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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (12087)	12/5/1999 2:39:00 PM
From: Percival 917	Respond to of 54805

Hi Mike, Well you sure don't mince words. I know this was a post from over a day ago but I am just trying to play catch up and couldn't help myself but to take a friendly dig at you, but I do promise to try harder........NOT! Joel

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (12087)	12/5/1999 2:58:00 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 54805

THINK TANK II! OK, time for more debate and discussion! First off, I am not trying to make the definitions we are using more elastic; I want to make them tighter. I want us to end up spending less time debating what category a company fits in, and more time finding the right companies, and figuring out when to hold them, and when to fold them. I think Moore has been a little too loose with his definitions, and the comments on the board, since I posted on this subject, quoting from the book, seem to back me up. Moore seems to be throwing around the term "Gorilla" too loosely lately, IMO. For instance, Mike, Lucent's old telephone switching equipment is generic, and has been for a long time. Moore's calling them a Gorilla in this area merely adds confusion. Lets start with the Intel situation: Both Microsoft and Cisco have a "system" sale. So do QCOM and GMST. Intel does not. It has a chip sale. They were forced by IBM to 'second source" the 1086 chip to AMD when they made the PC deal. So, they always had direct competition. Being a major king, Like JSDU is now, they were so far ahead of the competition that they controlled the market for years. They were also subject to "reverse engineering", which is legal for hardware, but you can't "reverse engineer" systems such as Windows or MSFT's DOS and sell it. QCOM can have someone come out with a much better CDMA chip, and they will still get a royalty off of it. You cannot get around GMST patents, IMO. Intel came under pricing pressure when the chips got to a speed that satisfied the PC market and AMD got its act together and became competitive at the low end. I maintain that the so-called Internet computers and Network computers were not discontinuous innovations, merely cheap PCs! This means that Intel fails my "Salem Witch Hunt" dunking test for a Gorilla. It can be "commoditized" without a discontinuous innovation taking its place. But that is the past, and I think clears up a gray area. On to the Kings! I don't want this area, which is huge compared to Gorillas, to degenerate into a discussion of a thousand "Shiny Pebbles"! The company will have to be way past its IPO, making a profit, and have no real competition, to qualify for our examination, IMO. It will look and act like a Gorilla in sales and profits, but it will be subject to competition. I would like to see if we could figure out some entry points for these tigers. When I look at a chart of JDSU, it appears that the stock took off in Sep of '98, and the stock accelerated when Gilder put out a report early this year. We need to hear from some of the followers of this stock to fill us in on where the entry points should have been for us, and how we would have known them at the time. I think we will find that these Kings that interest us "cross a chasm" and "enter a tornado" in a similar fashion to the Gorilla, only faster, because there is little resistance. What other companies should we study to identify these characteristics?