Quote:
Originally Posted by Caligari
so people want to bolster their insane margins by giving them more money? wow.
|
I see you've been watching Michael Moore. I can tell because virtually every word of that sentence
show a different misunderstanding fostered by Moore and his crew.
First, when you buy stock, you aren't "giving them more money", the rare case of a PO being
the exception. Rather, you're giving your money to the person who bought the stock in
previous years, probably as part of their 401K, and is now selling it, such as to pay their bills
now that they are retired. So you're "giving grandma more money".
You're also not affecting their profit margin one bit, since you're not buying anything from
them - you're buying the stock from grandma, who is selling her stock.
What's funny, and what really betrays the fact you've watching too many Michael Moore films,
which he eventually had to admit are "fiction", is your mention of " their insane margins".
The oil industry has one of the lowest profit margins of all industries. DP, specifically, had a
profit margin of 7.6% last period. To put that into terms you can understand, that's the same
as if you sold $100 of memberships and had a $92.40 hosting bill. That's like if your site brought
in $10,000 / month, but after paying for content, hosting, etc. you brought home just $760
for the month. They actually have very low profit margins, and when you add in those years
where they LOSE billions, like BP will this year, it's even slimmer. It's like if you got hacked
every ten years or so and had to pay your customers $1,000,000 because their information
was leaked. Offset against the slim margins in normal years, it's not really a great business.
It is an EXPENSIVE business - they pay $400 million dollars to build a deep sea rig and HOPE
that it will provide $450 million in oil. If, as often happens, it only produces $300 million, they are
out $100 million.