Investing
I’ve recently purchased shares of PALM, makers of the Treo and classic Palm Pilots. I made the decision to purchase it just before their last quarterly earnings report, so I bought in at $19.64/share, which one week later looks like an excellent buy.
I bought on company fundamentals and potential for growth. Palm has double digit growth for revenues and earnings, competitve margins, lots of cash on hand, very little debt and one of the biggest eye openers to me was that they are matching RIMM’s revenues with less than a third of the employees. I think Palm has a lot of upside potential.
Not to sound superior, but I feel like I’ve done a good analysis of the company and feel that as long as PALM can see consistent revenue growth things will continue to the upside. But as much as I feel I’ve analyzed, I was curious to read what other investors have to say, so I decided to check out the investors board for PALM at Yahoo!.
Talk about an eye opening experience. It is very possible the people on this board have done as much or more research on the stock as I have, but I’m skeptical. I can’t believe the level of pointless postings going on. It is like being at a casino and watching rows of gamblers numbly staring at slot machines, pushing buttons and pumping money in. There’s an average of two posts every minute. Here’s a snap shot of what investors (read gamblers) are saying:
“UGHHHHHHHHHH 23 IS THE NEW 21 ”
”$ 2 3___T W E N T Y___T H R E E___$ 2 3 Yippeee!!!”
“Great day for AAPL to buy PALM on its 30th Anniversary”
“if palm raise to 40+, all shorting money will become zero, and shorters will receive magin call, and their broker will help them to cover it in the market! This will pop palm to 100+ again, then palm need another split, compared with rimm and its peak price 1000+, palm still has a long way to go…. ”
Crap. All of it. These are a couple posts from a 5 minute snapshot. Speculation, based on nothing about Apple buying Palm, which I can’t say will never happen, but it is extremely unlikely. Some investor looking forward to a share price of $40, then to $100 then to $1000? I never want to say never to any of this, but it’s pure speculation, with no data backing it up.
There are very few signals to all the noise. Investor board trolling is a waste of time and can cloud your judgement. Buying and selling should be based solely on the performance of the company and it’s competitors.
