$2Bn in the first hour of trading today. Revenues up53.7%, active buyers up 52%.The mobile maus grew 138%. From $7M sales in 2009 to $5.7Bn in 2013 & now $8BN in just one day! (Bloomberg)
Seems as though there are bargain sales to be had out there with Alibaba..
Is Alibaba worth buying right now?
Lightningtiger
700 club gold member. Anniversary yesterday 1/10/2013. Recently returned from New York with a wish to see Wall Street for myself as a bit of a satisfying accomplishment. I first got interested in investments when I was a financial advisor for 14 years. I learned a lot & went to quite a few investment seminars. The one I remember particularly was with Fidelity. They visited the companies that they invested in and held them for a long duration in their portfolios. The other thing was with different currencies that they could buy a particular stock with and of course sell it if it was favourable with another currency. This was potentially more risky of course. It was not long before I realised that all the money from the insurance premiums had to be invested and who was doing it. We used to sell investment bonds where 5% was allowed to be taken tax free once a year on the anniversary of the policy which could run for 20 years.There was a choice of Managed, Property, or Equity to invest into. It was at this point of time that the Property fund went up 40% in less than a year. A simple comparison with the Managed and Equity funds showed the difference. I was soon taking a keen interest in unit trusts and shares, looking for things that were going up and the highest that they had been and bought them. I bought a software package with Up-data which enabled me to be much more efficient, putting stop losses in. Drummed into my head was cut your losses and sell when a stock breached the stop loss and let the profits run. Another stepping stone was to buy myself a Rolls Royce silver shadow that was chestnut brown in colour. The reasons were threefold. 1. That I could afford it. 2. The two managers for the insurance company that I was working for were called Douglas & Rolls. 3. I was still single. As well as doing the insurance business I joined an investment club in Basingstoke and became their chairman. We closed it this year sadly because of ill health with some of the members. Now I have a portfolio that I am able to take out (if & when I want to some cash) just like the insurance bonds but much more flexible. I enjoy the technology stocks and have taken profits several times from Arm Holdings which is the only share that I have held for many years now. Having just got this Stockopedia yesterday (first saw it at an investment seminar in London earlier this year) when I noticed Dart Group (DTG) so that is now in my portfolio too. I suppose you could say I am an analyst & a chartist. It was good to see my portfolio already has Globo, , Blinks, Clingen ,Dart, Wanddisco, opay,Easyjet ,LLoyds Arm Telicom Plus(which has doubled and a bit more but then started to drop so I have just sold almost half and re invested the proceeds into ASOS.) In conclusion I hold about 20 shares, and have just INCREASED my holdings in Globo about two weeks ago, and noticed someone has reduced their holding with Globo to 3%.I hope they are not still holding the poor pawnbroker shares (guess who) -40% in one day followed by further catastrophic drop. A good case for a stoploss . Join the 700 club and put some money to work I say. more »
Alibaba - Is unlike almost any other company you have ever tried to research.
Firstly the ownership structure means that you do not actually own shares in Alibaba the trading entity, but in another company that Alibaba executives have said that they will try to move the profits too, subject to Chinese law. Now clearly they have only made these statements with Chinese government approval. But that does not mean it cannot change tomorrow.
Secondly the figures it produces are potentially open to more of a question than a similar western company. It was only a few years ago that one of the senior govt economists said that the 8% growth rate was accurate subject to a +/- factor of 10%.
Thirdly the company is effectively run by its founder Jack Ma. Whilst discussing its value with Yahoo when he wanted Yahoo to sell part of the business to him the results were not nearly as good as they became shortly after Yahoo had sold some of its holding. Quite possibly a simple coincidence. But I seem to recall that at one stage Mr Ma took quite a chunk of what Yahoo thought was the business it owned and transferred it elsewhere on the grounds that what it did could not be owned by Yahoo under Chinese rules. But I am not sure Yahoo was overjoyed.
That is not to say Alibaba is not a great company. Mr Ma is clearly one of the world's great businessmen of the last decade. It is internet and China focused. People are making money on the shares. It is just that Alibaba is much more unique than most companies.
Regards
jpsc01
BABA is indeed interesting. Having recently bought at $304 I was not amused to see the stock drop rapidly to $253 on the news that Jack Ma and Xi Jinping, the Paramount Leader of China, are in disagreement - a row that could damage BABA. The spat is described in detail on Youtube and in fact there are several new Youtube clips released over the last couple of days that say very much the same thing - basically that BABA is a unique company, with better fundamentals than Amazon, and that the Chinese government may try to regulate it, but they're not going to do it any significant harm. I bought another tranche of shares at $263 yesterday in anticipation of a MACD crossover below the line in the next week and a currently favourable histogram.
