

Tell me, is “Sucker” spelled with an “S” or a “Z”?

I’ll let those who know more than I do figure that one out.

But when you get right down to it, it’s a big deal when you’re pushing a $100 billion IPO on America and the revenue stream is iffy, don’t you think?

Come to think of it, that smells a lot like the stimulus economy we’re running right now…the same game we’re selling the Eurozone on as we speak…

It makes the dot.com come-ons look like cheap knock-offs compared to the royal scam we just saw flower before our wallets in real time…

And it makes me wonder…and it ought to make you wonder, too…

Does the term market value have any real meaning at all anymore? Is there really a walnut beneath at least one of the coconut shells they’re sliding around that table?

Is the market confidence game really just a game with the same winners and the same losers?

Or, to cut it really close to the bone, are Facebook friends really friends at all? Is there any long-term value to be found in a Facebook friend?

Can you call them up to come get you when your car breaks down on the interstate?

Or, is not Facebook the perfect end game in the greatest hustle on earth?

Maybe the real meaning of value in the Facebook world is when your very best 900 million friends buy your IPO.

And those are…The Gorrie Details.

facebook   twitter   linkedin   reddit   email