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

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (21559)	3/28/2000 3:09:00 AM
From: tinkershaw	Respond to of 54805

I'm curious. Considering the strength of Siebel in the context of the manual and that the company's operations were generating huge cash flow, would you make the same decision now about another company with similarly strong characteristics? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND!!! Ummm, no, I would have bought. Siebels lock on the market is very strong in retrospect. Actually when I began buying my portfolio in June (until then I was too busy running my law practice to personally invest) I had no idea about GG investing and only a vague idea about cash flow. I had very good instincts, and did devise many of the Gorilla criteria for my purchases prior to knowing what a Gorilla was. But I did lack some sophistication. Also, their were an awful lot of darn fine companies to choose from in 1999. Particularly in the tech crisis of the summer. I owned the following from July onward NTAP, GMST, Q (except Q which I didn't get for another month or so), BRCM, DCLK. With this portfolio you can see why such little details as excessive receivables (a problem if I remember correctly I compared to Citrix and ITWO and did not exist with those companies) would make or break a stock as I had no free cash. I also ignored ITWO which had so much deferred revenue after its Q3 CC that even the folks on CNBC could not have missed it and I followed Citrix longingly from $33 on upwards. I guess I have an anti-software bias (irrationally) and it shows in my portfolio. As I subsequently added RMBS LEAPS (my first ever use of options), CREE and RBAK on Jan 2. I do now own WIND and ELON however and I can't say WIND's or ELON's financials are Citrix pretty. But I do prefer enabling software vs. application software. May explain my anti-software bias (but not why I never held onto CTXS, and I still love the company). Anyway, so the answer is no. Siebel's lock on the market and its Tornadic growth were something to behold. If it did not come down to selling off a core holding I would not let their receivables get in my way with everything else they had in play. Tinker