Did Crocs croak?

Georges
You are right but there is still so many short sellers who called in at much lower prices. They are begging on their knees to have Crox fall down more before they can cover their shorts without too much losses. They are paying their mortgages and they dont want to lose their homes. Who in the right mind would want to see more home foreclosures ? Lets fix it by lowring Crox much further . Next time, those same short sellers wouldnt get another chance like that. Be a bit compassionate... Same happened to Google but it just couldnt fall much further because it was so big and hard to overlook. Google short sellers werent so lucky back then. They are licking their wounds. But for Crox, I think Crox still has further to fall ....Crox is a great company, but we have to spare those homeowners who thought short selling is an entertainment...

NO matter how well you write about Crox, Wall Street is intent on bailing those poor Crox short sellers out by preventing any price rise of Crox for a while. I really dont know how low Crox will hit before turning back up. I wont be surprised to see it going down to 20's. The longer I wait the better because of coming developments from Crox that can be bad or worse. If not, it will keep Crox from faling further and rendering Wall Street's efforts to bail out those pithy short sellers moot. Give it a month or so. Wall Street will have to keep moving on. As of right now, I am helping Wall Street pushing Crox down to get those shortys out in a hurry....and saving their homes and shirts.

A word of advice to short sellers,, if you short a dividend paying stock... you will be paying dividends not the other way around. So if you have any urge to short a stock be sure it isnot paying any dividend or very little dividend that you will pay .

Look, where were they going with this, anyway. Crocs panties? NOT !This " Style " will fad away, like an old man slipping into a warm bath.

Doug
Your feet smells!! Wear Crocs!

If you buy Croc shoes and love them so much that you decided to buy Crox stock. That is wonderful but the real trouble with your stockbroker is that he is free to hand your shares over to short sellers. Why? Because you never requested for a stock certificate which is so tanamountal to your stockholding. It protect your shares from being tampered by your stockbroker or anybody behind him. Almost every stockbroker would charge you around $50 to send your stock certificate. Stock certificates is a must for anyobdy with a long term view. If you are trading the stock frequently, it will be cost prohibitive to obtain stock certificates. If you hold 100 shares of Crox or even more, you would be foolhardy not to request for a stock certificate from your stockbroker and pony up $50. You would pay some money for the title paper on your automobiles , personal properties and real estate. Stocks are no different. Stock certificates is not a piece of paper you frame on the wall, it is a title paper that tell everyone at Wall Street NOT to mess around with your stock!! SEC is not going to help you with this matter since it is very legal for stockbrokers to fool around with your stocks which you dont hold stock certificates with. Very valuable advice from me....

PS I dont always request stock certificates because I usually hold small amounts of shares and trade them frequently. I am trying to remind myself to ask for stock certificate whenever I decide to make a sizable positoin on a stock for a long term holding. Yes, it is expensive to do that but if more of us do that, the stocks will not be as volatile as today.

I went to a halloween party this year.

There was a woman with the absolute best costume. She was "Fad_Tabulous!" -- a super heroine dressed in old fads.

She wore Zubaz sweatpants, "snap" on bracelets, carried around a hula-hoop, and a pet-rock, work LA Gear tennis shoes, and a Pokemon t-shirt.

During the party, and I mean literally the 31st, she gathered everyone around and had a "voice vote" for the next fad to bite the dust. Out of her back-pack she pulled:

1. A pair of GIANT britney-spears style hollywood big sunglasses.

2. A "Green Certified" something or other sticker, with a "carbon footprint" certificate, and a set of car keys to a hybrid car.

3. A pair of Crocs.

By voice vote, the Greenie "carbon footprint" thing was voted biggest fad by the 30 or so people.

A very close second was the Crocs (with much moaning and groaning, especially those of us who have kids who are already tired of them).

On that last point, when I first started following this stock, I made it a point when visiting my youngster at school to see what everyone was wearing. I got out of my long position in August, when it seemed like Crocs were not "THE" shoe this year, as they really were last year.

Gumby,

You're displaying your ignorance about the stock market. If every single individual investor requested their stock certificates, it still would have no effect on short selling CROX.

90% of the outstanding shares of CROX are held by institutional investors - 74 million shares. Unless you measure your shares in millions, what you do with your miniscule holding will have no effect on the short selling supply. Sorry - you're just making your broker richer.

