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Technology Stocks : VALENCE TECHNOLOGY (VLNC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Curtis who wrote (12827)	7/6/1999 3:48:00 PM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 27311

John, thank you for the enlightening lesson in investing. It would fit my style if I was a fund manager, but two visits per year to each company I am invested in and talking to management (and I can see MRK's management finding time to talk with me, of course), with the 25 stocks I am typically invested in, would require I spend all my time managing these funds. I got to find a short cut, that is why I look at the SEC documents and the technical behavior of the stock. Apart of that, "having been" management myself, the last thing I would want to say to an investor is "all the truth and absolutely all the truth", I would not lie, of course, but I would "giggle" (or was it "snickering? <VBG>) if need be. Thus, being on the other side, I rarely talk to management, it clouds my rational deliberations. Zeev

To: John Curtis who wrote (12827)	7/6/1999 4:06:00 PM
From: BelowTheCrowd	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27311

> it's always advisable to speak directly with company management and members of their board, visit their location(s)(and I'm not speaking just about VLNC, but this should be done on ANY security you might be interested in), speak with their competition, crunch numbers if it ain't a speculation you're playing with......... < I've got to disagree somewhat. I generally find that speaking with management is fairly useless, for several reasons: * GOOD management makes all material information public, and makes a point of NOT sharing any information privately that isn't available through some public forum. * BAD management often tries to pass along additional "tidbits" or hype, which might make the company look better than it really is. After all, it's difficult to be sued for comments which can't be proven after the fact... * ALL managements are trying to present a certain image. Good companies (INTC, MSFT, CSCO) frequently talk themselves down intentionally. Bad ones often minimize problems. The only place they've got to be very accurate (or go to jail) is in official SEC filings. I find the same is true of talking to competitors. They'll try to present the picture that best suits THEIR particular goals. Customers, distributors, partners, and other "associated" organizations are VERY good places to get an accurate picture. They see the whole marketplace and generally have less reason to be biased towards one particular outcome or player. (For example, a store manager at CompUSA has very little reason to lie about which computers are selling. HWP, CPQ, AAPL and the others have their own spins...) Visiting a site is always good if possible. I like to pass by the offices of companies which I invest in and get a feel for what's going on. Are there cars in the parking lot late? If there's a factory, how many shifts do they appear to be running, and with how many people? How many trucks do I see coming and going? Note, none of these are "official" visits. Again, it's the skeptic in me. I figure if management invites me to tour a facility, they're probably going to go out of their way to present it in the best possible light and avoid showing me the troubles. (For example, invite me to visit during the one-hour-per-day period when all production lines are running...) What can I say, I'm a skeptic and a cynic... mg