Google Stock Quote

Who cares in you made $372,200,000 dollars of profit in one quarter? Its what you did relative to expectations that matter.

As I type, Google’s stock price is down sharply from the day’s closing price of $432.6601. Down more than $65 (15%). That hurts.

This comes after missing 31 analyst’s expectations of $1.76 per share. Earning $1.22 per share just doesn’t cut it.

Google’s mantra has been “do no evil". And they appear to be following that rule. Google recently said “no” to the government’s request for a piece of their search data.

While this act of courage is noble, the stock market voted with their money last week and pulled out in a hurry. If I am not mistaken, last week’s price drop is the largest one week percentage drop for GOOG. Moves like that, regardless of the reason, are to be respected.

Today’s price action indicates that some form of support is near the $400 level. The gap opening today (open at $407.76 versus Friday’s close of $399.46) doesn’t give me a warm, fuzzy feeling though. It seems that gaps love to be filled, especially the news driven type.

I will need to see where support and resistance forms for this stock before deciding my next move.

Does Google’s intraday price drop indicate that a significant top is in place? Or is it just a sympathy movement based on Yahoo’s announcement that search advertising revenue grew by less than 9% sequentially?

Who knows? About a week ago, technical indications were that a top could be in place. Today’s price action gives some validity to that idea.

It will be interesting to see at what price the stock closes for the day. The current price, ~$453, is higher than the opening price. That is typically a sign of bullishness.

Don’t act too surprised if Google’s stock price gives up some of the recent gains.

Here’s a stock that has advanced more than 10% since the end of last year. And the end of last year is only six trading days ago. A lot of that movement was driven by “news", in particular, “good news".

Eventually the impact from news wears off. Yesterday’s daily price bar is an early indication that the stock is slowing down. In candlestick terms, yesterday was a “spinning top". Yesterday’s open and close were at about the same price and in the middle of the day’s range. If you look at an intraday chart for GOOG, you’ll notice that price declined at the end of the day, not advanced.

Anyway, this is all specualtion (and isn’t that what trading is all about?). Until the stock takes out yesterday’s low at $460.94, the short term trend is up.

Oh boy, here we go.

Looks like the analysts are trying to stay one step ahead of each other with their price targets for Google’s stock price.

Yesterday, Piper Jaffray bumped their price target to $600, today it is Bear Stearns turn with an increased price target from $360 to $550.

My question is “what took so long before the price target is increased?” If the previous price target was $360 and the stock passed that mark more than two months ago … why the delay?

I get nervous when these things happen. If you want to know why, read my comments about what happened to Qualcomm when some young hot-shot analyst gave a price target for QCOM.

Anyways, we might as well enjoy this as these price targets tend to become self fulfilling.

2005 was a good year, a very good year for Google’s stock. The stock closed 2004 at $192.79 and finished 2005 at $414.86, up 115% for the year.

What lies ahead is anyone’s guess. The one thing I am willing to bet on is that the stock price will move. Given the expected growth rates for internet usage and Google’s ability to innovate, I don’t see any reason to not expect favorable price movement for this stock. That’s not to say I’m certain GOOG will see higher prices, it is a possibility that I have placed money on.

I will continue to vote with my dollars for a higher stock price until such time that the stock price (and not what people say) indicates that is not the likely direction.