[lavidaloca]

And no, I am not thinking about investing, just terribly bitter.

[David Weinstein]

When they report their 4th quarter 2005 earnings in January, 2006. They will exceed expectations, but not by as much as expected ... ;)

[Marshall Y]

The current ramp up in Google's stock price is largely being driven by accumulation of shares by mutual funds. Mutual fund managers are chasing performance. #1 Prior investment in Google has provided strong returns to mutual funds.#2 Fund manager wants to increase performance, so he purchases more of the stocks that are doing well for him (i.e. google)#3 Strong returns bring new investment dollars into the fund. Fund must by more shares of Google to maintain the same weighting.All of this puts a great deal of upward pressure on the stock price. As long as this buying pressure is stronger than the selling pressure (employee stock option exercises, VCs, public investors taking profits).So you wind up with a self reinforcing situation where Google continues to go up, simply because it has gone up in the past.When does this end?It ends when the sellers finally overwhelm the buyers. This typically happens when one of the large, large holders (i.e. Fidelity, owns 6% of Google shares) decides to back out.The price will inevitably show some weakness when there is a big seller, then the other mutual fund managers suddenly don't have the same impetus to hold on to shares. Hysterical selling ensues.