Dan Caplinger

There, I'm always looking at tax impacts.

When it's an all-cash deal or mostly cash deal like the Netflix offer, then I'll have a gain or a loss if I own those shares in a taxable account.

If it's an all-stock deal, there's usually no gain.

If I hold on to the shares I get in exchange, the tax basis comes over.

And so, if there's a stock component and the deal goes through, I'm asking myself, do I want to own the Netflix stock I'm going to get?

If there's a spinoff, do I want to hold that?

That would be the discovery communications piece.

If the answer to both of those is no, I don't want either one, it could be the stock price has already gone up before the deal closes enough that I can just sell out and call it good.

I think so.

And it's also a lot of those big retailers have made big online pushes themselves.

I mean, look at Walmart.

Walmart is more interested in its online business than its retail business.

That's why it's moving its stock to the NASDAQ to position itself as a tech company.

So I just think that in-person shopping just, it used to be more fun than it is now.

It used to be, you had the incentive, you'd get up at 4am, you'd go to the store, you'd get the deal, you'd get the deal that nobody else would get.

That was your payoff.

Right.

And that's what you got now.

There's FOMO of not finding the best deal that is out there.

If you go to the wrong website, oh, I only got 25% off.