Dragon in a Dog Year (#61; Topic K)

Sunday morning (1/29/06) at about 8:30, my younger sister called me from Hong Kong. After wishing me a Happy Lunar New Year, she said that I, being born as a Dragon, need be careful during the entire Year of the Dog. As she explained it, animals 6 years apart, sitting on opposite ends of a 12-sided Chinese zodiac, are not friendly to each other -- and Dogs and Dragons are 6 years apart. Among other consideration, she advised me to play safe with investments. I thanked her, since this is excellent advice -- indeed, at my age, conservation of principal must necessarily be the primary investment objective. A good friend of ours has Google in her portfolio, and talked about it whenever we met; eventually, I added it to mine as well. Yesterday, the stock had a volatile day. After closing at 432.66, up 5.84 for the day, it reported its 2005 earnings -- at 1.54 per share. Though this was some 80% higher than last year's 4th quarter, it was below the street's expectation of 1.76 per share. As such, the stock was down as much as $80 (18+%) in after-hour trading, even halting trade for a while -- both were unprecedented. Reading dispatches posted on the internet, I felt that the sell-off was overdone: higher tax rates (at 41.8%) and stronger dollar were mainly uncontrollable factors. This morning, Washington Post quotes an analyst: "Wall Street's expectations are so high that even when you have an operationally great quarter, that wasn't enough," exactly my view.
Posted at 12:57 pm, Wednesday, February 1, 2006