I'm surprised nobody has asked about Alibaba.... and it's IPO.
Frankly -- I really haven't paid all that much attention to it because I'm "done" playing in the IPO market. That doesn't mean you younger guys shouldn't be playing with some of this stuff.
I thought Alibaba was like Amazon.. or eBay. So I decided to go visit the site. What I found - and I didn't spend more than 4 minutes poking around - is that it seemed to be mostly for business customers not individuals. When I checked on buying some 2" X 60" belts for my Burr King.... I had to buy 1000 of them or 100 of them. I also found "mostly" Chinese suppliers. While you could select which country you wanted as a manufacturer -- there would be 50 Chinese suppliers to 1 or 2 USA.
What I'd really like to know about this company is whether or not USA companies are willing to buy from them (Alibaba) or use them the way the Chinese market has. It will be very interesting to watch.
Remember too -- the STOCK (IPO) is very different from the COMPANY... there is a ton of hype on this IPO. I would "expect" it to be "the IPO" of the year... given it's size and sales etc. And IPO's can be very interesting and fun to play with. Just look at GoPro so far! Wow!
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