The major market indexes are all weak today (as I write, anyway), down around 3/4%. But Google is up more than 1 1/2%, over $520 per share. A P/E of around 50, price/sales of 13-14, around 9 times book value, dividends - we don’t need no steenking dividends… need I go on. Just sheer speculation that there is always a greater fool to buy it at a higher price. Just like the housing bubble. Eventually this will fail from exhaustion.

In the meantime, I think of the Google share price as kind of an index of complacency. The higher it is, the more people are thinking that nothing can go wrong. Because Google’s business, advertising, is the first thing that companies cut in a recession. It is too volatile to short or buy puts, have to wait until it starts to head down. But it has a long way to fall.