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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TRINDY who wrote (69432)	10/23/1999 12:08:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

Trindy, I am not in the least impressed with the Gateway results because I don't believe them. The sales I believe. The costs are being capitalized and I am waiting for them to blow up. Logically, it doesn't make sense that this firm is doing well making crappy boxes while every other firm in the biz is having problems. All you have to do is look at "Other Assets" "Fixed Assets" and "Property" on the balance sheet to know that something odorous is going on at this co. One source I use is Bill Fleckenstein's column. You can get that on the Home Page of SI under the title "Contrarian." Another is Fred Hickey's "The High Tech Strategist," which you can order at P.O. Box 3133 Nashua, N.H. 03061-3133. It costs $95 a year. Another is The Richebacher Letter, which discusses more of how tech earnings are manipulated to inflate US GDP. That's a pricier proposition, $497 a year, 1-888-737-9358. I have no connnections with any of these pubs, though I sometimes trade jokes with Bill Fleckenstein on this thread. However, most of my opinions come from what I've garnered from 25 years as an investment professional, and 33 years as an investor, contacts in businesses and govt., the school of hard and nice knocks managing money professionally, and simply reading the news and analyzing it. For example, you didn't have to be a genius to know that Dell and Hewlett were about to blow up, long before they announced it. All you had to do was pay attention to what was happening and relate it to their businesses. IBM was a harder call, as they were lying up to the very end, and, since they dominate mainframes, it is hard to check with the competition. The other thing is valuation. Any going business is a buy at some price, and as an investor, you have to be able to figure out what that value is. If you listen to Wall Street, you will eventually get killed. Read the books written by folks like Dave Dreman, Ben Graham & Warren Buffett. They discuss buying stocks and valuing them as real businessess. Admittedly, it is tough to value an internet firm using their criteria, as most aren't real businesses, but that fact should be scary in itself.