General Electric: Let the hunt begin...

We are retired folks and GE is our largest investment, having been with us for many years. However we look farther back to the year 2000 when GE hit $60 and sadly observe what they have done since then. So while we also wonder when it will reach $40, how about a return to $60? I have no idea anymore what the Street thinks is wrong with GE.

i too would appreciate some insight as to any guesses as to when ge will get back to the $60.00 level [ do we need JACK back ???????]
i bought at their lows at $21.00 & $22.00 ,but expected it to rebound to higher levels than the up/down of a few dollars in the $35.00 area.do they expect ge to go in the dumper [ i think not !!!]
i thought i knew ge well,having worked for a company financed by ge capital and had been to their connecticut offices several times---they are good at what they do !!!!--the only faults i found is they will just pour money into anything to solve the problem and i mean millions as well as having too many layers of management---any comments ????

That's a good question. Given that all of the touts that tend to drive retail buying are giving GE a thumbs up, it stands to reason that institutions are giving it an aggregate thumbs down. You would have to analyze institutional holder increases/decreases to figure out who is doing what. That's not terribly difficult, but beyond the effort I'm willing to give it at the moment. One thing to consider here is that GE is a conglomerate, which makes it unsuitable for sector funds. Given the amount of focus that has been placed on that approach to investing, there may simply be less demand for tutti-frutti GE. This is all just conjecture, of course. My belief is that over time the cream rises to the top. If you can buy it at skim milk prices today, then all the better.

Keep in mind the 10's of millions shares bought in the past 2 months by large investors(institutions?.As the January 25 dividend date is approaching. it makes sense for those same investors to drive the price down to maximize their dividend share, don't you think so?

It perhaps has something to do with GE being one of the largest (or is it the largest) diversified businesses. Sanguine forecats in a particular sector are offset by the corresponding decline in other segments leading to this phenomenon. Jury is still out on whether diversified companies indeed create value in the long run.

I believe the divorce of Jack Welch, which revealed in court just how "piggish" the CEO's were in salary and benefits, at the expense of shareholders, has created GE's problems. People have not forgotten the huge pay package and apartments, and jets and and. Now, as our new CEO Jeff attempt to reinvent the business, which is costly as well as you have to pay "goodwill" for each company which has not value to shareholders, we will have to see how it goes. Reinventing a company is expensive, and institutional traders know that when a company makes a significant reinvention of itself, they usually take a wait and see approach before piling back in to the companies performance. Shareholders also remember when Jack always just beat earnings by just one penny, despite the growth rate of the company. How do they do that????

Just let it sit. I bought GE a while back and have enjoyed the benefits of a 2 for 1 and a 3 for 1. Has not done well lately but do you really think GE is going out of business ? Not unless the rest of the world does.

It's a great company in a lot of diversified businesses. To create shareholder value perhaps they should take the spin-off route like Altria, Tyco Int. and Rockwell Int. The sum value of the spin-off businesses would surely exceed the present share price we see now. The above cos. particularly Rockwell provided great returns to shareholders.

I tend to agree that the stock should be much higher. However, I also live off the dividends and am not directly concerned with the actual price of GE. I do however, have some GE in reivestment accounts so am affected in that realm also. I do however, wish they would do better. I also believe that the country will go down before GE does.

Why has GE stagnated? Perhaps there are too many other buying opportunites with short-term upside potential: Plenty of low price stocks to choose from. When will GE make a substantial move upward? Who knows! I'll be looking for GE to do its thing at the end of the next big down turn or bear market. Investors will then look for the best the Blue Chips have to offer. Be patient. Remember, timing is everything!

I worked for GE for 25 years at a high-middle management level - laid off 15 years ago. I still have an important part of my portfolio in GE stock (in-hand and still in Savings & Security [401k]).

My comment/input is that I recommend the references some are making to "GE was at $60 once" should be dropped. Look at a 10-year chart on GE and you'll see that the $60 mark was hit at the peak of the stock market craziness of 2000 and 2001. Virtually ALL good stocks were articifally and often grossly over-valued at that point in history. So using $60 as a historical benchmark is just not useful as a comparison to recent stock performance IMHO.

Looking at the 10-year chart, one can almost see a more realistic "sine-wave" of a cycle that would suggest a fairer, more realistic benchmark of perhaps $40 or at most, $45. So indeed, GE has yet to recover to that point, but it certainly is in better shape than comparing it to $60.

And in total, 10 years ago GE sold for $18/share; today it is around $36 -- that's a 7.2% annual growth rate for 10 years running - not counting dividends! I love it!

Thanks all.

I have owned GE for about 10 years now and very content with the stock plus 3% dividend yield.I believe the answer to the stocks price question is patience.Many investors today do not believe in the buy and hold strategy,which investors such as Buffet,Graham and Lynch fully understood.AS Ben Graham said:Fortunes are made over time (long term)as apposed to fast turnovers.

I know one thing they do at Corporate R&D (now GE Global Research). They pit employees against one another as if GE were a sports team. This is the one policy which guarantees that nothing gets done.(And believe me, nothing every comes out of there, except a bunch of useless patents.) Do you know where they learned that trick? Fom Bell Labs (now Lucent). Look what happened to that company!