I read an article a while back where a guy said he was cashing in his kids college accounts to buy Facebook $FB. In his mind this was his shot at greatness, his time to shine. Can’t really blame him, it’s maddening to watch others get rich by dumb luck. This was the next $GOOG right? Odd though, when you consider that disasters like $ZNGA and $GRPN were in full implosion mode.
I blame the financial media for so much of this, as they relentlessly opined on the merits of Facebook. They showed countdowns to the IPO date, there were hour long “specials” galore and they made you fell like an imbecile if you didn’t subscribe for shares. After all, everyone has a $FB account, so it must be awesome. How could it fail.?
So while the masses fell to their knees and worshiped at the alter of Zuckerberg, and trusted (once again) the stand up guys at the big investment banks, here are some names that you could have owned instead over the same time period.
$MLNX -How about a 60 point move in Mellanox?
$GOOG – How about a 75 point move in Google?
$PCYC -How about a 35 point move in Pharmacyclics?
$AAPL -How about a 120 point move in Apple?
Bottom line? No IPO is worth the opportunity cost and when you get your allocation filled from your broker, there is something terribly wrong.
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