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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: hdrjr who wrote (64709)	4/16/2000 8:43:00 AM
From: jim_p	Respond to of 95453

I remember it all to well. It made the front pages of the business section when a lot of the employee became instant millionaires over night, and it made the front pages when they all got screwed with large amounts of taxable income and no cash to pay for the taxes. Many of the employees had to file for bankruptcy. In a lot of ways, what happened in the oil patch in the 80's is very similar to what just took place in the tech sector. This market can turn on a dime in either direction. That is probably more true today than back then given the relatively small size of our sector, and the changes in the way people invest in the market. I hate to admit it, but I was stupid enough to buy a $4,000,000 Continental Emsco D-2 land drilling rig as a personal tax shelter and lease it to a public drilling company. The lease payments were to pay for the rig in seven years, and then I would own a rig that was going up in value by 10-20% per year. Needless to say, the company stopped making payments on the rig about a year later and it became one hell of a tax shelter. That was the last time I every borrowed money (except for margin debt). I try to forget those days, but I was there. Jim