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

To: Mathemagician who wrote (23936)	4/30/2000 5:37:00 PM
From: Snowshoe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

>>While many companies can do it in-house, it is simply too expensive and time-consuming. An analogy can be drawn with a dog house. Anybody can build a dog house, but everybody seems to buy them.<< Building dog houses is a serf game.

To: Mathemagician who wrote (23936)	4/30/2000 9:46:00 PM
From: Pat W.	Respond to of 54805

I just sent mathemagician a PM. On reconsideration, i decided to post here. I am one of the ones who bought INTF, and i am still holding, needless to say for a big loss so far. I based it on the report, and i blame no one except myself. Nobody forced me to submit the order. If i did not look into the company as closely as i should have, i have only my laziness to blame. I realize that in today's society every ill can be blamed on someone else, but i refuse to blame mathemagician. If anything, until i see proof of willful deceit, i give him my thanks for the work that went into the report. pat w. sorry for the thread bloat, but i needed to vent on this.

To: Mathemagician who wrote (23936)	4/30/2000 10:05:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Mathemegician, You might have noticed that I wrote a post awhile back suggesting that we not assume the drop in INTF's stock is the result of an overly ambitious report on your part, and especially that it is not the result of pumping and dumping until proven otherwise. I suggested that a post mortem of sorts be done so everyone understands what is and isn't at the core of the fundamentals that didn't meet expectations and what the long-term implications might be not just for the company but for the way we look at companies and stocks here in the folder. It's in that light that I offer some responses to your post. Those numbers were supplied in early March directly by Bob Nero, CEO of Interface. The fact that they missed their own projections and failed to provide additional guidance to that effect is not any fault of ours. Of course, Bob also told us directly that he would split the stock between 45 and 50 and then did not. As analysts with access to management that most individual investors do not have, I'd like to see a little bit different take on that. Part of your job is to assess management's credibility and ability to achieve projections. It's certainly not an easy task and sometimes might be entirely impossible. But when estimates are missed and promises not kept, I'd prefer to see comments other than, "It's not our fault." I'd prefer to see comments along the line of, "It was a real disappointment. The recent series of events leaves us no less optimistic about the long-term prospects for the company but does cause us to be more cautious about the short-term expectations in the future." It's a rare opportunity that I'm given the chance to communicate directly with an analyst made even rarer by being able to do it on a public forum, and I appreciate your open-mindedness to considering my suggestions. I seem to recall that the Gorilla Game is a long-term investment strategy. I'm sure you can appreciate that I'm disturbed that you would mention the notion of Gorilla Gaming about a company that, according to your own report, states there is no proprietary architecture. Your comment doesn't remove responsibility for people who failed to do their own due diligence, especially in light of a report that even I highly complimented and still stand by that compliment. However, if INTF proves to be the best stock over the next ten years, it won't be because of anything having to do with Gorilla Gaming. The strength of your report relative to this folder was that it showed that INTF by your standards is not engaging in a gorilla game. That you mention the stock now in that context, frankly, blows my mind. Please tell me what I'm missing. --Mike Buckley

To: Mathemagician who wrote (23936)	4/30/2000 10:16:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Respond to of 54805

I'd like to mention a lesson I learned from my experience a couple years ago investing in Zitel. This is a company that, depending on who you believed, had a solution to the Y2k problem that was badly needed by corporations. There was never a hint of a suggestion that their solution didn't work. But there was tremendous disagreement among people I respected tremendously as to whether corporations needed Zitel's solution. In the end, the lesson I learned from that experience is that when I see diometrically opposed opinion by people I respect about the need of a technology product, I hope to never invest in the company selling that product. That's because I, a carpetologist, have no way of coming to an informed opinion about who is right and who is wrong about such a fundamental issue that is at the very core of a company's future. Relative to Gorilla Gaming, it's at the core of expectations about the product adoption. That brings me to the following point mathemagician made: "Most assume Legacy-to-internet transformation is easy to do and dismiss the value of a canned solution because they do not understand it." If you are an investor looking at INTF's potential and are seeing divergent opinion about the value of INTF's product, and if you like me don't understand the technology, don't invest in the company. You should never, ever invest in a product you don't understand if you are wondering if it will go into the tornado or if you are wondering if it has mass-market potential, especially a product such as INTF's which apparently has no proprietary architecture. --Mike Buckley

To: Mathemagician who wrote (23936)	5/2/2000 12:02:00 AM
From: John Hemphill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

I bought heavily (for me) into INTF between 7 and 14 on the way up. I reveled in the exuberance of an "8-bagger" and then wanted to fall on my sword when the bottom dropped out. I made my own decisions--Dave Zimmer and Mathemagician didn't hold me down on the ground and make me buy the stock. I have greatly appreciated the quality of analysis that has gone into INTF, both by these two and others. Someone has, in my opinion, tried to hold INTF down since the plunge, but I have no reason to believe it was anyone posting on SI and extolling the merits of INTF. We will come back, in time, and if we want the "big bucks" then we have to be willing to take risks in volatile stocks and accept the fact that they have big swings. I'm hanging on tight, and hope all of the rest of you do too--just think what is going to happen in late July and late October when the next two quarters are posted and the revenues start shooting up. I'm not about to get out now, because I couldn't stand to wait for the fun! John H.