Hello Michael (and Kevin),
After reading many of your postings today (and Mr. Chen's) I
couldn't help but reply. Why? Because I AM one of the small investors
to which you were referring. Here's some background:
I'm 27 yrs. old and I've worked for GE Aerospace, Martin Marietta,
Lockheed Martin, Lotus (actually their Soft-Switch division), and now IBM(same
division.) I've actually only changed jobs once, from Lockeed to Lotus. The
rest were mergers/acquisitions. This occured in only 5 years and so made
me much more interested in the workings of the business world. After talking
with a brother of mine in the router hardware area, I heard about Netscape's
IPO. At work the browser was all I heard about, so I used in myself. When
I saw all the "Netscape enhanced" lines on the web sites, I thought hmmm...
I was also impressed about what I heard about the management team. It didn't
sound to me to be more than just a one-product short term company. Since I
started at also Lotus I actively read anything Internet related, since my
previous job exerience was all goverment related and old. I read about Netscape
a lot.
So, Netscape sounded like a good idea and I bought the day after the
IPO at $53, my first purchase through a broker and not a 401k plan. I've
watched it closely and have always checked their home page, the news, and
of course, Silicon Investor. I even watch CNBC occasionally. I sold
half my shares at $162.5 I suspected at that time that MSFT's Internet
strategy meeting two days later would impact the stock (and did it ever.)
So I made back my original investment, plus quite a bit more and the rest
is so called "someone else's money." So, after calming down I settled in
for the long haul. Or have I, its hard to say. That was my original
intent and I'll probably stick with, changing plans midstream is a bad
idea. I've eagerly awaited the split and the 4Q earnings so the next few
weeks will be as interesting as those in november/december.
All in all, its been one hell of a learning experience, thanks in
great part to the internet and those on it. Particularly this group.
Going from the government contract arena, to the commercial leading edge
type of work has been interesting. So I'll continue to read about Netscape,
Notes, and Microsoft, interesting times indeed.
Sincerely,
Mark |
