May 08, 2006

Watch David Lose Money

Based on all the web speculation about the Nintendo Wii design, and based on the (relatively) reasonable valuation that the stock market seems to be giving NTDOY stock as the #3 console maker, I bought a little piece of Nintendo today. It was not a great deal - $19.95 - with Nintendo currently trading at highs it has not seen since 2002.

It was my first experience ever buying a foreign Pink Sheets ADR. NTDOY is thinly traded, with a huge spread and market data that is not timely. I put in a couple wee little orders, and could see myself move the market as Wall Street's trading programs tried to play chess against me. It was a royal pain.

Well, trading programs (and analysts) do not know anything about game design. By the time you read this, you may know if I bought NTDOY at a bad time or not. Nintendo's E3 press conference is at 9:30AM PDT tomorrow; they promise to finally unveil the Revolution's secrets, and they could drop a bombshell - or they could just bomb.

The members of the press have been divded up into R-G-B color-coded sections within Kodak theatre for the press event: they will sit in "Mushroom Kingdom," "Hyrule," and "Yoshi's Island." Perhaps Nintendo will put on a good show and reality will live up to the rumors? Or just as likely they will not, and you will get to watch me lose money. You get good family entertainment either way.

Update: It was a good time to buy. I've written more on Nintendo here and here and here.

Posted by David at May 8, 2006 04:37 PM
Comments

If you held on to it you did quite well.

Posted by: john at September 8, 2006 10:23 PM

I did hold on to it, fortunately.

I also bought a few DS's for the kids (and me) and watched how popular they were. And I have come to notice things like the fact that tiny little DS shelf at EB Games always has a crowd of shoppers around it. It's the only part of the store with female customers. And they're not just looking, they're buying.

I wish NTDOY would have a stock option scandal like AAPL or some other nonsense to make it go back down; I'd like to buy some more.

Posted by: David at September 10, 2006 12:08 PM
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