Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price
google.com
google.com
It's been kind of a (minor) bloodbath so far in the markets today. So, a 10% drop for a young, growth-oriented company is not terribly surprising on a day like today, I'd think.
0: https://www.google.com/finance?cid=13756934
Sorry for the barb, but that meme (your house as an investment) really bothers me, because it has the potential to do a lot of damage. It's like penny stocks. Sure you can make money if you really know what you're doing or get lucky, but by and large the idea that it's a good investment originates with people who've a financial interest in convincing you to buy some.
Pretty shortsighted view there, and demonstrably wrong. Historically housing prices have always risen faster than the rate of inflation - both in 'popular'neighborhoods and elsewhere. Take almost any 10 year period of time and you'd be very very hard pressed to find a region where housing prices didn't dramatically outpace inflation.
For example, over the past 25 years the average price of a US home has grown by about 14% in real terms. I'm too lazy to calculate out what that would be as an annual percentage rate, but it's definitely lower than the average US property tax rate, which I believe is a smidge under 1%. So already, even without considering other expenses, houses tend to be gradual money losers on average.
I don't buy a house expecting to use it 10+ years and still make a buck selling it afterwards. The same way I don't buy a car and expect it to yield me money when it's a broken beater, in fact, the simple fact of buying it immediately devalues it (to others).
(I guess this is because (1) the market and tax situation in the US are broken and (2) it causes the land to be vastly more valuable than whatever is standing on top of it)
And be careful what you wish for, because once you do own that house, if the prices continue to fall, you could be underwater fairly easily. If a $1m place falls to $750k, which you can afford, but then the economy continues to stutter, it could fall to $500k or $350k. Remember that your mortgage doesn't reflect what you could sell your house for, once you sign the papers, you're on the hook for it.
I really question what those economic factors are though. For SF it's clearly the availability of high paying jobs. However in Portland, OR (where I live) there are little to no high paying tech jobs available, and yet the housing prices are sky rocketing to levels never seen before.
Given my basic understanding of economics the current climate makes absolutely no sense. Wages have been stagnate for years, college grads have no career outlook (outstanding student debt is now $1.2 trillion), and prices for everything (except for oil) are higher than ever. I've seen friends empty their bank accounts just to pay rent. The concept of savings or retirement for millennial might as well not even exist.
Probably not a popular view, but I think there's some truth to it. Check out the Harvard JCHS article [1], more households are paying 30, 40, and even 50% of their salaries for rent than ever before.
Major shifts like this can only be explained by culture, IMO. Maybe the US is undergoing a major shift toward wanting to live in city centers, even at the cost of saving for the future? Or people in certain metros just think they're that exceptional / special / etc. that they "deserve" to live in a certain place? Or everyone in a high-ambition career think they don't need to save because they'll "make it" (maybe true?) and will have fuck-you money in a few years?
It's a big change from the past, that's for sure.
[1] http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/research/publications/projecting...
People I've known who bought houses look at it as locking a "rent rate" in for 30 years and assuming the burden of maintenance rather than riding the fluctuating markets. Right now, they're locked in at lower rates than other people I know are paying in rent to live in a similar area.
I willing to wager part of the problem is the lockdown on lending after 07/08 and more people got pushed into the rent market because they couldn't get the loans to purchase a house which has led to the inversion of the cost of owning vs renting. Historically, owning has been more expensive than renting in most places
Not to mention a lot of consumers view home ownership as the single largest investment they make, so they are sitting on their retirement.
My wife and I have put in more than 20 unsuccessful offers attempting to stay in our unfortunately popular neighborhood in the last two years. We have been chasing the affordability train for some years now, our increasing bids never getting ahead of the frenzy... (today, it seems we're at peak market and it'd be foolhardy to buy perhaps...)
NB: we don't just 'move further out' not only because of 20 years of community, our love of bike commuting, and our great 'hood...
...we are bound by the location of our excellent public school. Non-parents may not realize the staggering import of lucking into a K8 public school you truly love... for two siblings in SF, staying in our school instead of paying for some private (assuming we could get into one) will amounts to well over half a million dollars in post-tax income over the next decade...
