>but reasonable profit should be acceptable.

Then the first thing we should do is get rid of all these Wall Street Anlysts that IMO do more harm then good. For example:

Wall Street Expert: Even though I don't work at Microsoft, or really work at all, I think Microsoft will make this much money this year.

Investor: Given that data, I'm going to buy MS stock at this price.

3 months later: Wall Street Expert's predictions (iow, guesses) are low, so after he inflated the price of the stock, the stock now looses money, and most likely, the stock owners will think of some way to get profits back up to this arbitrary value, leading to situations that you're describing.

Maybe I'm way off base with how the Street works with all these suits guessing how much stocks will cost, but as far as I can tell they're not only worthless, but dangerous.