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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rupert1 who wrote (73318)	12/6/1999 10:40:00 AM
From: Piotr Koziol	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 97611

RE: the collective judgement of the market As of the last few minutes the buyers have come back :^) Let's "do 27+" today !!! /Piotr

To: rupert1 who wrote (73318)	12/6/1999 11:34:00 AM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 97611

victor - Your responses are approaching ad hominem - I thought your background and education would keep you from indulging in fallacies of debating logic... Your arguments rely so much on the office gossip of executives or managers in Houston that it is difficult to deal with it. Also a little of the straw man - "rudedog" claims to get superior information from COMPAQ insiders whose hindsight is almost perfect. Comparing the 190 degree difference in some of his judgements then and now (last year and this) I can see why they call them "spin doctors". I thought it was well known that the period when I was professionally involved with CPQ was 1995 and 1996, and even then it was not the kind of engagement which would have exposed me to the internal politics at CPQ to any great extent. Most of the executives I knew at that time have left CPQ, years before the current troubles for the most part. I do occasionally see people who work at CPQ, as we are in the same social circles - church, or boy scouts, or sports events, or sometimes just happen to be at the same watering hole. My assumption is that they know more about what was going on than you or I do. That does not make such anecdotal data gospel. Their hindsight is better than their foresight - but that is universally true. I also have triangulation with other folks in the industry, primarily people at MSFT whom I have known for many years, and for whom reasonably accurate industry gossip is a mainstay of daily life. There again, it is easier to see the implications of events and rumors from 1Q99 with the advantage of 9 months additional history. As far as changing my positions, only a fool would maintain his positions in the face of the events we have seen this year. I would suggest that your own positions have undergone a more radical shift than mine, but that does not make you a "spin doctor". That term is usually applied to pundits, reporters and "spokespersons" who adjust the previously understood meaning to match current facts, hardly what we are doing here. I am a little surprised at your spirited defense of Pfeiffer. I think he has been tarred and feathered sufficiently but he can hardly be let off the hook as the officer on the bridge when the ship ran aground. As far as the collective judgment of the market, it is no worse than CPQ in 1991 and not as bad as IBM's low point. I will take the upside from either of those events... or the more recent example of AAPL, which in my mind has nowhere near the potential of CPQ.