We too are part of the tired story of 'middle' class (by SF standards... :P) professional families with 2x full time incomes finding it almost impossible to hold on to a life of modest middle class comfort in SF (where middle class means: a 1000 sq ft 2 bedroom home for family of four; one 25K car; public schools; etc.)
with a global equities slump more foreign money might pour into california real estate.
Note that I am not saying that the school district system is somehow intrinsically morally bad, or that I know of a better alternative to it, just that it has this unfortunate result if you think class mobility is a good thing.
.. Or so I hope, since I just bought an overpriced Peninsula house last year :)
Present is ugly.
All-cash comp in the 300-500k range is surprisingly common (at least for 10+ year experience people in hot fields); add any luck on equity, and 2 incomes, and you can afford SF rents as they stand.
Being able to reliably get a $300k/yr cash salary (salary+bonus, but still cash) seems more related to absurd rents than 10% of people getting huge equity payouts (which tend to not even be that huge). I also think a lot of people who get $1-5mm equity windfalls often think "oh, buy a house somewhere else" vs. "a small condo in SF".
(equity does affect the buy market; if there were a rate hike and China implosion at the same time, but people still had equity money, they'd probably be the majority of buyers.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/01/20/n...
The environment should stabilize by 2016Q2.
Apple is not remotely the largest company in history, when adjusted for inflation. The The Dutch East India Company, for instance, was worth over 7 trillion dollars at one point. Likewise, Standard Oil held a monopoly on all the USA's oil at one point and certainly had a several trillion dollar valuation.
Saudi Aramco will be massive, certainly. But not without precedent in history.
Saudi Aramco – the $10tn mystery at the heart of the Gulf state - http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/16/saudi-aramco...
Don't hold your breath.
The big question is - who is Square competing with.
Now that Square is a public company with shareholders, the Silicon Valley mantra of growth-at-all-costs no longer generally applies, instead the focus is on profitability/ROI. Which is something that Square lacks, and is in an industry with slim margins already.
This reminds me of Peter Thiel's thoughts on monopolies.
Square are in competition with every payment method of every kind. They are not in some tiny "niche" category of payment that will somehow remain invulnerable to competition from banks, Apple Pay, Android Pay, Stripe, etc. etc.
I don't see how they can possibly survive in the long-term.
I'm sure you can build a great business in that market, but is it a 3 billion dollar business?
There's a bunch internationally where Square hasn't really begun to compete.
Anecdotally, tons of other people. Looking at the coffee shops and smaller stores in my area there's a pretty wide array of iPad-POS systems in use that aren't Square. In fact where I am (NYC) I'd wager that Square holds a plurality of that market rather than the majority.
Most of their frontends (in so far as I have to interact with them as a customer) aren't quite as slick as Square's, but they do get the job done, and presumably vendors use them because they're cheaper, which only underscores how fragile Square's business is.
These third party solutions aren't as sexy or slick as Square, but ultimately when it comes to payment processing sexiness is very, very far down the list of priorities.
It's also worth noting that there are big juggernauts moving in on Square's territory of physical transactions - PayPal being one - who already run enormous electronic payment volume. Stripe also has a big piece of the electronic payments pie and can potentially move in on Square's territory, while Square has so far been unable to branch out beyond physical payments.
Not to say that a 10% drop isn't notable, but the whole market is taking a beating today.
Some of it is correction, but I think generally more people are starting to treat it as a hedge against general global markets--as a haven like gold.
The Square IPO was less than employees who started after their last round and preferences made it even worse, meaning even though there is a liquidity event, employees who took options are out. With this significant drop, other employees who exercised their options (and paid taxes) are also out.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-19/square-emp...
It's not doing too poorly today, but it's not been immune to the larger macro trends of the last month.
I've spent the last year trying to understand the whole private-to-public process and I'm curious what this means for Square and other companies like Etsy who are experiencing the same drop in stock price.
Other remarkable tidbit: Shell now has a smaller marketcap than Unilever.
Here's one example: http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/15/technology/square-starbucks/
Don't be wary ;)
When the price of oil falls, that indicates that people are pulling back on oil/gas/etc purchases due to constrained budgets, reduced business/operations, etc. (and/or that people buying the oil predict that others will cut back on those things in the near future)
Whole market is going nuts over the possibility of $10/barrel oil and overly strong US dollar
In other words, as you read this, unicorn valuations are getting less "unicorny," so to speak.