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eBay: Warming Up or Cooling Off?

As Warren Buffett proved, buying and holding is the key to great investing. But how do you know you're not holding on to a loser? Aside from glancing at an earnings release, the only information many investors get about a stock comes from its price. It's tough to separate good companies from bad ones on such scant evidence -- but it's vitally important. Finding well-run companies at bargain-basement prices is a great way to accumulate a fortune over the long run.

With that in mind, we Fools have whipped up an easy tool to help you see how your company is doing. We can harness the aggregate intelligence of the 140,000-plus investors participating in Motley Fool CAPS to see what the community is thinking about a company today, and how they felt about it last quarter. A change in the community's approval (signified by four- and five-star ratings) or disapproval (one- and two-star ratings) could indicate that further research is in order.

Here are the CAPS community's aggregate feelings on eBay, Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY  ) , and opinions on some related companies, from today and last quarter.

Metric eBay, Inc. Vocus, Inc. (Nasdaq: VOCS  ) RealNetworks, Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK  ) Terremark Worldwide, Inc. (Nasdaq: TMRK  )
This Quarter (10/28/2009):
Price: $22.75 $17.78 $3.78 $6.57
% of Members Rating Outperform 86.02% 86.02% 86.02% 86.02%
% of All-Star Members Rating Outperform 91.00% 61.76% 78.79% 51.61%
CAPS Rating (out of 5)
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Last Quarter (7/30/2009):
Price: $21.66 $17.05 $3.06 $6.34
% of Members Rating Outperform 86.50% 86.50% 86.50% 86.50%
% of All-Star Members Rating Outperform 92.31% 92.31% 92.31% 92.31%
CAPS Rating (out of 5)
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Source: Motley Fool CAPS. Dates given are the posting dates of eBay, Inc.'s most recent quarterly and/or annual reports to the SEC's website. Percentages are calculated from the number of members rating each company.

It pays to start your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS. Read a company's financial reports, scrutinize key data and charts, and examine the comments your fellow investors have made -- all from a stock's CAPS page. Head over to the completely free CAPS service, and let us hear what you've got to say about these or any other stocks that might be up-and-comers.

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No individual person selected the stocks in this article, so there is no author to disclose an interest in them. Since this article was automatically generated by identifying the stocks loved both by the CAPS community and by buyers in today’s market, it is possible that Motley Fool personnel (and even The Motley Fool itself, through our Million Dollar Portfolio, Motley Fool Pro, and Ready Made Millionaire services), have positions in these stocks. We thought you'd like to know that. You can learn more about The Motley Fool’s disclosure policy here.


Comments from our Foolish Readers

Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the Report this Comment Report this Comment icon found on every comment.

  • Report this Comment On October 30, 2009, at 1:36 AM, BellasPosting wrote:

    Sorry, but eBay is ancient history. A few years ago, eBay was the talk of the town. Everyone was buying and selling on eBay. But then greed took over and eBay kept raising fees and forcing their lousy Paypal payment service on all users. Many of the best sellers gave up and left eBay. Now eBay has become a website full of junk. More like a flea market than an auction site, IMO.

    So now Amazon and Craigslist are the talk of the town.

    Most of my friends and relatives buy and sell on those two sites, but not many use eBay at all. Donahoe will go down in history as the one who killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Just some "noise" from a former eBay user.

  • Report this Comment On October 30, 2009, at 8:08 AM, PhilipCohen wrote:

    And, from another eBay buyer’s perspective, some more food for thought …

    Shill Bidding on eBay

    Shining some light on the more sophisticated and therefore harder to detect shill bidding activity by many “professional” sellers on eBay auctions

    For all you eBay “buyers” who are still trying to find a bargain on eBay and are agile enough to avoid all the shill-bidding professional sellers that infest eBay, eBay recently touted two Diamond PowerSellers as major success stories of selling on eBay. An analysis of bidding patterns suggests that they could both be habitual shill bidders. The details at:

    http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6502...

    The earlier Case Study 2: This time including a spreadsheet analysis of multiple auctions, from some "professional" sellers from the US and Australia. Needless to say the analysis demonstrates, once again, that, contrary to eBay’s claims, shill bidding by many “professional” sellers is rampant on eBay auctions. The full comment and spreadsheet download links at:

    http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2429...

    And, the even earlier Case Study 1: Blatantly naïve shill bidding, at:

    http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2403...

    And my even earlier ramblings on the matter of “hidden bidders”, “eBay introduces absolute anonymity for (shill) bidders” at:

    http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2322...

    A most disingenuous, unscrupulous, dare I say, criminal organisation—eBay that is.

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Related Tickers

2/14/2012 4:00 PM
EBAY $32.96 Down -0.20 -0.60%
eBay CAPS Rating: ***
VOCS $24.19 Up +0.21 +0.88%
Vocus, Inc. CAPS Rating: **
TMRK $18.99 Down +0.00 +0.00%
Terremark Worldwid… CAPS Rating: **
RNWK $11.00 Up +0.05 +0.46%
RealNetworks, Inc. CAPS Rating: *

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