Thanks, Sam, for the comments on the fiber-makers. I'll continue
to research SPTR and GLW.
Actually, although I've contemplated getting into foreign CEF's
before and actually followed some, I just bought my first slice
of one over New Years-- CH, Chile, at 20 1/2. So I can't speak
firsthand about the perils of rights offerings. The rationale
usually offered is that the managers need cash to pursue
unusually attractive investment opportunities without realizing
capital gains in shares that are still attractive. That may
sometimes be reasonable, I guess. But what usually happens is
rights to buy shares at a discount to the then-current market
price are offered (typical the right to buy several shares for
each currently held share), so the market price falls on the
shares you already hold. For example, look at the graph of the
Swiss Helvetia Fund (SWZ) price and NAV for the summer of '95.
The price drops steeply when the rights offering is announced
in July, and the fund has sold at a greater average discount
since then, than it did previously. That may have something to
do with a less exciting Swiss stock market since then too, of
course.
I know an engineer at Intel, but I haven't talked with him
for a few months. (Needless to say, he is a happy camper!)
He did say he was amazed at the fast adoption of CMP and the
results it has been getting... "magic" (although he isn't a
CMP specialist). I own some SFAM (Intel, as you know, uses
IPEC machines).
Thread, the rest of this is not investment-related:
Quantum information theory is not the same as chaos theory--
maybe I should e-mail you an explanation since I'm not sure
the rest of the thread is interested. Short version: classical
information theory deals with "bits," equally probably alternatives
often called "0" and"1". Quantum information theory is the analogue
of this, but for quantum mechanics, which always permits
"superpositions" (in the sense of arbitrary normalized
linear combinations with
complex coefficients) of alternatives which classical theory posits as
mutually exclusive. Thus, for example, a computer which used the
full resources of quantum theory could be in a "superposition" of
"0" and "1"-- such a quantum alternative, the quantum analogue of
a classical bit, has come to be known as a "qubit" and is the
fundamental unit of quantum information theory. We then deal with
such questions as the rate at which qubits can be sent down a
"noisy" channel (where the noise must be modeled quantum mechanically,
of course), the accuracy with which qubits can be copied, etc....
It's a relatively new, rapidly expanding field, spurred by the
recent discoveries (due to Peter Shor at AT&T--maybe at Lucent now,
I'm not sure--, building on work
by Simon, Deutsch, and Jozsa) of algorithms that would run on
quantum computers (if there were any such things, which there aren't--
well, some experimentalists have made one simple gate!), and solve
problems in polynomial time (in the length of the input), which
classically are believed not to be solvable in polynomial time, but
take exponential (or close) time-- like factoring large numbers.
(Which as you might imagine, interests one or two government agencies.)
I have done some work on quantum versions of classically chaotic
systems, but that's another thing although it uses information-
theoretic tools.
For the hard-core who find this piques their interest, you might
take a look at xxx.lanl.gov . The FORM
INTERFACE button allows you to search the archive.
Cheers,
Howard |