Individual investors are gnats in a field of elephants - look for the elephant tracks and follow those.

Well you got some lunatic responses to a rational blog. Big part of the problem is the bobbleheads at CNBC trashing the stock. Having their fun. Helping out their hedge fund pals.

What say you?

World's Scariest Stock: Crocs
By Anders "The Ghoul" Bylund October 29, 2007
8
Recommendations
My kids have these nice, lightweight shoes made from some sort of fluffy rubber. They're perforated all over, and you can buy little brooches that snap into the holes. My son's black clogs are full of Spider-Man mementos, and my daughter's pink-and-whites look like Cinderella's after-party. Yeah, those Skechers (NYSE: SKX) are pretty nice.

Oh, you were expecting a different brand? Sorry, but the actual Crocs (Nasdaq: CROX) are way too pricey, and we shop at Gymboree (Nasdaq: GYMB) on a regular basis. Skechers is just one of an avalanche of shoemakers who have copied the Crocs concept already, and the knock-offs are available everywhere at reasonable prices. They're often backed by other household names like Skechers or Collective Brands' Payless ShoeSource (NYSE: PSS), and they come in a cornucopia of colors and styles, most of which accept those snazzy decoration plug-ins.

The kids' closet even contains an unbranded pair, stamped "Made in China" but otherwise unidentifiable. And that pair looks just as good -- or ugly, depending on your opinion -- as the others.

I can certainly see the attraction of light, breathable, and overdesigned footwear, especially here in sunny Florida. But Crocs lost the first-mover advantage a long time ago, and it's only a question of time before the brand itself fades into the linguistic mists of time.

It's too early to pass definitive judgment on Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) yet, but longtime holders of other brands that became commodity dictionary terms can tell you what happened to their competitive moats: They disappeared.

I can take the heat!
So you're not scared yet? OK. Then think about valuation for a minute. Maybe you don't mind a price-to-earnings ratio around 46 times trailing earnings. Perhaps the company is worth trading at nine times trailing sales, or 44 times cash flow. It's a growing puppy, you know?

Yes, but cash doesn't lie. Let's run the stock through a remarkably generous discounted cash flow exercise, shall we?

Even in Fantasyland, this stock is too expensive
The current analyst guesstimate points to 27% income growth over the next five years. Let's bump that up to 30% -- nearly quadrupling earnings over that period -- and then ticking down to 15% for five years and an inflation-beating 4% forevermore. Then let's pretend that free cash flow is equal to operating cash flow, despite the blatantly ridiculous lenience of that assumption. And let's say that Crocs is no riskier an investment than any mass-market, big-box retailer, so the discount rate stays at a low, low 10%.

There's just no way that all these loose assumptions can come true. The operating cash flow substitution is particularly heinous, and none of the growth numbers accounts for the knock-offs stealing market share. Reality will most assuredly come in way below the output from this run, but we're in Fantasyland today, and reality doesn't matter.

And even then, the company should be worth just $3.6 billion today. It's overvalued by 40% over the ideal dream picture we just painted. It's enough to scare me, who bought Google shares at almost $500 a pop.

Stick to candy
If you want something light and sweet in pastel shades of orange and brown, stick with candy corn this Halloween. You let Crocs into your portfolio only at your own peril. The massacre will come in the dead of night, and it'll be scary. Don't buy the hype.

Do you agree? Think I'm overstating the fright factor? Click on over to our Motley Fool CAPS community and tell us what you think. A thumbs-down vote for Crocs is a vote for sanity. And after a spaced-out valuation fantasy like this one, you might want to go to Philip Durell's Turkish valuation steam bath, also known as the Inside Value newsletter. One free 30-day trial is guaranteed to ease your worried mind.

Further Foolishness:

Fool Video: Is Crocs a Passing Fad?
Get Ready for the Fall?
Prepare for the Crash
Want to know what other companies give us the frights? You can view the rest of our hair-raising stocks here.

Well lets not forget all the ederly people with foot problems that can't do shoe laces!!! What a great slip
on shoe,. They provide comfort for tight heel cords,arch
support and ease of donning,they keep the ederly going!!You guys must be worryied about your Medicare!

Sin
even institutional investors (mostly mutual funds or insurance companies or whatever) dont bother to request stock certificates because it is a big bother. So here you goes... in street names where hobos can tamper with your stocks.