Uncle, thanks for the warm reception. Having lurked here for over a year, I feel like I know you guys, but you don't know me! It's very difficult jumping in to the midst of the tornado! (Sorry, bad pun.)
The one part of Gorilla Gaming that is the most difficult is identifying new gorillas. In the early months of '99 a fellow lurker (you know who you are!)and I identified the optical networking industry as a viable gorilla game, and we identified 4 key players: Uniphase, SDLI, ETEK, and Corning. Little did we know! In fact, we didn't really 'get' the optical networking, we just saw it as 'fiber optics'. We didn't know anything about any of these companies, but we put them on a watch list. We kinda dismissed Corning as we thought the glass fiber itself as being a 'commodity'. Wrong! We did follow the lasers, though. After a while, (say, about the middle of the summer)it became evident that Uniphase was the dominant company, and I was ready to buy. Then, Uniphase bought (merged with) JDS Fidel, and all heck broke loose! The stock soared! So, I waited until the price rose some more!
This thing kept going, and going, and (does the Energizer Bunny come to mind?) going! I kept waiting for a correction, but none was forthcoming. I mean, I really wanted to buy on a cup and handle breakout. UNPH's chart was a straight line! I didn't want to 'chase' the stock, but after a little correction, I finally got in in late August. Of course, the stock went flat for a month. I could have bought in cheaper. It's now up 340%.
What of the others? As we all know, they've been absorbed by JDSU. (Except for Corning.) Here's a gorilla game that didn't play out like ORCL, Sybase, and Informix, where you play the Russian Army game. JSDU decided to play CSCO's gorilla game of buying all worthy opponents. (Oh, yes, I played the arbitrage, and bought ETEK after the deal was announced.)
Have the rules for buying baskets of stocks changed? Or was fiber optics a special case? I'm now looking at the 'data storage' industry, EMC, NTAP, et al. Should I bother trying to figure who will be gorilla (or at least king) or just buy 'em all and let the king/gorilla buy me out?
All the best,
AdairM |
