When you say things like the following:
"The place to make money long on ASTN is in the past."
" . . with all the 144s flying, don't you realize the keepers of your stock are selling you out?"
you come across as a complete idiot to anybody who knows the truth. ATG dropped 1/2 on tepid trading. So what. ATG is on its own time line right now. Which has been very opportunistic for you, to be sure. But that does not make anything you have stated and continue to state to back your recently correct price predictions either true or fair. You and AG have called the last month right, I admit it. But for all the wrong reasons -- Perception, yes. Reality, no. And I am not saying the stock does not deserve to be back in single digits - clearly that is a correction that made sense given the public's increasing demand that companies perform before the stockholders get rewarded. But your willingness to make dramatic statements about how this company is already dead in the water reflects such profound ignorance about its financial condition and its prospects for the future that it is hard to take anything else you say seriously.
So make your money, but don't lecture me about how to make money. Your focus on stock price over substance, and short term over long term, is the first sign that any advice from you regarding "investment" or "making money" is worthless. But congratulations, you bring new meaning to the word "astute".
An initial investor in Dell was down 70% on his or her investment 2 years after making it, and could have been prone to the same self-serving attacks you two have leveled. The shorts won the battle over Dell in year 2 of its existence. But the long term investor won the war. To the tune of 75-100 times their original investments. Dell's detractors were no doubt every bit as offensive as the two of you are, and for that one moment in time, it appeared they were right. Perception. Not reality. The longs who held on then did so under what must have been enormous pressure to sell -- they were told (correctly) that Dell was a small fish in a sea of predators who had the resources to crush them, and (incorrectly) that its 21 year old CEO could never successfully take on IBM, Apple and Compaq with all of their resources and history and name recognition -- and look what happened over a 10 year period -- Dell ended up kicking the crap out of IBM, Apple and Compaq, and virtually everybody else in the consumer PC market and they are now one of the most respected companies in America -- they were not always perceived that way (and they still have their detractors), but that is the triumph of reality over perception. So you say it was not too smart of me to have passed up the sell order when the stock was at 17-18 (one day in May), and I say it is bad form to assess the intelligence of a long term investment until you actually do sell -- which is many years away.
You say that insiders, the "keepers of my stock", are selling me out. Perception. I say that with only a handful of exceptions, the 144s are for the most part no more "insiders" or "keepers of my stock" than the lady who empties my wastebasket when I go home tonight. Reality. They are mostly just a bunch of wealthy people who a broker wanted to hook (so he let them in on a PP), or who knew a guy who knew the brother in law of the guy who knew a guy. And I tell you from personal knowledge that the 144's I have communicated with, who have actually gone out of their way to contact me to tell me this, are not only no more informed than the average ATG investor, but every one of those 144's merely registered their shares, and did not sell them. To their chagrine, I might add, hindsight being 20/20. And so I can be really clear on this, I am quite sure more than a few 144's have sold, and personally I am happy for them. They stepped up to put in the seed money and are entitled to liquidate an investment they have held for 3-4 years. And while I'm at it, let me be the first to concede that there are more than a few intelligent and rational stockholders who have lost patience, who are upset at management, who have sold in disgust and who will never invest in ATG again. It is not a zero sum game, Doc. There is a lot of complexity to this one, it is far from over, and anybody who says it is a simple, black and white proposition, or that the company is dead in the water is, in a word, wrong.
So as I look at the relatively small percentage of the company's stock that has traded over the past 4 weeks as the stock price has dropped 40% (much of which is not even original issue, but borrowed and sold short), I am thinking that the tail is wagging the dog when it comes to the stock price. The pack is running in synch, but from where I sit, it looks like they are a pack of lemmings running over a cliff, while professional shorts know better and will get out long before the pack is able to. In my opinion, based on the quality of your posts and the fact that you still make them, I mark you and your buddy Auric as the self-appointed leaders of the pack right now. A relatively small pack compared to the friendly hands that hold 20 million or so of the 23 million shares of ATG that are now outstanding. And I hope that you (and they) continue to underestimate ATG's management. When I look in contrast at the 4 senior officers of the company, Messrs. Rittereiser, Weingard, Uchimoto and Bacci, who are truly "the keepers of my stock", I am more convinced than ever that my trust and faith in management is well justified, and will pay huge dividends over the long haul.
You are the one who needs to learn about investing, Doc. You seem to have had some success "trading", at least recently, but I don't think you know very much about investing, with all due respect.
MST |
