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Gold/Mining/Energy : PAAS : Pan American Silver
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To: Canuck Dave who wrote (153)3/1/2001 2:49:57 PM
From: Dave  Read Replies (1) of 294
 
Wee Willy Gates owns 10% of this thing and he hates to lose.

Gates invests differently than most of us do. He invests strategically.

When Gates bought a big chunk of Newport News Shipbuilding, nobody was surprised when a few weeks later the Navy announces a contract to buy boatloads of Microsoft products. It doesn't necessarily mean that he thought Newport News is a good investment in the traditional sense.

When he started building his Corbis digital image-bank empire, it didn't mean that he thought it was ever going to be profitable. Rather, he probably has some long-term plan to control the distribution mechanism for digital images through his software monopolies. And of course he who controls the content controls the means of distribution; ask the record labels.

So I don't think we can assume from the fact that Gates own 10% of PAAS that he thinks it will appreciate nicely and turn a profit. I wouldn't be surprised if that investment is somehow strategically tied to one of his other interests. How, exactly, I don't know. Silver, of course, is used heavily in analog photography. Could this be related somehow to Corbis? Is silver an important material in some networking fiber technology, or chip production technique? I don't know. But I am too wary of Gates to just blindly follow him into PAAS because he's smart.

On the other hand, a tiny piece of my IRA is in PAAS. It used to be a bigger piece.

Dave
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