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Q: Is anyone going to buy Alibaba shares?
Is anyone thinking of investing in it?
9 years 31 weeks ago in Money & Banking - China
If I can get enough cash at the right time I will seriously consider it.
I would like to..but i have no idea how investing and shares and all that stuff works.
Agreed WanderingTeach - if I can find the money I need to find a way to figure out how to do this. Search engine time 
Hummm, I will buy one or two of those luxury mansions (marble, fountains, luxury cars parked in front, 5 mn by walk from the fanciest district of Suzhou) under construction next to my place, using a big loan. Then I will sell the mansions 6 months later and use that to buy Alibaba stocks. Bullet proof plan, what can possibly go wrong ?
Scandinavian:
you could forget "6 month later" so remember to mark the calendar. other than that, seems bulletproof.
Does a bear buy Alibaba stock the woods? Or does it just come out his... ?
Here are the details : http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/15/us-alibaba-group-ipo-idUSKBN0H...
In short, they want to expand to North America and Europe and need to raise the capital hence the new IPO stock options. They handle the sales volume of Amazon and Ebay combined and is the main payment portal for Taobao.
I am seriously considering it. If they manage to break in to these markets successfully it could mean a rise in share from about $60-66 dollars to something like $100-120.00 per share within a year or so... or they COULD explode into something like Microsoft numbers. If they fail, well then... down the drain goes the value of your stocks although they are very strong in China... it may be a good risk to take.
Robk:
This amount per share is pretty reasonable.
In 1986 Microsoft opened their shares at $26.00 per share.
Because Microsoft expanded they split those shares and resold them as they got larger. So if you bought just one share it would have split and be worth about 8 grand today.
If you had the foresight to invest say a reasonable sum of 10 grand into Microsoft at that time, you would be worth $3 million today.
So the question is... does Europe and North America have room for Alibaba?
Alibaba is merely a byproduct of China's protectionist measures.
Just like Tencent or Baidu or so many others, it has nothing to do in the world of giant corporations, it has hardly any true value, and would have been out of business for a long time should it not have been allowed to be the only choice for Chinese. But the wall goes both ways.
So, what does Alibaba own in reality:
- the exclusive access to many Chinese factories so people can cut middle men. Right. That's interesting though we're desperately stuck in the bottom feeder end of the business. Big companies will keep their exclusive high end supply chains. Plus, I don't think customs in many countries will allow this game to play forever. And I don't think this customer base would have any loyalty should a bigger player, let's say quality-oriented, emerge.
- The exclusive access to many Chinese moneybags with eBay's copycat Alipay. Yeah, right, fine. Is anyone outside of China putting their bank information in their hands abroad? Didn't think so.
- Aaaaaand... that's it. Yeah. So they have the exclusive access to whatever they need inside of China. Which, like any other Chinese company, has prevented them to make any sort of reality check on anything and be truly competitive over the year.
If I had any money to put in the stock market, I'd avoid any of those Chinese IT companies that aren't backed by anything else than China's will to play unfair.
DrMonkey:
I'm particularly curious to know what would happen if a customer in Europe got something from Taobao, from a Chinese vendor, and that the product turns out to be not up to the local regulations. Who's liable, how it works if something goes bad, etc. In all that IPO fanfare, I never read this kind of considerations.
mengxing:
This may all be true but they also have amazing access to a lot of Chinese people, the sheer volume of which will not be decreasing anytime soon...
RiriRiri:
Which only but stresses the lack of knowledgeable journalists or analysts on the subject. I read so much more accurate things here than in so many "pro" outlets or from self-appointed China specialists.
Well... Chinese also deserve credit for being (at least) efficient at hiding stuff under the carpet.
Anyway, customs are bound to become a problem soon or later. It should be a focus in the reporting, but it's not.
Robk:
That's true, but as the comment above me mentioned and you yourself agreed to... they have pretty much exclusive rights in China. And Chinese on-line shoppers are rising steadily.
Let's say 10 years into the future when a ton of Chinese emigrate over to new places, they are going to want to use a payment portal they are familiar with as well when shopping online aren't they?
On the other hand, Hong Kong has said no to being their base for holding international shares, which is saying a lot and they are going to NY. But there has been a lot of hostility towards China from HK, so this could have something to do with it.
Also, Jack Ma the owner is working very hard to push that Alibaba is not a Chinese company it just happened to start in China. So there are points for both sides.
What it comes down to is if they can hang with western payment portals... PayPal is owned by eBay, so of course they will do everything in their power to shut out Alibaba. It's a roll of the dice... but my thoughts are there is about a...
