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Technology Stocks : TSEM --Tower Semiconductor Ltd. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Xenogenetic who wrote (26)	4/6/2000 1:06:00 AM
From: ahhaha	Respond to of 60

The question is whether anyone is justified in attempting to realize a gain based on unjustified expectations or perceptions. The investment community stayed away from ATHM while it was gradually advancing due to the lack of constructive perception. It advanced anyway, driven by the uninformed public. After the peak on the down side the institutional analysts started recommending it. They persisted in doing that throughout a continued and grinding down side. The analysts haven't convinced either the public or the institutions because the issue is not the perception, the issue is the reality of the company's failure to produce. The reality is that the company is a disaster and that is the same as the current perception. I didn't say that perception and reality couldn't diverge, but they always eventually converge. That has been proven in March. I did say that perception alone doesn't justify taking a position. What is the perception in TSEM? My perception is it's terrific. I depend on investors not being so well-informed. When the company starts delivering results, voila, the public and institutions will run it up. Trying to do so without something concrete has failed. The perception wasn't strong enough or the reality hadn't made the perception strong enough. Not many benefited from ATHM's move. The jury is still out on whether that move was a wrong perception. When the company decides to make it happen, I believe the perception will be shown to be completely valid. In any event the critical expectation is the unknown one which is set by the random actions of the public at the margin. In that action lies inscrutably all knowledge about the company. I will answer the institutional question. TSEM has little institutional following and no sponsorship. There isn't even much institutional speculation going on in it. Every trade data tells the story. Tha paucity of blocks reveals the company is not actively traded. Most of the action is public speculation and foreign investment. Thus TSEM made a dynamic move on public gambling. Like many other unsponsored techs TSEM doesn't have the strong hands underneath that come with institutional sponsorship. The only consequence is high volatility. Any person bullish on this company must realize that just like ATHM one must divide the share price by 10 and handle it accordingly. TSEM therefore is effectively a $2 stock. I wish you luck on the popularity contest theory of investment. There's a lot of people out there who believe in it. There's a lot of people who follow Cramer and Buffit, Lynch, Harmon, and BANMAN. The problem is that they are part of the Wall Street game which is a subset of the information stream game. Those games have an expected return just a little better than trading but worse than the return on the SP500. You have to be more creative than that. Getting on board the guaranteed riskless train never makes it to the destination unless you buy and hold and ignore which is equivalent to choosing by dart.