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Mr. Market sounds pretty reasonable the way you describe him. But just 7 days ago he thought Facebook was worth 25% more than he thinks it's worth now. So he

by pg 14y ago

Mr. Market sounds pretty reasonable the way you describe him. But just 7 days ago he thought Facebook was worth 25% more than he thinks it's worth now. So he looks to me like the familiar Mr. Market portrayed in Benjamin Graham's book.

lucianomt 14y ago
That's just framing. Had the IPO come out at $20 and popped to the very same $26, everybody would be celebrating it as an amazing success. But Goldman Sachs and DST had to get their money back somehow...
_dps 14y ago
Seconded on the framing comment from lucianomt, and I'd also keep in mind that the people buying and selling 7 days ago were not the same people buying and selling now. At the IPO you had two special classes of participants. One the sell side: insiders and the underwriting investment bank. On the buy side: IPO speculators (i.e. people who specifically try to play IPO events, as opposed to people motivated by fundamentals and technicals). On the technical side, the bulk of algo and technicals trading above a 1-2 day timescale would presumably not have been trading at the IPO. I'd venture a guess that these algo and technical traders provide the bulk of day-to-day price stabilization so their opinions matter, rightly or wrongly. Ratio-driven fundamentals investors often look for, e.g. quarter-to-quarter metrics (changes in margin and so on), so they too lack the information to participate in their preferred manner until the next earnings report. I'd guess that the bulk of big pension and mutual funds operate in this fashion. In short, the people transacting 7 days ago were not particularly representative of the market in general.
rst 14y ago
Graham doesn't think Mr. Market is always reasonable to begin with. But I'm not sure it's fair to attribute that valuation to "the market" as a whole. It was set by the underwriters, who might have been expecting a flood of "greater fool" buyers as in the late 1990s. They did exist (I'm sorry to say I know a few), but obviously not in sufficient numbers to generate the classic "pop"...

by pg 14y ago

lucianomt 14y ago

That's just framing. Had the IPO come out at $20 and popped to the very same $26, everybody would be celebrating it as an amazing success. But Goldman Sachs and DST had to get their money back somehow...

_dps 14y ago

Seconded on the framing comment from lucianomt, and I'd also keep in mind that the people buying and selling 7 days ago were not the same people buying and selling now. At the IPO you had two special classes of participants. One the sell side: insiders and the underwriting investment bank. On the buy side: IPO speculators (i.e. people who specifically try to play IPO events, as opposed to people motivated by fundamentals and technicals). On the technical side, the bulk of algo and technicals trading above a 1-2 day timescale would presumably not have been trading at the IPO. I'd venture a guess that these algo and technical traders provide the bulk of day-to-day price stabilization so their opinions matter, rightly or wrongly. Ratio-driven fundamentals investors often look for, e.g. quarter-to-quarter metrics (changes in margin and so on), so they too lack the information to participate in their preferred manner until the next earnings report. I'd guess that the bulk of big pension and mutual funds operate in this fashion. In short, the people transacting 7 days ago were not particularly representative of the market in general.

rst 14y ago

Graham doesn't think Mr. Market is always reasonable to begin with. But I'm not sure it's fair to attribute that valuation to "the market" as a whole. It was set by the underwriters, who might have been expecting a flood of "greater fool" buyers as in the late 1990s. They did exist (I'm sorry to say I know a few), but obviously not in sufficient numbers to generate the classic "pop"...