<CSCO was a pyramid scheme wrapped around a great business. And until the wrapper comes off it's still a lousy investment. Get over it. Cisco's not alone. Many others like that. Could have been SEBL, for example.
Big hit? Nah, sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. IR? Hardly. I spent the last half of July and all of August mostly in the woods and parks across Canada and the Western US, and despite those who think the Internet should be everywhere I happen to disagree. >
John, I haven't studied Cisco at all, but several years ago was impressed by Cisco City when I stumbled across it in San Jose.
I have been aware that they made lots of acquisitions over the years, using an ever-inflating currency.
This whole stockmarket implosion is remarkably reminiscent to me of the New Zealand experience of the 1980s. Yes, everyone had a crash in 1987, but NZ's was unique.
The lessons from that are disconcerting for what's going on now. I escaped unscathed because I didn't get caught up in the financial leveraging companies because I thought they were puffballs, buying good little companies, but pumping them up with debt, leveraging that into new opportunities and so on which was going to cause a rapid and substantial deflation]. I didn't escape this one unscathed because I backed bad management for an excellent asset [Globalstar] and while accepting that QUALCOMM would drop to possibly $50, hadn't studied the overall market sufficiently to realize just how puff-balled the whole thing was.
Anyway, that's water under the bridge. Where to from here is what matters. I'm not all that comfortable with the prospects if NZ's experience is anything to go by.
The main reason for my concern is that NZ's implosion was moderated because there was a huge external world to NZ and NZ's economy being an export economy didn't lose the income from overseas. But there is no externality to the USA/Japan/Latin America/Europe/Africa/rest of world other than China/Korea [I think we can almost join Korea together again although part of it is still allegedly a component of the Axis of Evil]. China and Korea are too small to act as much of an externality, though China does to a small extent [especially if the appropriate currency adjustments take place].
Re the idea that the internet shouldn't be everywhere, that might be because your child/wife/buddy didn't fall down a crevasse and you didn't need to get help. The internet can be everywhere and you can ignore it. Radio signals don't interfere with enjoyment of black flies and mosquitoes in the Canadian forests.
I have unpleasant memories of black flies and mosquitoes in Canada in summer, but fond memories of Lake Paudash and other backwoods places. Snowmobiling through forests on a starry night was fun too. Noisy and mad [a quiet walk is nice too] but fun. I would want to have a Globalstar phone if I was out in the -30 degrees night and ran out of petrol or got a flat tyre in the middle of the forest.
I've never yet found knowledge to be a disadvantage. I have never yet found the option for me to communicate to be a disadvantage. I can always choose not to download or upload via cyberspace. But the choice is nice.
Mqurice |
