Nanotech Excitement Boosts Wrong Stock
from the prefix-investing dept
Back during the bubble years, companies were seeing their stock prices shoot up if they simply added an "e-" prefix to their name and/or a ".com" to the end. Call it "prefix investing." There were also more than a few stories of companies having their stock prices driven up after a similarly named company had some good news happen. This is a sign that there are a lot of greedy, but unsophisticated investors dumping lots and lots of dough into the market. It appears to be happening again. These days, it appears that the "hot" thing is nanotechnology (though, certain honest employees at many "nanotech" startups will admit that the "nano" part is a lot more marketing than reality). As such, everyone wants to have a "nano" prefix in their name. They won't get the NANO stock ticker symbol, though, as that's already held by a company named Nanometrics, who doesn't even do anything in the nanotechnology field, and has been around for 35 years. That hasn't stopped investors from piling on, though. Yesterday their stock got a huge boost, despite the fact that they didn't do anything special. There was this other company, Nanogen, that received a "nanotechnology patent" that excited investors - and it appears some of those investors were so "excited" that they didn't bother to check to make sure they were investing in the right company.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
spike in Nanotech interest
Check out our Nanotechnology T-shirts
www.emergants.com
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
The stock market has an old addage to explain this:
"a rising tide floats all boats"
If you buy into boats just because they float, then you'll get burned when the tide goes out. You should really be interested in the captin of the boat, the size of its last haul and the engineer/crew.
If nano-tech does half the things predicted (some even say if it just dones one of the things predicted), the subsequent revolution will be far more profound than semi-conductor based computers.
People are looking for the next Intel. It will probably be a 1 in 1000 pick, but if you have the money, you can afford to invest in all 1000.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]