15% chance it will be hugely successful and rise (as many people are getting tired of using PayPal and Skrill and their high transaction fees).
50% chance it do so-so and numbers will either crawl up or down
35% chance it will plummet and be totally out matched. If they can do payment processing cheaper and still at reasonable quality then I think they would have an excellent chance. Many businesses are looking for cheaper solutions because of the crappy economony.
RiriRiri:
@mengxing, no one is impressed by sheer numbers anymore. China promised to deliver 300.000.000 heads in terms of middle class consumers by 2014/15. So far, it's not even sure whether the actual number even reaches 70.000.000.
And yet they still dare boasting about being the gateway to 1.3 billion customers.
Numbers. Storytelling. Fairy tales.
xinyuren:
Agreeing with Riri. I'm really sick of companies waving the magic wand and chanting, "China...China....1.3B people with money" The stupid investors' eyes may be as big as plates looking at Alibaba, but all I see is a Chinese company. And as long as I have been in China, I haven't been once impressed with the way a company here has been run. What I have seen in excess is,
CEO / CFO's cutting and running and taking the money.
Company accountants cooking the books to inflate stock prices.
Companies performing under protectionist market conditions with few or no international competitors.
I've had personal conversations with CEO's and executives of "multinational" firms and they always exude an attitude of overactive confidence about future performance in places like Singapore and India. Mention expanding to the West, and suddenly their eyes glaze. I've seen it more than once. They hadn't a clue. When investing in Alibaba, you're investing in the Chinese market. Nothing more.
That been said, Alibaba may do very well. But China is the world of smoke and mirrors. I wouldn't trust it enough to put my money there.
sam239:
Robk: you said that Ma wants to push that it's not a Chinese company, but I read he had always considered the foreign staff to be temporary, and the goal for it was to be 100% Chinese in make-up. I wonder how he expects to do that and still have people see it as an international company.
Burak43:
RiriRiri, if you are so sure in your predictions you can always go short on Alibaba, and those who predict otherwise should go long. Let the money do the talking ;)
Maybe, it will really help, to find out some movies on YT, about how are money created. To really understand.
So, Alibaba, will eat all the money invested in. and give you back yours IOU - I Owe You - paper. considering, it is still chinese company anyway ... "OOh, we got troubless, not enough customers outside of china, we have shut own operations abroad. sorry ... "
I would as I am worried they will be fined in China for breaking anti monopoly laws. If you believe that I will tell you another.
First report about Alibaba IPO share price and sentiment in USA:
With A Market Cap Of $168 Billion, Alibaba Is Bigger Than...
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/18/2014 - 17:59
With a market capitalization of $168 billion after its pricing at $68/share, the upper end of the range which makes this the largest US IPO in history and would be the largest in the world if the greenshoe is exercised, Alibaba, while not a member of the S&P 500 (at least not immediately), will have a market cap that is larger than the following index members:
icnif77:
Meanwhile, Here's What The "Super-Rich" Are Rushing To Buy
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/20/2014 - 17:44
If you said shares of BABA, you'd be wrong. According to the Telegraph, the exodus out of paper wealth and into hard assets is reaching a fever pitch as the "super-rich are looking to protect their wealth through buying record numbers of "Italian job" style gold bars, according to bullion experts." The numbers cited by the paper are impressive: the number of 12.5kg gold bars being bought by wealthy customers has increased 243% so far this year, when compared to the same period last year, said Rob Halliday-Stein founder of BullionByPost. "These gold bars are usually stored in the vaults of central banks and are the same ones you see in the film 'The Italian Job'," added David Cousins, bullion executive from London based ATS Bullion.
alibaba is dropping like a queen with leprosy.
ambivalentmace:
careful, once in a while the bottom keeps coming and averaging down can get expensive
icnif77:
You have to be familiar with the Fibonacci levels, i.e. Technical analysis ... combined with the increase/decrease of the buying/selling volume ...
Furthermore, if you would scan BABA with Elliott Waves count (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and a, b, c ), one could predict latest drop and anticipated next up or further down-move ...
If you have time for some tutorial ...
https://elliottwave.com/Investing/Using-Elliott-Waves-As-Simple-As-ABC
ambivalentmace:
I have used elliot wave but once in a while an outlier breaks the rules, especially with government interference in the free market.
icnif77:
It is a very detailed TA tool used together with the volume and Fib. levels.
EW alone doesn't give you the exact entry/exit points needed for the scalps and day-trades, i.e. short time frame trades, but about the direction of the next move in long term (month or longer ..), it is 100% on the ball.
One must get into Elliott Waves to understand it properly ... and stop reading the news and FOMO-in.
Chart/TA reliance, only! 
