Pancho, - When I began in the research department in 1967 for a local NYSE & ASE member firm, 10-K's, Q's, etc., were not known or used on the street. It was WSJ, Barron's, Value Line, Argus Research, Wright's Investor's Service, the Big New York houses, and Joe Granville, <g> who carried the weight. If an annual report contained more than 2 paragraphs from the auditors, you had some serious further digging to do, as that meant everything wasn't completely kosher. Bear in mind that NYSE trading volume averaged < 10 mil. shs/day, and the Dow eventually took 10 years after it's first assault on 1,000 to finally break through it and hold. I have seen, maybe in the "old paradigm", a market which actually entered a 10-year trading range, prime interest rates ranging from 2.5% - 21%, and bear markets. The "momentum players" of the day were the elderly gentlemen who would sit with pen and paper in hand and watch the moving ticker on the wall, occasionally shouting out to their broker (about 20 feet away) to buy or sell one of the day's "hot" issues. The moving DJ ticker could go at the rate of 600 characters per MINUTE, and on particularly busy days, it was not uncommon for the tape to run 20-minutes late, (kinda like delayed quotes). Many good brokers received commissions in the hundreds of dollars per trade, and subsequently were able to afford the country clubs, and the rubbing of elbows with the movers and the shakers of the time. A good deal of "business" was probably conducted on the golf course. Earnings were earnings, and extraordinary items were just that - extraordinary. The balance sheet and income statements still had to be analyzed, but you could trust the numbers more back then. Earnings revisions, the one's that there were, generated nothing more that idle talk among the aforementioned elderly gentlemen who would also read "the broad tape", Telex teletype. For breaking news announcements a little bell would ring on the top of the telex machine, and all would rise, and walk over to the machine, eyeglasses in hand. The information exchange flowed like the pony express, and local companies proved to be fertile investing grounds, in that they were familiar, (a la Peter Lynch), and conveniently accessible to meet with. Yeah, back in the old days we made money on Wall Street the old fashioned way -- we used good, solid analysis, and inside information. <G>
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