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Comment by ajju | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is leading two separate businesses that are growing very fast: online retail and cloud computing. It's sort of like being in the chain store business and the electricity business at an imaginary point in the 20th century when they both were about to take off.

Disclaimer:I am (stupidly) waiting for a local minima in AMZN's stock price to buy more.

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The stupid part about waiting for a local minimum isn't the waiting, it's the thinking that you can even identify a local minimum.

Indeed. I once gave a presentation on the absolute futility of trying to time stock markets based on this excellent paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1032962

Given that and my long horizon, it is absolutely stupid, but that's (my) human mind for you.

"On average across all 15 markets, missing the best 10 days resulted in portfolios 50.8% less valuable than a passive investment; and avoiding the worst 10 days resulted in portfolios 150.4% more valuable than a passive investment. Given that 10 days represent less than 0.1% of the days considered in the average market, the odds against successful market timing are staggering. "

N.B.: To put a less stupid slant on it, I am sure ;) that the markets will shortly give in to periodic hysteria about the economy tanking, affecting retail, taking Amazon down with them

I hope you're selling puts while waiting.

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