
Kodak, Bill Gates and efficient markets - tortilla
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/12/kodak-bill-gates-and-efficient-markets.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BronteCapital+%28Bronte+Capital%29
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furtivefelon
Who believes in the strong version of efficient market hypothesis anyways? One
of the most interesting paradoxes of efficient markets is that to have
efficient market, you must have people in the market who doesn't believe in
efficient markets. There are a lot of them (the entire field of arbitrage is
based on the hypothesis that market is not efficient)

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jplewicke
Alternatively, you can have a market where the prices fluctuates but no one
ever trades. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-trade_theorem> .

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lrm242
Or, as John Maynard Keynes famously said, "The market can stay irrational
longer than you can stay solvent." Stop trying to predict, let the price tell
you what to do and follow the trend.

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ankeshk
There is big picture. And then there are details.

There is trending. And then there is individual timing.

Bill Gates pointed out a trend. Before most others. Finding trends and
patterns before others = you will usually not lose money.

But not being right on time = you may not make a lot of money either.

To do awesome in the stock market, a finger on both the pulses is necessary:
trending as well as timing.

But it starts with the trends.

(Imho - candlestick is a good method for finding the right time - but only
after you've analyzed the trends.)

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thecoffeeman
Considering the long term perspective of Buffett's investments, I'd say Bill
was spot on. I could say oil companies are equally doomed and in a 10 year
perspective I know I am right. That doesn't mean they won't make loads of
money the coming few years.

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jrockway
Doesn't Kodak make digital cameras, photo printers, and photo printing paper
now? Sounds like their stock price is low because the company is not a good
buy, not because they are in the wrong market.

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jstevens85
I don't think it's been able to make up for the revenue they've lost in film
for still cameras.

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gaius
Not only that, but the revenue from printing (paper, chemicals, services) as
most photos now never make it into prints.

Having said that, the only _proven_ way to store digital photos long-term is
presently archival paper, so...

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borism
Interesting. Does Kodak have the best archival paper (and the tint) on the
market?

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gaius
Kodak and Fuji are about equivalent. You can print a digital image onto photo
paper with a Frontier printer, and if you can keep it dry and out of direct
sunlight it'll last a hundred years with no additional effort on your part.
There's not yet a digital consumer media format that comes close to that.

