Duru and I were trippin' off of Google being around $150 (without us!). We both talked about buying it a few weeks ago but both passed. He wanted to try it just after it tested the $100 level. I considered buying it as it took out its all-time high at $113.50. I've mentioned here several times that I like to wait for an IPO to make a base and then buy it once it makes a new high. (I made a killing doing that over & over back in the day.) That's exactly what GOOG did, but I passed on it because I thought the base was too short. Silly me!
On a related note, I see some analyst is repeating what I said on the day of the IPO (you heard it here first):
Google rally shows banks low-balled IPO, Hambrecht says -- Bloomberg.com (GOOG) 149.16 : Google Inc.'s share price has risen 75% since the co's IPO in August, enriching founders, employees and investors. William Hambrecht, the banker who designed the search engine's auction IPO, sees too much of a good thing. Hambrecht says his own clients were willing to pay $97 a share, not $85. Based on that price, Google may have left as much as $270 mln on the table. "They underpriced the deal to create a traditional discount to ensure the stock price would move in the right direction," says Barry Randall, manager of U.S. Bancorp Asset Management's $100 mln First American Technology Fund. Randall bid $96 each for 10,000 shares of Google. His firm received 7,421 shares at the IPO price of $85. At yesterday's price, Google has a market value of $40.88 billion, just ahead of Dallas-based Texas Instruments Inc., which makes chips for half the world's mobile telephones. (via Briefing.com)
Google is the reason I've sworn off trying to figure out the markets. I'd rather die poor and sane than drive myself nuts chasing decimal points and talking myself out of sure things that go to the moon only when I don't buy them.