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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (31332)	4/30/2000 8:52:00 AM
From: tracor	Respond to of 50167

Ike, Congratulations to you and three years of IDEAS. Very few see into these markets the way you do. This most recent post does a good job of illustrating the confusion even the "big boys" are suffering with. But you......you have laid out your calls publicly here on IDEAS for 3 years for all to see and all I have seen is one amazingly accurate market read after another. Thank you for everything, Robert

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (31332)	4/30/2000 9:22:00 PM
From: debby	Respond to of 50167

What companies do you think will be the next gorilla stocks? How does one begin to learn as much as you. Where's a good place to start. After reading some of the threads on SI for the past few months I realize how little I know. I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to pick up bits of wisdom from select SI regulars.

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (31332)	4/30/2000 10:25:00 PM
From: the options strategist	Respond to of 50167

IQ, CONGRATULATIONS on your three MOST successful years as founder and host of IDEA... I have thanked you and tried to summarize what I have learned from you in the past and again, THANK YOU so much for all your sharing of your time, energy and wisdom of the markets. (I certainly wish I could have made your celebration :) jj

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (31332)	5/1/2000 12:52:00 PM
From: TWICK	Respond to of 50167

IQ, merci beaucoup.

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (31332)	5/1/2000 12:54:00 PM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

SEBL is the one I would like as a good share to look at. Also I was told about check point software that deserves a look too, BMCS is looking quite promising so is LU and ALA. In my index or group trade MER's IIH may be a good trade with a tight stop loss, PALm can be bought out and GMST will move up quicj once it takes out 52.. KEYN was badly mauled since 27$ low it does look nice to watch..

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (31332)	5/1/2000 1:09:00 PM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Inflation.. a point of view.. that highlights the reason for which numbers were strong although misses that with fuel cost which have not yet reflected in the numbers even in today NAPM, the rising health cost and shift to private care may be also one time item that may have led to distorted ECI..I am looking at markets from a distant place and a different set, will reply to lot of interesting issues raised by some of the posters, thanks to everyone for congratulating the thread for completing 3 years. In these markets even surviving a year with head up could be good, nice to look back and see how we went through various cycles and our interpretation of under currents, with hind sight lot of what we said in 97 still is current and very much in.. <<What had everyone spooked last week even as GDP fell was the GDP deflator (at 2.6% annually versus 1.9% versus the last months of 1999) and the rise in wages (4.3% over the previous 12 months). The rise in the GDP deflator was once again fueled (no pun intended) by higher energy costs. As discussed before, the higher fuel costs brought about by OPEC's actions are not inflation according to any economic theory we know of, but everyone is treating it as such. Wages were higher than expected, and the Fed thinks that higher wages will result in more money chasing fewer goods and result in inflation. We need to understand that higher wages is not inflation either. Again, the Fed thinks if wages rise too much, an imbalance will occur between demand and supply. That can happen if supply is constrained and cannot meet demand. You then have the monetary problem of too many dollars competing for too few goods. A tanking stock market could help that as the investment money in the form of high stock prices that companies use to retool to meet demand diminishes, making it more difficult to meet the demand. In a free market, supply will meet demand. When the government steps in, (and that can take many forms) and through its action constrains supply, that is usually when we have inflation or recession. One of the government's recent tricks is to use litigation or the threat of litigation. No one wants to have to go through what Microsoft is going through, so companies think twice about making certain investments, merging with another company, or taking other actions that may invite a closer look from big brother. That has a slowing effect on investment that would be made to meet perceived demand. The market is very efficient in meeting demand when left to its own devices that has been part of this great boom as deregulation, tax cuts and a hands off Fed let industry free to meet demand quickly. We feel that by raising rates the Fed is going to hurt one of the cornerstones that made the boom successful: investment that led to the great productivity allowing greater growth. If companies cannot get investment capital at the cheap rates they have in the past, or if a tanking stock market due to rate hikes dries up investment funds, are companies going to be as inclined to sink money into the continued research and development and keep that technology curve on its steep ascent? Even now, even as these supposedly 'inflationary' numbers came out this week, let's realize that they are not in and of themselves inflation. As Fed governor Kelley said just last week, "either inflation has begun or will soon begin." This guy is a hawk, and he cannot even say that inflation is here for sure. The point is that prices have been low for such a long time and with so low upward pressure that seeing some acceleration in other areas has everyone concerned. We don't like it either, but we have a different view about where we are in the cycle, what is driving the gains we have enjoyed, and what the future holds. That makes us less concerned that inflation is going to spiral out of control. We are more concerned with keeping the forces that got us this far going and preparing for that point when the baby boomers are not providing that huge consumption engine to drive the economy. That is why we think rate hikes are the wrong approach at this point. As the Fed controls the shots, however, we have to live with its collective wisdom.

