<nettime> Re: TBTF: eToys pays in market cap for bullying etoy

[David Mandl <dmandl@panix.com>]

On the I'd-like-it-to-be-so front:

I'd put the eToys drop in the same category as levitation of the
Pentagon: Publicly, to support the cause, I'd swear I saw the building
rise.  Why not?  The whole thing was about psyching people out anyway.
But if "one of us" asked me in private, did I really, truly see the
building levitate?, I'd let him in on the secret.

So, publicly, I'd have no problem with press releases attributing the
stock drop to the atack on eToy.  Great idea.  Freaking out/scaring
the hell out of eToys is what this is all about, after all.  But among
friends, if someone were to ask me, honestly, I'd say: Not a
snowball's chance in hell.  The people who can make a stock like that
drop that much (big NASDAQ market makers, big money managers, soulless
day traders) care less than zero about a bunch of marginal weirdo net
artists.  There are infinitely bigger news stories about Issues People
Care About at the moment--slave-labor factories in Asia, for
example--and even those rarely cause the speculators in question to
dump their stock.  There's just no way.

I'm not a defeatist, but it's important to keep the signifance of
stories like the eToy attack *to the world at large* in perspective.

Cheers,

   --D.


On Mon, 13 Dec 1999, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> I'm hardly interested in the type of formal proof that would satisfy a
> mathematician. But folks who follow the market would readily accept the
> events I cited (analyst ratings, increased competition, slow growth) as
> adequate explanations of the drop. 
> 
> You are backing a novel interpretation. For that you need a bit more proof
> than an I'd-like-it-to-be-so hunch. Correlation does not equal casuation,
> remember, and I'd say the etoys.com legal win probably boosted their stock
> price instead. 
> 
> -Declan
> 
> 
> At 15:59 12/12/1999 -0500, t byfield wrote:
> >declan:
> >
> >there's no doubt that the events you cite affected etoys' stock
> >price (that much seems clear); but the question remains whether
> >they're *adequate* explanations of the drop. i don't think that
> >has been proven, or even can be proven.
> 
> <...>
> 
> 
> 
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--
Dave Mandl
dmandl@panix.com
davem@wfmu.org
http://www.wfmu.org/~davem

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