i play basketball on a rec league team and sometimes like to analyze our stats. does anyone know if there's a way to access these tools publicly? it would be interesting to see what kind of player we each are and then see how to complement our existing team. we know that we have some imbalances, but it would be cool to see if the tool picks out the same issues that we understand more intuitively.

it took me a minute or two to parse what you said (and i don't even know if my interpretation is correct). you really shouldn't use a slash if you mean "stop, here's a new idea coming..." (as you did in between http and https), since slashes are stand-ins for "and/or". we have the very well-understood period for that. or semi-colons, which may be closer to what you were going for.

your argument doesn't hold up to the opportunity cost test. if we taxed wealth, what is the next best thing for the rich to do with their wealth? would they still not want to invest it and try to grow their wealth, despite the tax? i'm pretty sure they wouldn't pull it out of the bank and put it into a mattress just to hide it from the tax man. (and no, moving out of the country is not the next best answer here, hopefully for obvious reasons)

sure, a wealth tax is highly unlikely because of political realities, but it's certainly not moronic, as you suggest. growth and economic economy depends on monetary velocity, and concentrated wealth has low velocity on average.

ugh, where to begin... first, you and your male compatriots in this thread should not be taking this out on the women who might benefit from this. you should be upset at the many generations of men who have had advantage over not only women but other classes of men. you should be angry that these guys took a disproportionate amount of resources for themselves at the expense of these other classes of people, and thereby creating a system designed to perpetuate such inequities. you may believe it's women who are taking something from you, but they are not. look at your male predecessors for people to be disgusted at for creating a situation requiring such remedies. this is no different from many classes of economic issues we are facing today because of the greed and shortsightedness of people past. housing prices, college costs, medicare/social security, etc. all have similar systemic disapportionments. we get to overpay for houses, college, and our retirement benefits (to name a few) because those who came before us wanted both greater benefits and lower prices/taxes.

the previous point you made is well taken, but this second one is overly broad in that companies vary in the padding they maintain. the amount of cash a company keeps on hand (or doesn't) depends on industry characteristics, competition, regulatory environment, supply chain risk, and other factors like that. apple is a prime (counter-)example here with $98 billion in cash on its balance sheet. this cash is kept for a variety of reasons, but a few to note: the highly dynamic industry that apple competes in, the supply chain risks it's exposed to (including currency risk), and the competitive threat that such a large amount of cash represents to its potential competitors. elsewhere, someone pointed out the adverse tax consequences of paying out dividends with this cash, which is another valid (but tangential) reason to keep lots of cash.

you're theoretically correct, but in practice, most (non-institutional) investors don't have the technical chops and the market knowledge/connections to judge valuations that well, so they are essentially betting (i.e., they're potential suckers - i'd guess that even professional investors often gamble based on intuition rather than analysis). the stock market, like democracy, needs informed actors (and the instantaneous dissemination of material information that the efficient market hypothesis depends on) to really work efficiently. and that's not even considering what information is relevant to a given valuation... so yes, your explanation could be the case, but i'd bet a lot of trades are more due to gambling behavior than to differences of valuation. =)

i've said this elsewhere, but yes, you are missing something: the amount of data you use and the date rates available are inextricably linked (a rate is the derivative of an amount in calculus). since these things are not mathematically independent, it doesn't make sense to say that one is limited, while the other isn't (saying a slower rate is not equivalent to limiting data is logically incorrect).

what's more interesting is that the IPO might be auction-based, which means that facebook will net more of the raised proceeds than they might through a traditional IPO. investment banks typically make 7%-ish fees on IPOs for taking risk (they have a responsibility to make sure the share price rises and can lose money to prop it up), prepping the company for the roadshow, providing the syndication of institutional investors who pledge to buy initial shares (spreading the risk), and doing all the paperwork (like the prospectus, creating some legal/regulatory risk). with an auction, those fees would be reduced substantially (which is a good thing, from both a free-market and a social fairness perspective) since they wouldn't be providing the syndication or taking as much of the risk.

the (preliminary) prospectus that they will file presumably today will tell you how they plan to make money. since you're not an insider, that prospectus is your best source of direct information from facebook, as they are otherwise not allowed to provide material information to the public during the quiet period. the prospectus has legal weight so it must be factual (though there's no requirement to be direct in what it is trying to tell you) and include material factors in valuing the investment.

marketing can't work without usefulness backing it up. the neat trick is that apple is able to convince even techies that it's all marketing and no actual engineering, programming, design, etc. (i.e., hard work) to make good products, which then makes the competition scratch their heads over how apple does it (it's just marketing, let's beat them with more features!). by being systematic about developing, releasing, and marketing features, apple is able to maximize their marketing spend (that is, they are a great product management organization) and be more profitable.