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Originally Posted by Young Entrepreneur

Speaking of stocks, Google stock hits near $200!!!
Crazy. $85 IPO to $185 currently. Oh my. I should've invested when I had the chance.

I was also surprised.

Originally Posted by MG315 @ http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15068 97&postcount=12

one of the main reasons for the high price is the small float (amount of outstanding shares available for purchase). Once the grace period for the employees wears off and they are able to dump their shares on the open market it will drop a lot again. If you want to invest in google, wait for that.

Personally, I didn't think google was a good investment at $85, and a certainly don't think its a good investment at $200. It's way to unpredictable (didn't they go from no money to making hundreds of millions in 2 years?) and their whole business model is built on being the best and selling advertising. Technology changes so quickly that 5 years from now google might not be here, and ad blockers are getting increasingly accurate and soon will probably block all of googles ads.

Notwithstanding all of that, it trades at something like 70x P/E (price/earnings ratio). That's crazy. While it might have made you some good money investing in the IPO, there was just as good of a chance it would drop to $10/share and everyone would be saying "i'm glad I didn't get into that." Don't look at google as an investment, look at it as a gamble. You gamble, not because you expect to win, but because even if you don't you'll be having fun. If you like google and you want to track it's progress, throw down some money and have a little fun. But don't consider it an investment.


(Oh and for those who think i'm a conservative investor, 35% of my holdings are in REITs and junk bonds. google was just too risky for me).