The more I hear -ve remarks about 3D Printing being a fancy disruptive technology but with very low margins, the more I'm compelled to sink my teeth into it.
Currently SSYS is being hammered and has me almost salivating as an Entry point.... Any suggestions/thoughts from ye smart people ?
In my opinion these stocks are speculative, and should be approached as such. I knew 3D printing stocks were in a bubble a year or two ago when I started hearing people talking on the radio about how home printing was going to replace central manufacturing, everyone would be printing their own replacement car parts, etc. Since then the stocks have crashed, but I'm still not interested.
I have a friend with a Makerbot and it's good at printing custom designed plastic parts the color of the feedstock and with a visible grain from the direction of the feed. I do believe it is a good technology for hobbyists and prototyping, and possibly for flexible manufacturing of non-critical parts. I don't believe that we'll ever be printing brake rotors or electromechanical devices, anything that has to be tested, listed, approved or warrantied, or requires specialized manufacturing processes for tight QC and/or safety and reliability standards. But no matter what you believe about 3D printing, the stocks are still valued on a promise of what might happen in the future.
I think there is plenty of risk in either SSYS or DDD, but if I had to choose one right now it would be SSYS. It is a volatile market with new players all of the time and new technologies, but with the big pullback the valuation isn't terrible.
In my younger days I would be all over it, but been burned too many times by the next big thing to want to put any capital at risk in either at this time.
A new article covering DDD and SSYS was posted on Seeking Alpha this morning. I agree completely with the author's thoughts.
A Look For Value In 3D Systems and Stratasys After The Sell-Offs
They are looking more interesting, but don't buy too early. I think they still have a way's to fall before they land in "value" territory.