To: tejek who wrote (130434 ) 1/6/2001 5:29:57 PM From: Bert Herman Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1573919 Ted, Thanks for your long response. I feel a bit like coming from Mars wrt the stock market. Think I will wait and see a little longer before making a move. Being in cash can also be a very good investment. From all European telecoms, I think also Deutsch Telecom is the most interesting. They are one of the largest, and relatively to their income, paid the smallest price for the UMTS licenses. Also their debt structure is better than all the other ones. Because they are partly owned by the governement, they have been out of the wild take-over plays of the last years. Back then it seemed too conservative, but now they don't suffer from having paid too high prices and having to much debt.My major concern is that once the problems (most of them with renewing debt in the coming months) starts to be known by the public, the entire group will tank big time. Like always, the good with the bad ones. It surprises me a little you start to like AMZN. When I saw companies not bigger than the size of my own, with valuations in the hundreds of millions I promised myself never to buy one share in a dotcom. But maybe you are right, after the big shakeout the winners can become real companies with a real income. After a second thought, I think I will never buy them in the future. In our local newspaper last week there was a small article saying that in a public park in Seattle, someone had placed a very big metal sculpture, and now everybody was searching for the artist or group who did this. It seemed so funny. You now what , Ted, the big battle between Dutch and French speaking Belgians is more or less history. We have a federal state now, with everybody responsible for his own. And surprise, surprise, it's working quite well. I don't say there are no problems any more, but from an explosive situation in the seventies, we are now becoming good neighbours. I always think they should give a better look at our solution to solve these problems in areas like Northern Ireland or Jeruzalem. Greetings, Bert