I must admit, I was one of those who thought that buying Google shares around their IPO time was not a sensible thing to do, and as the share price then continued going up, I kept thinking that it was too late to jump on. Back in January 2007, Robert X. Cringely wrote an article “When Being a Verb is Not Enough: Google wants to be YOUR Internet“, and it convinced me that it was not too late to jump on the Google stocks.

In the article he talks about the fact that Google at the time “…controls more network fiber than any other organization.”. They were in the process of building a massive data center not far from where Mr. Cringely lives, and they had been building other large data centers elsewhere in the US, particularly where the data centers could be located next to power plants.

He further makes some guesses at why Google needs so many big data centers around the US. It is probably worth also linking to another Robert X. Cringely article from November 2005, “Google-Mart: Sam Walton Taught Google More About How to Dominate the Internet Than Microsoft Ever Did“, where he tells about the Google data-center-in-a-shipping-container “that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig”.

Jumping back to the “When being a verb is not enough” article from this year, Cringely says that “Google intends to take over most of the functions of existing fixed networks in our lives, notably telephone and cable television” and “Google will become our phone company, our cable company, our stereo system and our digital video recorder.”

He goes on to say that Google will end up

…assum[ing] most of the market capitalization of all the service providers … about $1 trillion in all — which places today’s $500 Google share price about eight times too low.

It’s a grand plan, but can Google pull it off? Yes they can.”

Even if it doesn’t quite happen that way, I realised, that with the entire infrastructure (servers and network fiber) Google has, they really have the capacity to support almost any internet-based task. Even if a start-up invents a better mouse trap, they would most likely find it difficult if not impossible to roll out necessary infrastructure before Google either buys them or develops a similar mouse trap in-house.

In July 2007, Google released second quarter 2007 financial results that disappointed the market, and the share price dropped. Shortly afterwards I bought Google shares at $520, and I intend to hold them for the long term.

Go to my Covestor profile if you want to see my returns on Google shares so far.

I subscribe to the Motley Fool Income Investor newsletter, and PetroBras, a Brazilian oil company, was recommended twice this year. I mainly bought on that recommendation, and it has turned out to be an outstanding recommendation. I bought at $52.83 at the back end of August, and the shares now stand at $106.71, having doubled in price in less than 4 months. They have lately been in the news quite a lot because of large additional oil finds. “Buy on the rumour, sell on the news”, I guess that means I should sell, but being a buy-and-hold investor (with a love for dividend-stocks) that is not really my style. They don’t believe the hype over on Seeking Alpha, so this may be something I end up regretting, but nevertheless, it is staying in the portfolio.

Yahoo Finance profile

Go to my Covestor profile if you want to see my returns on Google shares so far.

I recently came across this article on “Seeking Alpha” about “Peer-to-Peer” investing (Covestor and VesTopia: Winners and Losers from Peer to Peer Investing – Seeking Alpha). I thought it sounded quite interesting and decided to have a go at signing up and I am now a “certified member” (I am soo important .

I haven’t been registered at Covestor for very long, but this is a site I would recommend. I have so far only tried it with US stock holding, I suspect it would be less useful if your share holdings are all in non-US shares.

I just found this interesting stock tip about US stocks from the Danish business daily “Børsen“. Christian Blaabjerg, market strategist with Saxo Bank is quoted as saying (in my translation):
“In the last 30 years … one has been able to obtain profit if one bought American shares before Thanksgiving and sold again after Thanksgiving. It is irrational, but it is an effect one shouldn’t underestimate.”

Click here if you want to read the original article in Danish…

Unless you have some effective spam filters, your inbox most likely has emails telling you about some amazing investing opportunities. If you have ever wondered wether the investment tips might actually be good, or if you just need a good laugh on behalf of the spammers, you should take a look at the Spam Stock Tracker – Tracking Penny Stocks Hyped in Spam website.

The idea is: “What if I purchased 1000 shares of stock from EVERY stock tip mentioned in a SPAM email? Could we all really be missing out on a great opportunity?”

So the website tracks a fictitious portfolio based shares recommended in spam email to see what the gains (or losses) would be had you actually bought the shares. The original portfolio started in 2005, but a new portfolio has been started as of October 2007.