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Technology Stocks : Safeguard Scientifics SFE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gdichaz who wrote (3370)	8/21/1999 3:14:00 PM
From: LarryCPA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4467

Chaz, I see your point also. The problem is does SFE has enough brain power to run all of these companies? I'm looking at a list of the public companies, and quite frankly, picking out where to put the resources is hard. I would have never expected SCAI to be such a big winner (but it's taken 10 years), and have been burned by TESI countless times (just rebought in at 3 recently :( ) CATP is always a roller coaster. I think that SFE will continue to lighten up on TLAB because they have no control their. It is totally an investment. I would not commit to FCGI, but DTPI looks promising. I am totally baffled as to why CVSN hasn't exploded since getting the blanket FDA approval. I will load up at 10 or under during the next crack, and will check the SEC filing to see if SFE is buying also. Seeing how much Pete Musser bought of CATP at 11 made me buy some also. In at 11 out at 16 in 2 weeks wasn't bad. Anyway, I'm not ready to write these guys off yet. Larry

To: gdichaz who wrote (3370)	8/21/1999 8:39:00 PM
From: Katherine Derbyshire	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4467

>> Would hope that SFE management would give higher priority to strengthening winners than helping the wounded survive. Build on strength and sell the weak is a good general rule. The danger is that SFE thinks of itself as a doctor who heals, as opposed to a generator of winners. << But how do you tell which ones are the winners? Going back to the medical analogy, you could start with identical twin babies, both born healthy and strong. If you feed one and don't feed the other, the neglected one will die. It takes 15-20 years or more to figure out whether one or both of them will succeed. Do you quit feeding one of them because he cries more than the other? Baby companies grow up faster than baby humans, but they still all face a stage where they cry a lot and will die without management, capital, and all the other "food" uncle SFE provides. All of this shows where the common analogy between SFE and a closed end mutual fund breaks down. The fund can't really influence the direction of the companies it buys, while SFE can. So you could view the premium (or discount) over NAV as the value of the private companies plus the value of SFE's expertise. Any statisticians out there have a good metric for that expertise? Katherine