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Non-Tech : Ashton Technology (ASTN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dr. Seuss who wrote (2761)	10/5/1999 5:35:00 PM
From: mst2000	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4443

Doc - You are wasting your time telling long term investors in ATG that they "don't get it" because they look at long term growth, and not persistent trading, as the engine of making money. If your way works for you, fine . . . it seems to have been successful for the most part thus far . . . but your alleged success in short term short trading does not diminish the gains that long term longs have achieved. One has almost nothing to do with the other (and the trading approach is not necessarily the better approach - you get a higher tax rate in order to make crumbs playing a guessing game based on little more than your certainty that any stock which is up 500% for the year (as ATG still is) must come down). You claim it is a lot of crumbs - for your sake I hope it is, because you will need gains to offset the bad decisions you will make (I assume your diligence on other companies is as woeful as it has been on ATG) and, either way, it did not come from any of the long term investors of ATG (any more than our 100-500% long term gains came out of your pocket). With a long term investment, if you have the resources not to sell when the price declines in the short term, it doesn't matter if the price rises or declines from one day to the next over issues of perception, trading phenomena, short selling, market performance as a whole (or lack thereof), a Greenspan speech, or whatever . . . what matters is this: Is the company financially healthy, is it executing its business plan, are there insurmountable obstacles to its success, is management honest and capable, etc., or, conversely, is the price declining because of problems intrinsic to the company, its product and its business plan. Once you conclude that the problem with a company's declining stock price in a bear market is for the most part extrinsic to the company, and is temporary, the fact that the price is down today or up tomorrow is largely irrelevent unless you intend to buy more (or, for that matter, to sell a few shares to hedge your risk). Which is to say that while I would love the stock price to be 15 again next week, since I know it will be there in the next 2-6 months, and since I am not going anywhere (and have no need to liquidate my position between now and then and pay the IRS), it really makes no difference to me. I know this is a revolutionary concept to you, but trust me, I am sincere in expressing it. Now if you (or anybody else) posted something credible that demonstrated why investors should be especially concerned about ATG's financial health in the short term (and/or the long term), that would be a different story. So far, you and Auric have done nothing to raise such concerns on my part (144's from non-insiders and a private placement involving convertible preferred stock that helps the company immeasurably over the next 6 months financially just don't cut it as causes for concern). In fact, your and Auric's collective inability to identify a major financial problem affecting ATG is reassuring, because god knows, you and he have been trying for months now. So I am left with my patience and you with your certainty that every timing decision you make will be the right one. Which, I might add, are not necessarily inconsistent, oddly enough. So tell us something we don't know next time. But don't waste your breath arguing that short term trading is superior to long term investment and then tell us that "we don't get it" because you have had some success here doing it - sometimes short term trading is successful, but in the long run, with a short term strategy you end up leaving the lion's share of the gain on the table, and your bad timing decisions will be as numerous or more numerous than your good ones. MST