<p>Actually about 4 months. Where is the doom and gloom? Billions lost. The horror. Congress to get involved??</p>
<p>I think some of it is that people are taking some value off the table. The other is that maybe that you cannot make infinite amount of money in advertising. The other applications are still on the come and the true transition from pc based to web based applications is still a few years away and most likely there will be competition in this area. Google is still a player and a growth play it is just starting to get into the mature cycle of the growth curve.</p>
<p>Google is a buy.</p>
<p>My point exactly. People who bought houses in say LA in 2001 made around 100% or more increase. Now they had to give back 10% on paper. Boo Hoo. You still made around $300k for the average house using mostly borrowed money and you got to live in it and deduct the interest. Not too shabby. Now the schmo who bought Google at $750 or a house in LA at $600K is kinda bummed right now. That’s life. But which is all over the papers?</p>
<p>Another very smart guy agrees:</p>
<p>[Zell </a> Sees Start of Housing Recovery in the Spring - Real Estate * US * News * Story - MSNBC.com](<a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/23350846/site/14081545]Zell ">http://www.cnbc.com/id/23350846/site/14081545)</p>
<p>Housing prices dropping at the largest rate in 70 years is a bigger story than a stock dropping 40%, even if it is Google.</p>
<p>How many people are affected by Google’s stock drop? How many people are affected by the housing drop?</p>
<p>I don’t hear Google asking for bailouts.
The banks, real estate industry and brokerage firms…</p>
<p>The tech market implosion of 2000 affected quite a few people. Some lost their retirement funds by daytrading them away, and there were quite a few promising companies not being able to raise VC cash to continue operations. The biotech was affected the most… Well, we licked our wounds and went on with our business. This too shall pass.</p>
<p>This is just the second web bubble starting to burst. Google isn’t worth $600+ a share. Web advertising has a definite market, but it was overvalued.</p>
<p>Facebook is another overvalued company. Microsoft paid $300/user for the 1% non controlling stake they bought- 240 million, which would value the company as a whole at 15 billion dollars. Facebook has been in the red since it opened- hence, why they’re trying Beacon and other questionable (privacy-wise) measures.</p>
<p>What we’re seeing here is pretty similar to what happened in 2001- build up quickly at a loss to gain “mind share”. People realize that mind share is not worth as nearly as much as they thought, stock plummets.</p>
<p>Some stocks will take a beating, the market will retreat and life will go on.</p>
<p>The reason it dropped “at its largest rate in 70 years” is that it hardly ever drops. So a drop of 5% is BIG NEWS. ( Unlike the market which has dropped 30-50% at the drop of a hat). I say big deal. It went up 50–100% the last few years so it went down a bit. Totally overblown reaction. Given the turmoil in mortgages it’s really holding up pretty well.</p>
<p>If it is a totally overblown reaction can we cancel the stimulus plan and raise the fed funds rate back to 5.25%?</p>
<p>There is a story in yahoo about over 8 million people with mortgages larger than the homes are worth. Expected to go to 15 million people, or 30% of all mortgages (unless we inflate 
).</p>
<p>[ABC</a> News: Homes Worth Less Than Mortgages](<a href=“Homes Worth Less Than Their Mortgages - ABC News”>Homes Worth Less Than Their Mortgages - ABC News)</p>
<p>[Video</a> - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com](<a href=“Video News - CNN”>Video News - CNN)</p>
<p>It would be fine with me either way. Google worth less than I bought it for. Microsoft worth less, Yahoo worth less, Starbucks worth less, Amazon worth less. Stop me when you have had enough (if you bought it in the last 6 mos). My advice, don’t sell right now. It’s pretty easy to have a mortgage worth more than your home when you borrow 100% plus closing costs and have negative am loans. Unless you live in the Northwest as our prices are still going up, or down depending on who you believe.</p>
<p>“It’s pretty easy to have a mortgage worth more than your home when you borrow 100% plus closing costs and have negative am loans”</p>
<p>That’s why these loans should not exist and those that make these loans and those that borrow using these loans should not get one penny from the public when the loans go bad.</p>
<p>I thought you only own Microsoft?</p>
<p>I have a tiny amount of Yahoo. Teeny-tiny.</p>
<p>I was just making a point–all the I’s (investors) of the world.</p>
<p>I pretty much agree on the bailout but if they can get the mortgage holders to go along it’s good. Happens all the time in commercial mortgages. Things go south you redo the terms. Nobody really wants a bunch of foreclosures.</p>
<p>I think there are two types of peoples for “house” ownership: Investors (risk takers) and Homeowners. Some Homeowners got confused with Investing in a House.</p>
<p>Gains and Losses in te security markets are expected. No one really complained (very loudly) when technology crashed.</p>
<p>having been an investor for many years I know that stock prices rise and fall for fundamental reasons and for emotional ones. Googles recent rise was probably due to both and its fall, given it most recent guidance seemed to involve a bit of both too. </p>
<p>If you were a recent trader in google you probably go burnt. If you were a long term investor, you are still firmly in positive territory but probably should have had(and still have) a sizable percentage of you holding with stop loss orders.</p>
<p>So if I bought my Google stock for about $180 I should hold on to it but set up a stop-loss order? I was figuring I would keep it indefinitely since it’s become a lower-case verb (it’s in an IRA; not many shares–just enough for 3 months of college).</p>
<p>Who’d a thunk I could visit CC for free stock market advice? Or do I get what I paid for? ;)</p>
<p>“Gains and Losses in te security markets are expected. No one really complained (very loudly) when technology crashed”</p>
<p>Are you kidding?? There are many thousands of shareholder lawsuits against both the companies and the brokerage firms over the losses in the last tech bust. It’s like asbestos, lawyers are advertising on TV looking for clients who lost money.</p>
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<p>Absolutely!!! ;)</p>
<p>neumes, you should definitely have a stop loss order on at least 25% of your holdings, enough to cover most of your original investment. From then on you are playing with house money.</p>
<p>Nobody can buy GOOG or any other stock with just 5% (or even 20%) down. Most margin accounts need much more than 20% collateral. </p>
<p>The tax treatment of margin interest and mortgage interest is different.</p>
<p>Nobody lives in their stock portfolio.</p>
<p>Having said that, every time you take out a mortgage you get a huge pile of mandatory disclosure documents that warn you about the risks you are undertaking. At some point people (and banks) should have to pay for their risk taking behavior. If banks and borrowers want to renegotiate terms of mortgages to avoid foreclosures, that is fine with me. My problem is with governmental dollars being used to bail out banks and/or borrowers. Seriously undercuts the whole basis of our capitalist economy.</p>