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Technology Stocks : Charter Communications (CHTR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sarkie who wrote (540)	11/14/1999 1:45:00 PM
From: Roger Sherman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2437

Off Topic Article? Time will tell. I thought this group might get a kick out of the following article from the "Pacific Northwest" section of this morning's Seattle Times. Especially those of us who bought CHTR at (or near) it's IPO price this past Tuesday (and especially those on the CHTR "long ones" list). seattletimes.com ...................................................... (highlights added by me) Posted at 11:00 p.m. PST; Sunday, November 14, 1999 Pacific Northwest STRUCK RICH: Fortunes come and go but waffling endures by Steve Johnston Seattle Times staff reporter IF I'D BEEN AROUND 100 years ago, I would have been one of those local yahoos standing on a Seattle dock when the steamship Portland returned from the Klondike loaded down with gold. No, I wouldn't have been one of the few lucky gold miners with a fortune in his pockets. But I'm sure I would have been on the dock, saying to the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston: "You know, I should have gone to the Yukon and made a fortune." And she would have said (like she does now when I talk about what I should have done): "I said you should have gone up there. But you said they would all starve to death." That seems to be the story of my life. Years ago, Mrs. Johnston said we should put some money into the stock of some high-tech company like Microsoft. I said I thought our money was safer in a sock under our mattress. When I finally agreed to put it in a high-risk adventure, the one I selected was our neighborhood bank, where it collected about 2 percent interest. At least, I said, I could visit my money whenever I wanted. I started thinking about the Yukon gold strike the other day as I was reading yet another story about some kid in his 20s making more money than most countries have by starting a computer company after inventing a program to keep track of your socks. Or maybe he just worked for a company that keeps track of socks and had an investment program that allowed this 20-year-old kid to make enough money so he could retire before his 25th birthday. "I think after I retire, I'll run for U.S. Senate," the kid is saying in the newspaper interview. "But of course I'll have to wait a few years until I'm old enough. Maybe my first thing as senator will be to change the Constitution so you can run for Senate when you are 18." Unfortunately, I'll be so old when I retire it will be a miracle if I can even vote, much less run for public office. It's my own fault I'm not a millionaire It's not like I haven't had a chance to make millions. Occasionally someone will tell me about a company that's going to start selling shares, but by the time I make up my mind to invest a few hundred into it, the stock has done something stupid like become too expensive for me (my $400 nest egg will buy only four shares) and the next day you read that the stock was overpriced and has gone down to $5 a share. Then you read in the business section about a company started in someone's basement that was bought out by Walt Disney and anybody who bought stock when it first came out at 10 cents a share is now so rich they can retire. It's always a company I never heard of. Or if I heard of it before it made millionaires, I probably thought it was a waste of money to invest in it. "A computer company?" I no doubt said years ago. "Who can afford to buy a computer? Aren't they as big as a house? That company will be out of business in a year." I would have thought the same thing about the Yukon gold strike in 1890. If you've lived in Seattle long enough, you have seen pictures from the Gold Rush, in which some adventuresome souls went up to the Yukon with shovels and pails, spent a few cold months in the great outdoors and came back to Seattle. Here is the part that reminds me of current events: Some of these guys came back rich, like the 1890s version of Microsoft rich, but you know a lot more came back broke or dead. At least that's what I keep telling myself. Copyright ¸ 1999 The Seattle Times Company