Yes, it sure as heck takes a lot more gumption and work to research -- thoroughly -- your own holdings. But that means I can take the hit or hold the celebration based on my own call. I'm in control, not a market-making stock analyst. There are aggregate and numbers-based interpretative formulas that many analyst houses fly on flagpoles these days, but many of them are dead wrong. That tells me the market is largely, well, a crap shoot.

We come to Google, which has a market capitalization that blows my mind. That is telling -- the world is a global marketplace and is interconnected in ways never before seen, thanks to the Internet. For information, Google is the ringleader. But a $500/share ringleader? In the recent few months, Google has placed well-timed and incredibly-lucrative partnerships with companies that stretch the globe, from MySpace.com to Intuit to Dell.

Those are all pretty safe bets for Google in its quest to become the world's largest advertising company (or network, to be more precise). When all these partnerships start showing results, I may revisit my thought that GOOG shares are not worth $500 (if they get there). As for right now, Google still receives almost all revenue from text ads on its market-leading search engine, I'm just not convinced. I use Google products all day long and really admire them -- but I rarely (once a quarter) click on an ad link. I am in the minority here, since Google's entire kingdom rests on those links being clicked -- for now.