Results of Gemstar Poll
In two surveys concluded exactly five months apart, on 12/21/99 and 5/21/99, people responded with one of the following opinions:
1) Gemstar is a Gorilla; or
2) Gemstar is not a Gorilla; or
3) I have thought about it and am undecided.
The responses are as follows, the number in parenthesis being the number of responses and the other being self-explanatory:
IS IS NOT UNDECIDED TOTAL
12/21/99 Survey: (31) 55% (11) 20% (14) 25% (56) 100%
5/21/00 Survey: (26) 41% (25) 40% (12) 19% (63) 100%
Of the 56 people who responded in the first survey, 27 of them (48%) also responded in the second survey. Of those 27 people, some changed their opinion between the first and second surveys as follows:
Changed from IS to IS NOT: (6) 22%
Changed from IS NOT to IS: (0) 0%
Changed from anything to UNDECIDED: (0) 0%
Changed from UNDECIDED TO IS: (3) 11%
Changed from UNDECIDED TO IS NOT: (3) 11%
Did not change opinion: (15) 56%
TOTAL (27) 100%
I'll leave it up to the statisticians to make authoritative comment, but I suspect the database is so small that there is not a lot we can emphatically conclude. Even so, I'll offer a couple of observations and invite others.
I do think it's interesting that the two surveys rendered different counts for the people who were not yet able to conclude that Gemstar is a Gorilla. From the time the first survey was conducted to the time the second one was conducted, those people increased from 45% of the total surveyed to 59%.
On a similar note, the people responding in the "undecided" category did not change significantly between the two surveys (from 25% in the first to 19% in the second.) Instead, the much larger swing took place among those who decidedly had an opinion. Those who voted that Gemstar was not a Gorilla increased from 20% of the total in the first survey to 40% in the second one, an increase of 100%.
Precipitous declines took place in the Naz and the stock from their respective highs between the time the two surveys were conducted. Most if not all people following the thread suffered similar declines in their portfolios. Did those declines cause investors to express opinion with a greater degree of caution about Gemstar's current strength?
I wish there had been more people who voted in both surveys. Since only half of the people who participated in the first one also participated in the second one, we've got especially limited data. Even so, it's interesting that of the people who were undecided in the first survey and came to a decision in the second survey, half voted affirmatively and half voted negatively about Gemstar's gorilla status.
Despite the limited data, I think two observations are especially interesting. Of the people who were decided about Gemstar's status in the first survey and changed their opinion in the second survey, all of them changed from thinking Gemstar is a Gorilla to thinking it is not. Of the people who voted in both surveys, almost half (44%) of them voted differently in the second survey, implying for me a willingness to be open minded to change and/or to take the survey very seriously.
Stan, a last-minute question comes to mind. How many people responding in your survey owned Gemstar stock?
Comments or questions anyone?
--Mike Buckley |
