I have mostly commented in earlier blogs about how the silly people of the planet have magnetically attached themselves to the latest fad called Facebook. To the point that the American media had nothing else to yammer pre IPO this morning. Every channel that thought themselves to be a reliable news provider blabbed about the next big thing - the hoodie clad CEO ringing the bell over the heads of clueless citizenry about to take his company public.
Then came the moment of truth. The big Initial Stock Offering to the devotees. Many in the stock trading world including big institutions and retail customers lined up to trade. All hoped that the stock will rocket. Far from it. What happened was amazing. Not because the stock did not do anything but percisely because it did not. It basically flattened out at the initial list price.
Now one day does not a story make but I am surely hoping that people actually saw what a joke the whole valuation business is and specifically how a college drop out initiated business to score a date with a chick could never be valued over a $100B.
That said the underwriters tried to save face and supported the offer price apparently by buying all sales. Market functions only when there is a buyer to every seller. This too amazing to be true story got told. There seems to be sanity in the market somewhere.
This time for a tech conference in the realm of what else? AI. But applied to an oft neglected space called Knowledge Management. The latter is a community of practice that focuses on analyzing, organizing and making available reams of data that have been gathered over time by various functions within an organization for anyone in the company to utilize. This function or process is ripe for applying AI agents (or agentic AI framework) and optimize for better outcomes. It was informative. More rewarding was getting acquainted with folks who practice this craft as well as learning of what they see in the corporate or public sectors. Since the venue was Washington DC it also afforded me the chance to take evening strolls albeit the weather was trying. With wind chill in the single digit it still is a glamorous place to perambulate through history absorbing what this country has been through since its founding days. I was able to visit the place Lincoln was killed along with his monument t...
Interesting. I am fairly sure that most stocks are actually overhyped. This was probably the upper limit of the phenomenon.
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