Back in early October and again in early November I sang the praises of Roku Inc (NASDAQ:ROKU), suggesting ROKU stock would be higher a year from now, and higher still two years from now. It just needed to suffer the usual post-IPO capitulation before making that bullish journey.

The reason for my bullishness? Because, unlike too many other IPO flops this year, Roku actually had a marketable product seeing increased demand. Most investors,  individual as well as institutional, disagreed with my thesis.

They were laboring under the presumption that the ROKU stock price would follow the likes of other newly-minted stocks like Blue Apron Holdings Inc (NYSE:APRN) or Snap Inc (NYSE:SNAP). The former is down 60% from its June IPO price, while the latter is down 6% from its March IPO price, but 40% from its post-IPO peak.

Well, ROKU stock is up 235% since going public in September, with most of that gain taking shape in response to the company’s first-ever quarterly report as a publicly-traded outfit. That report came in mid-November.

I don’t reprise my bullish commentary to gloat though, well, not to gloat much, as I was partially wrong. Roku shares never made the hard landing I thought was brewing before the company proved it was a winner.

Oh, at one point the ROKU stock price was down 25% from where it was when I first suggested it was due for a setback, but that’s not the kind of weakness I was talking about. I was talking about painful, gut-wrenching kind of implosion. We never got it.

In fact, that’s the reason I’m bringing the matter up again at all. As hot as the stock’s been, I still suspect that scary selloff is in the cards sooner or later. We’re simply going to start the selloff from a higher altitude.

ROKU Stock Rocks!

If you’re not familiar with the company, Roku makes TV boxes that connect your TV to the internet, giving you access to all sorts of over-the-top television services.

It’s akin to Apple TV from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Chromecast, from Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ: GOOGL) and the Fire stick from Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). Where Roku differs from its rivals, though, in two important ways.

First, for whatever reason, Roku’s technology is the one that television manufacturers have been willing to build into some of their new televisions in earnest, using the added Roku platform as a selling point. This translates into licensing revenue.

Second, Roku has monetized its set-top boxes by selling ad space on its main-menu screen and within the streams of many of its available channels. Ad sales are growing faster than device revenue is, and as the cord-cutting phenomenon picks up steam (and it still is picking up steam) both aspects of the business will continue to swell.

And for the record, Roku is the market leader here, keeping bigger rivals like Apple and Google fighting for leftovers. That dominance from the smaller player is a core part of the reason I suspected and continue to suspect this stock’s worth owning.

The lingering problem of a wave profit-taking remains, however.

Looking Ahead for ROKU Stock

The chart of ROKU stock is a thing of beauty to those few who believed in it enough to take a chance. In spite of a wobbly start, its November 8th earnings report catapulted shares upward in a way nobody could have realistically imagined at the time.

And yet, I still suspect we’re going to see one final sucker-punch before the decks are cleared for a long-term uptrend.

I don’t have a great technical argument for my short-term bearish expectation, other than to say the bullish volume that did so much work in mid-November has since petered out. And I have no fundamentally-based bearish argument.

More than anything, it’s a hunch based on (too many) years of experience with newly-minted companies. Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) come to mind.

Yes, Facebook is a must-have now, but you may recall it tanked hard in its first three months following its May-2012 public offering. Alibaba shares were trading at $58 a year after going public at $68 in 2014, but ultimately fell nearly 50% from its post-IPO high.

Both names were vindicated in the end, but it took a long while for the market to fully digest these new stocks, They both suffered in the meantime. Roku stock isn’t apt to be an exception to that norm. That storm should still be brewing. You’ll know it when you see it.

And yes, it’s a buying opportunity. Just don’t jump the gun.

As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. You can follow him on Twitter, at @jbrumley.