The last ball knocked out of the park by all-time home run king Barry Bonds has sold at auction for $376,612.

That's either a bargain or a rip-off, depending on what happens next. Barry Bonds is an unsigned free agent as of now, but he and his agent have insisted that the slugger intends to continue his Hall of Fame career that has been tarnished by allegations of performance enhancing drug use.

The president of the auction house told the Associated Press that "If Barry Bonds never plays again, whoever bought this ball has a valuable piece that's worth seven figures." Of course, if Bonds does make a comeback, the ball is worth a fraction of what it sold for.

The sale of the Barry Bonds ball is actually a pretty good metaphor for the stock market. Given the tremendous uncertainty surrounding Barry Bonds' career, the sale price represents the market's best estimate of what will happen. That is, in a nutshell, the premise behind discounted cash flow.

Given the large discrepancy between the ball's sale price and its probable value if it is indeed his last home run, it seems that many baseball enthusiasts are betting we haven't seen the last of one of the most hated men in the history of the game.

Alternatively, it could be that the increasing scandal surrounding Bonds' accomplishments have driven down the ball's value -- kind of like how investors will pay a lower P/E ratio for a company's stock if they believe it's inflating its numbers.

I love value investing. But in markets like today's, it becomes increasingly difficult to find undervalued stocks with attractive characteristics, and secular growth plays start to take my interest because, in a momentum market, moves are much more predictable.

But, like I mentioned in a post earlier this week, my mindset is entirely different when trading these names than it is when making long-term value investments. I tend to look at most of the trading companies merely as stocks, not as companies, because in the short term, that's all they are to the market -- names with a sector, news, and short term earnings figures.

People who read analyst or investment bank reports on a regular basis constantly see discounted cash flow models that seem to flow and create logical valuation. But I don't really see too much value in this form of DCF -- I tend to believe that making precise estimations of future growth in cash flows to be extraordinarily difficult. In fact, analysts struggle to hit estimates for growth even in shorter term quarter-quarter or year-year comparisons.

In addition, the entire issue of choosing a discount rate is always very subjective in my opinion. Some argue that the "cost of capital" should be calculated using academic models (beta, etc.) while others believe that the cost of capital is merely what could be earned investing the capital in something similar. So, for example, a risky stock's cost of capital using the second model might be 15% while a conservative stock might be 9%, because investors would demand a higher return from a riskier stock. I tend to believe the second case makes more sense, but I believe neither methodology makes perfect sense.