Ice Shark, St. Jude's is a classy medical devices stock with less than a market multiple and higher than market growth. I doubt if I would buy it with the market at these levels, but there are certainly worse places to be. They do compete with Medtronic, my only real long term holding, and Guidant, one of which is a real good co. But there is plenty of business and their products do save lives and cut medical costs. They just won a lawsuit against Guidant, which can't hurt. I have owned it from time to time and find that their mgt., unlike many, are honest folks most of the time.
However, I still remember when I met an analyst touting STJ in 1980. He told the story about the heart valve and I was excited. Then he said, "and I have one I can show you." It looked like a golf tee that had been bent in half. The only other stock where the product and the hype seemed out of whack like this was Cisco, where they showed me this silly gizmo called a router. In both cases, I bought my nose and bought and in both cases, I was happy for a long time. But I do likes my bells and whistles on the products. <G>
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