Jim: Being a bit of a tongue-in-cheeker myself, I wonder whether you are.
Your criticisms do have a consistency in their collective premise, namely, that COMPAQ is playing fast and loose with the underlying realities of its business and that the channel-stuffing that was systemic, at least in 1997, is symptomatic of serious underlying cash-flow problems: that the DEC merger was another attempt to cover up these problems, or confuse the critics, and that underneath it all is a serious lack of profitability which has not been solved by the DEC merger. You then go on to suggest that COMPAQ's statements, whether about operational issues or accounts, should be taken with a pinch of salt. I would characterise this premise as being reasonable skepticism for any investor or potential investor to investigate, especially if they are investing a substantial proportion of their assets. You go on to say that the thread, in general, is too rah rah, there is no serious, informed criticism of COMPAQ and too much jajajajaj.
The difficulty some seem to be having with the structure of your conclusions is that you appear to have arrived at them without proceeding through the stages of verifiable observation, premise and argument. Your thesis seems to be more an assertion of belief or conviction. This does not make them wrong.
Personally I welcome your contribution, because in their very vagueness and lack of specificity they have caused Rudedog and others to do considerable rational research and cover all the possible meanings you might have intended, had you drawn up you argument more rigorously. (But I suspect Rudedog would have done this work anyway, even if you had not provided him with a spur and a focus).
I have invested in COMPAQ on the basis of criteria that satisfy me (but which I constantly review). It is somewhat of a luxury to have Rudedog and others publish the results of their extraordinary due dilligence which they may not have done without you voicing doubts which perhaps ought to be voiced, anyway. The thread is, by and large, a group of people who have committed investments to COMPAQ. We all know that very serious and informed analysts have counselled against investing in COMPAQ and have walked away from it for the better part of a year. They were hardly wrong, given that COMPAQ is only about 16% higher than it was more than a year ago, and that gain was only very recently, when other companies were doing substantially better than that in the same time frame.
Maybe you are really a huge holder of CPQ stock, just seeking reassurance from Rudedog?
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