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (31332)	5/8/2000 9:55:00 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

<<On Wall Street, men age like dogs.>> I wrote on 30th of april...<<This is new economy with its lightening style of gorging the sharpest of investors with severest of cuts. >> now the story.. Soros, Buffett and Robertson and Aging: Michael Lewis (Correct) 5/8/0 7:31 (New York) Soros, Buffett and Robertson and Aging: Michael Lewis (Correct) (Corrects spelling of new in 13th paragraph of column published Thursday.) (Commentary. Michael Lewis, the author of ``Liar's Poker'' and ``The New New Thing,'' is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.) New York, May 4 (Bloomberg) -- You could make a slim book from the collected public statements over the past few weeks by George Soros, Warren Buffett, and Julian Robertson. Anyone who sits down and reads these will notice a common theme. Or, rather, a pair of related themes. The first and most obvious of these is the role played by the stocks of new technology companies in the demise of the three greatest investors of the modern Wall Street era. Soros, the world's biggest hedge fund manager, saw his Quantum fund plunge 25 percent from March 24 through April because it bet on tech stocks when it shouldn't have. Shares of Buffett's holding company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., have declined 27 percent in the past year, and Robertson's Tiger funds fell 13 percent this year through February after dropping 19 percent last year, all because they didn't bet on tech stocks when they should have. Maybe more to the point, none of the investors fully accepts that he, and not the market, has made some mistake. Buffett argues that the market is mad. Soros says that the market has become too risky. (Soros!) Robertson might as well have been speaking for all three men when he writes, in his farewell letter to his shareholders, that ``there is no point in subjecting investors to risk in a market which I frankly do not understand.'' Which brings us to a second and related theme in the thoughts of three of the world's most famous investors: how old they sound! Re-read their public statements and you hear a familiar voice. It is the voice of an old man who disapproves, or fails to understand, what kids these days are getting up to. The Age Factor Of course, the world's greatest investors are old men. Soros and Buffett are both 69; Robertson is 67. Even the two younger men to whom Soros had delegated the responsibility for investment decisions -- Nicholas Roditi and Stanley Druckenmiller -- are no spring chickens. Roditi is 54 and Druckenmiller is 46. Is there, perhaps, a connection to be made here? Could the investment problems of Soros, Buffett and Robertson be that they are old men? It wouldn't be surprising if it were. Even in normal times there is probably a slight tendency for investors to hang around longer than they should. The investment business is a past-haunted enterprise. People with money tend to entrust it to investors with track records; investors with long track records tend to be people who have been around for awhile, for no better reason than that they have been around for awhile. This general tendency for the market to indulge investors who are perhaps slightly past their prime is right now more glaring than ever. Since late 1995, when Netscape Communications Corp. signaled the start of the Internet revolution, a lot of shockingly young people have seized economic power. In the process, a glaring generation gap has opened up, between the investment legends of yore and the entrepreneurs currently re-making the U.S. economy. Value of Experience Druckenmiller -- the only legend who even made a stab at playing the new game -- has been seeking to evaluate and capitalize on the activity of people 20 years younger than himself. There's no point in pretending that age does not matter on Wall Street. Old people are different than young people in many ways. One is the value they attach to experience. It's hard to say why old people place so much more value on experience than young people do. Maybe experience is as valuable as they say it is. Or maybe experience is merely the one commodity in whose market old people enjoy a monopoly. In any case, a person who has a great deal of experience, especially one who is vain about his experience, longs to say ``I've seen this before, or some version of this, and therefore I know how it will end.'' Faced with something genuinely new he is less likely to say, ``I've never seen anything like this before. I need to adapt.'' The Aging Process No doubt there are many old people who defy the physiology of aging, and who preserve a child-like gift for learning new skills, thinking new thoughts and seeking new experiences. No doubt there are many older people who resist the most crippling psychological trait of the aged: self-importance. But I doubt you'll find such people working on Wall Street. On Wall Street, men age like dogs. In any case, the counter-intuitive truth of the past few years is that people with no experience have had an edge in the investment business. It's no accident that the best thing you could have done with money since late 1994 is to have handed it over to any 28-year-old who happened to work in venture capital. True, the 28-year-old had no respect for the rules of finance -- what goes up must come down, if it looks too good to be true it probably is, etc., etc. That ignorance was the source of his edge. The trick for him will be the trick every investor faces, once he has made his name: He must avoid drawing the wrong lessons from his experience.