> approximately 15 percent equity stake in China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd
15 percent of Alibaba is about $52.5 billion. I'm not sure why we're even discussing anything else. It's like saying that my contribution to family finances is:
a) not selling my parents' house, which is now worth half a million.
b) having $1.32 in change in a little ashtray by the door.
As a long time Yahoo mail user, I was very disappointed with Yahoo under Mayer. Firstly they did a terrible job with the Yahoo mail web client; it became slow and clunky and inherited the worst parts of Gmail and none of the good parts. Secondly my account was hacked and to this day my old contacts still receive spoof emails from "me" (though not actually my email address) about weight loss supplements.
I am ashamed to tell people my email address. I started moving to Gmail.
Yahoo and LinkedIn are basically right next door to each other and employees from one routinely hop to the other, so it makes sense that they share production values.
Core Yahoo was actually worth a negative amount when comparing its market cap to the market cap of the Alibaba assets.
c) crashed the car that was worth $50,000 but is now worthless
And in comparison to actually growing a company that is worth a similar amount its childs play,
https://www.engadget.com/2014/05/20/what-ever-became-of-micr...
By 2001, MSFT had 18 million shares of Apple, sold by 2003. Later a 2:1 and then a 7:1 stock split, would give them a value of $36 billion today (if my math and the article's math are correct), but was sold for a relatively small profit instead.
It's harder than you think to hold onto a massive amount of shares in a growing company.
" The average investor lost money in the Fidelity Magellan fund under Peter Lynch’s tenure during a period of time when the fund returned around 29% annually."
http://www.innovativewealth.com/wall-street-wisdom/individua...
It's easy to look back and say, wow, if I had invested at that time, I'd have $x m/b, but the temptation to "lock in gains" or "diversify" is really strong. And sometimes it is right!
The link you provided is just one persons essay.
And sometimes people sell for other valid reasons, they need the cash even though they think its still a good long term investment.
The original point was that yahoo and marissa meyer hardly set the business world alight by holding (not even buying), just holding, alibaba shares.
Well, that makes two more links than you've provided.
Sorry, can't find an original source link online (it was from before the interwebs, after all), but here's another with more quotes from Lynch, and google will find lots more:
http://ivanhoff.com/2016/10/23/five-market-insights-from-pet...
Yahoo definitely was successful with the Alibaba investment, whether through luck or good decision making - though I agree, the rest of their decision-making lends weight to the "luck" evaluation.
No dispute at all that they showed no competitive advantage in managing their actual business.
There must be millions of people around the world who have bought and held growing assets, my fucking dad did and he is no warren buffet.
I have absolutely no back up evidence of this, but you don't either. One blog, now two blogs neither of which are peer reviewed or provide any form of source data. This second blogs just quotes someone else.
Its hard to hold on to a growing asset ? I really don't think it is. Unless you desperately need the money for something more important.