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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (43403)	11/13/2000 1:11:22 PM
From: bambs	Respond to of 77397

Hey guess what...I've been banned from posting on the cisco happy thread.... Those jokers think we have a buying opp here...what else is new. Bambs

To: RetiredNow who wrote (43403)	11/13/2000 1:49:16 PM
From: chic_hearne	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 77397

However, we were talking about statistics. Statistics tell us that everything regresses to the mean. They also tell us that probabilistically speaking, it is highly unlikely that a data point outside 2 standard deviations from the mean will occur. You can't really argue with that. It is a mathematical fact. Can a deviation occur? Absolutely. We saw it to the upside and we may see it to the downside. Of course, with any statistical model you must assume all things are equal. First of all, the Naz should've never got this high so the mean is way above where it should be. Second, the fundamentals are deteriorating and things were priced to perfection. IMO, you are making an argument like this: Mark McGwire hits a homerun 1/10 of the time he bats, or 10%. In a homerun derby of 100 swings, it's logical to assume he will get 10 homeruns. But today there's a 50 mile per hour wind coming to homeplate from the outfield. Under these condition maybe he gets lucky and hits one even though this goes against the statistics, same with the Naz. For a person with a 10 year horizon, this looks like the mother of all buying opportunities. It's pretty early in the game to be doing that.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (43403)	11/13/2000 2:05:28 PM
From: Monty Lenard	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 77397

You can't really argue with that. I did not see anyone calling that when the naz went to 5.5? The very person spouting this called LU a buy at 53 ish and said it would also be a bargain at 90 or some such nonsense. The market will do what it will do but it won't look at 2.5 when it does it. I just don't know how you can argue one side with out paying attention to the other side of your formula. Did you or he call a top when it went to 5.5 in March? I don't think so so why would anyone put any faith in it the other way? Monty

To: RetiredNow who wrote (43403)	11/15/2000 10:03:31 PM
From: Helios	Respond to of 77397

"Statistics tell us that everything regresses to the mean" Hey Monty, in the FWIW dept. statistics tell us no such thing. If you take a fair coin and start flipping it and counting the difference in heads and tails, you will move away from zero at a rate of sqrt(N) where N is the number of coin flips. So if you flip the coin a million times you can expect to have around 1000 more heads or more tails. Regression toward the mean has to to with the average coin flip over time. That would be the difference in heads and tails divided by the number of flips i.e. sqrt(N)/N = 1/sqrt(N).