Here's another shocker: I LIKE GOOGLE BETTER THAN AMAZON!!!

I have written many times that I think Google is overvalued and the stock price should come down. It has and it will continue to do so. So all you dreamers of further upside pops should temper your outlook. Long term it goes up, but for now it goes down, and it will never equal the valuation of GE or Exxon.

However, I have been down on Amazon for years, right from the time of the IPO. People have made great sums and lost great sums on this stock and the price has always been a joke to me. I consider Jeff Bezos to be very bright and yet I view him as the Flim Flam Man. I used to call him "smilin' Jack", almost has a kind of mad man's glow to him, like Nero... He just needs the fiddle.

Amazon is one of my favorite targets and it was one of the issues that brought me to the attention of financial editors years ago.

The Numbers. As I write, Google's P/E is 56 and I think fair value should be closer to 40. I cannot see looking at it for investment until it moves down another 50 to 60 dollars.

Amazon on the other hand has a P/E around 36. Even after its partial free fall this week, I still think that the P/E is nuts. People have been comparing it to an Internet company and that's a mistake. Yahoo is an Internet company, Google is an Internet company, even News Corp with MySpace is an Internet company. Amazon is a sales company.

If you read any of the many business magazines that I read (which is most of them), you will find that they give some very good advice regarding the benefits of investing in Index Funds over the long haul. However, once a year they publish things like the "Top 1,000 Funds" and variations on this theme. To me this contradicts their year-round advice just to generate an extra issue that serves no purpose except to confuse investors. I think 90% of the 1,000 funds are garbage and exist only to generate revenue for the investment company. They cater to a public fascinated by quantity of choice and various meaningless nuances and not by good sense.

Most of the data I have seen supports the premise that index investing (notably the S&P 500) beats stock picking (higher Internal Rate of Return (IRR)) over any 20 year period you choose. Plus, it has the added benefit of less market volatility. This makes it the optimal choice for most people. This is even more true when you consider taxes and fees.

Furthermore, if it were not true then investment guru and fund manager Bill Miller of Legg Mason would not be such a celebrity for beating the Standard & Poor's index for 14 years running. Have you read about any others? NO! There are many advisor's who may beat the index funds for a period of time, but not a long period, and it is usually not the same ones.

Business publications, such as Time Warner's Money and Fortune, should have a disclaimer accompanying their fund reviews. Or, giving them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps I should view these mag-rags as the publisher's way of giving us an opportunity to see for ourselves that none of these funds provide much added value -- unless you own the fund company.