> Hey Harlan, there are not very many people with that fine last
> name you have, Are we any relation?
I don't know. The Sexton's that I am related to were, in my
grandfather's time, from around northern Arkansas and were
share-croppers. Does that match your family tree?
> I also have wondered at the usefulness of valuation methods of
> high tech firms- the most important asset being the few pounds
> of grey matter between the ears of more or less nameless
> engineers.
Certainly in determining the utility of the products the company
sells. But my question was along the lines of trying to
understand if there is any sense in which even the best software
company's stock is anything other than a sort of pyramid
scheme. If I had bought MSFT at its IPO and assigned it to a
trust for the Jetson family, would the trust have anything in it
by the time Astro reached his majority?
> Whether the core creative engineers are present, happy and
> productive or not doesn't show up on the balance sheet soon
> enough. Its only when lame, late, costly, behind the curve
> products are the only thing being produced does it show, and by
> then the shows usually over.
Since I don't know how assign an intrinsic value to a company, I
just assume that the market will value it on sufficiently the
same terms tomorrow that it does today, look for factors that I
think I understand more than the average analyst, and hope that
these factors are more important than the ones I understand
less. The most important thing I have to remember is that I can't
just notice a company and say "these guys are going to make a lot
of money for the next 3 years", and then forget about it. That's
what I did for years, and for some reason I never made a dime at
it. |
