Small Capitalization Stocks Officially in Bubble

Tulip mania was a period in the 17th century during which prices for tulip bulbs reached irrationally high levels and then collapsed almost overnight. The picture to the right is a tulip, known as “the Viceroy”, as displayed in a Dutch catalog of the time. The picture serves as a reminder to us of the potential madness of crowds, perhaps no better popularized by Charles Mackay’s 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which outlined such behavior: Many individuals grew suddenly rich. A golden bait hung temptingly out before the people, and, one after the other, they rushed to the tulip marts, like flies around a honey-pot. Every one imagined that the passion for tulips would last … Read more

Baidu Dollars Likely Shifting to Alibaba Near Term; Raising Our Fair Value of Yahoo

Valuentum previewed the valuation of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in October 2013. Today, we’ve updated our analysis of the company in the table below and have raised our intrinsic value estimate to approximately $100 billion from $75 billion previously. This revision has had a relatively large per-share upward re-valuation of the shares of 24%-owner Yahoo (YHOO) in its 16-page report. Softbank, which owns more than 35% of Alibaba, will also see a more optimistic slant towards its own valuation in coming periods. Our updated valuation details of Alibaba are shown below. The previous table had a typo regarding the long-term growth rate of the perpetuity calculation, which has been corrected in the table above. Though we think our forecasts are … Read more

Plenty of Growth Ahead for Chinese Internet Companies

The Chinese Internet space has been a fantastic growth story through the course of 2013. Shares of Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio holding Baidu (click ticker for report: ), Qihoo (QIHU), Sohu.com (click ticker for report: ), and Tencent (click ticker for report: ) are all up at least 50% year-to-date. What do all of these companies have in common? They all have exposure to China’s rapidly-growing Internet usage as well as the country’s Internet search market. Search growth in China is phenomenal. Image Source: China Internet Watch In the second quarter of 2013, the value of the Chinese search market surged approximately 35% year-over-year (shown above), lapping a very robust growth rate well above 50% during the same period of 2012. Chinese search … Read more