Good afternoon jbe,
I certainly bring out the journalist in you! Instead of answering my question you've tossed several in my direction. After reading your answer I still don't understand the market psychology surrounding the oil sector!
** OT **
First, think of the market in existential terms. Kafka's Penal Colony immediately comes to mind. After the harrow has repeatedly engraved your transgressions on your back to you begin to understand your sin! Actually, with WDC it was pretty easy to see it coming, because we could watch extreme overcapacity in in the entire sector starting with Seagate. And even there the market's realization that the sector was suffering from oversupply developed slowly. I was not lucky with my picks, I simply watched certain parameters and ignored everything else.
So here's how I do it: read some unbiased publications concerning the utility of the products produced, and the competitive challenges faced by the company. Ignore the technical mumbo-jumbo on the threads. I think that only engineers understand it, and the rest of us tend to be cowed by their expertise. Focus on the business. How well does the company execute compared to its competitors?
I would guess that a "current non-existent IEEE ... product" is a product that will be developed in the future. Alternatively, it might be some kind of virtual oar used to propel a virtual boat in an imaginary stream. The issue is, do people want to buy it, if so, how badly do they want it, and can the company profitably produce it. Everything else is noise.
To use mph's favorite drug of choice as an example-- Viagra -- you don't need to know how it works or how it's manufactured to know that there is potentially a huge demand for the drug. I suspect that the engineers sometimes spend more time showing off their specialized knowledge to one another than actually imparting useful information. The tech stocks I'm in are ASND, DELL, HBOC, PSFT and TLAB.
I'm not familiar with the concept of "enterprise value". Perhaps I know it under a different name. I would be happy to look at it if you would reference the concept.
Now that I've answered your questions, how about answering mine? (You are a terrible interviewee -- always shifting the questions back to the interviewer <VBG>)
TTFN,
CTC |
