Hi Folks,
I've been monitoring SI since October and have finally decided to join.
Lou, thank for the 2 reposts you've done for me. You have been an excellent source of rationality and expertise regarding this stock.
Jeff Bertrand, thanks for the insight and enthusiasim you've provided this thread during the darkest hours of IFMX.
Melissa, I appreciate you insight into this stock, as well as your candid posts on your options activities.
This all reminds me of Ron Howard's Apollo 13 (Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Ed Harris, etc.) when Ground Flight Chief Kranz is asked by aides, for President Nixon, "what the odds are."
Kranz refuses to give the odds. A spokesman for NASA, instead, gives our helpless astronaust a 50/50 chance of returning home. Later, Kranz is asked how he feels in NASA's "darkest hour." He replies, "With all due respect, gentlemen, I beleive this is NASA's finest hour."
How right he was.
NASA learned from that Apollo mission how to organize, focus (your favorite word, Jeff) and respond to emergencies in space like never before. That mission set the model, as well as the standard, for how a rescue operation should take place.
Similarly, I see the same thing with IFMX. Bob F and crew and creating, right before our eyes, the textbook case for a tech turnaround in the 1990's. This IFMX turnaround is only matched by the likes of Captain Lou G. at IBM. The college textbooks of 2005 will sight IFMX of 1998 and 1999 as a classic expample of a tech turnaround, despite all the odds (bad former management, commoditezed market, tough competition, Asian crisis, etc.). In essence, this is Informix's finest moment. And we get to live it!!
I originally bought at 18 months ago. Then we found out about the lie and the 1996 earnings restatement. But, I've stayed with it ever since. Bought in at 9 1/4 the next day. Then we found out that earnings were to be restated going 3 years back. I bought in again at 6 1/4. Then, after the Asian crisis and tax selling season, bought in at 4 in December, bringing my total cost to 7.80/share. Being in the IT business myself, I know that at the current 9, IFMX is still a bargain.
My congrats to all those who hung in there. And I believe IFMX will head much farther north .... much farther!
Cheers!
Ed Bowes. |
