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To: Mama Bear who wrote (2630)	11/2/2000 10:05:58 AM
From: Tom Kearney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57684

Mama - yes the 19th century crack was a slight exaggeration, for effect, of what you said, and I'll explain why I feel it was warrented. And the FUD post was not part of our conversation; it was just a new post about something else attached to your name. But, let me reiterate the whole discussion: the quote which started this was Robert's and it said this: "but in a bear market, after a bubble like no other, the bottom line is correcting toward historic norms" Message 14683396 You and Robert both responded to Lizzie's answer to this post. Since each post must be attached to one previous post, I guess I chose yours, jumping in to be part of the general conversation, not responding only to you. This is how these boards work, no? My remark meant there are no historic norms for high tech companies today because they are far more profitable than any that ever existed, and I think my statement was clear. I thought that was relevant to the thread of the conversation. Then you clipped part of my statement and said 'you've got to be kidding' without saying why, and then 'IMO that quote is a joke', without any details, and then said of the statement it was '... hogwash'. The specific statement was: "GM, Ford, GE, etc, never had profit margins like this, and never had to increase manufacturing capacity 5 to 10 TIMES in a few years, just to try and keep up with demand the way JDSU, SDLI, GLW must." Now there are really two different statements there 1) GM, Ford, GE, etc, never had profit margins like this 2) GM, Ford, GE, etc, never had to increase manufacturing capacity 5 to 10 TIMES in a few years, just to try and keep up with demand the way JDSU, SDLI, GLW must Now you still haven't said which of these statements were hogwash or why; you gave no details at all. That was the source of my exaggeration. Mama, my whole investing idea is this: Wall Street sometimes likes high tech, but they still revert to 19th century thinking, historic PEs, book value, etc. from time to time. They periodically trash all tech because they forget that there has never been companies that can earn money the way today's high tech cos do. This has made high tech investing wildly profitable - just wait till WS dumps tech and jump in. This 19th century mind set pops up in lots of ways. The Fortune 500 list has INTC at 39(!!!) MSFT at 84 (!!!!) and CSCO 146 (!!!!!!!!!!!!). Arguably, these are the 3 greatest companies in the world, and one of Wall Street's standard historic measures of great companies practically ignores them. Why? Because they measure them the wrong way. I'm a very slow typist. The market is soaring - I'm going to watch CNBC. I've said it all before. Be a bear, I don't care. Good luck. Really. But, I think you are trying to push a rope. Regards, Tom