Kirk's Market Thoughts Message Board

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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts

COHR 181.67

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Dec 5 9:30 AM EST

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Gottfried

To: Jerome who wrote (2290)	11/20/2014 3:29:20 PM
From: Kirk ©	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) of 26704

I like to keep track of what went wrong with my bad investments. In my newsletter, I actually keep a table that shows all closed positions and what I learned so I and others can review it monthly if we are of that mind. The reason is most of the really bad investments ARE from things we can't control. Bad deals, graft, incompetent management, etc. I like to remember the warning signs so I can be on the look out for them with current investments. Also, it is important to keep in mind what Apple did and how they are as "evil" in some ways to the working stiff as Walmart is with using child labor in China (until they were caught) and they continue to have terrible working conditions relative to US laws... yet they have a TON of cash overseas so they will CONTINUE to manufacture offshore until the penalty to bring cash to the US to create Foxcom like jobs is removed. It would be interesting to follow the furnaces and see who owns the debt as they will get the furnaces... maybe they'll make the smaller, more expensive sapphire glass with those for the larger phones and Apple will just charge more to have lower warranty costs. FWIW and a bit of history, part of my "claim to fame" and what got me an offer in 2000 to run R&D plus manufacturing for a fiber optics startup was us at HP in the early 1980s designed a fiber optic transceiver module for IBM that was better and cheaper than AT&T and most others. It and competitors like AT&T had a huge issue with EMI. I was given a budget of $50 per part and team to solve this problem. I solved it with some chip and package design changes and no extra manufacturing cost and was treated as a hero. This was probably as important to what is Avago now as the Sapphire business was for GTAT... make or break. The R&D manager at the time is retiring soon at Agilent's CEO and his boss retired long ago with his wife big now in local politics. I got a few extra bucks, the engineer/scientist title and stock options... and also the realization that the people who nearly kill themselves working to find solutions don't make nearly as much as those at the top.... Anyway, I'm always interested in tracking these sorts of manufacturing/design issues in the event I decide to go back into the industry as a problem solver. I believe I may be the only one who talks about money lost over a decade ago...

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