Ray, I am also under water in BAY but not selling at these levels. I will give you three minimal reasons, though I certainly do not fault the logic that says nip the pain in the bud and move on.
1) Excellent technology/products/established base of customers to sell into/management (with the possible exception of the CFO as has been mentioned on this thread).
2) The inevitable collision of voice with data and networking with telecom. There is going to be huge consolidation in this area. I have no idea if BAY will be merged, purged, or regurged, but clearly there is an M&A angle here.
3) This one is personal. Twice I have packed it in with a large holding that was under water and seemed hopeless. I had other large gains and used these losers as tax losses at the time, even though I believe that making buy/sell/hold decisions for tax purposes is a sucker's game. I will just tell you about one of these times. I had bought Viacom at 42 because of its tremendous assets and potential breakup value. I know of nothing other than Coke that has the brand name recognition of some of Viacom's assets (Star Trek, MTV, etc.) The stock went up to 44 and then began to plunge. And it plunged, and it plunged. I think we hit the low 20s. I didn't sell. I figured Star Trek alone was worth 20 bucks a share. It sort of came back but struggled. Finally, I bailed out at 36 1/2, not a huge loss but painful nonetheless. For the conclusion of this story I suggest that you check out the Viacom chart. It recently hit 60. I do not want to repeat this mistake with BAY. Obviously, BAY will not go to zero. I figure the worst case scenario is that it gets taken under at 15-20. I can live with that risk/reward. Remember, DEC was bought for one reason -- its installed base of customers. BAY has that too. I am not Job, but I will be patient here.
By the way, these 8 million share days are kind of interesting.
Beachbumm |
