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Pastimes : NNBM - SI Branch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Clappy who wrote (1295)	1/13/2001 11:27:13 AM
From: Dealer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 104155

Hi Clappy! This is interesting read on IT. A scooter?...........................Maybe the craze for the scooter at Christmas was only a test......????? abcnews.go.com dealie

To: Clappy who wrote (1295)	1/13/2001 8:54:36 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 104155

Hi Clap, Just got back from Maui and realized that I'd failed to post the following before I left. (Maybe it was just too painful.<ng>) So with a belated Happy New year (when this was composed), here 'tis. ----------------------------------------------------------- I've been thinking about LHSP...er make that LHSPQ. Every year I try to review what went right and wrong. As you know, your supposed to learn more from your mistakes. Not sure I agree with that, but I definitely believe in "post mortems" on positions that have to be "written off". I made a misassessment of LHSP ab initio, but like most "sad tales" - "it just kept getting worse". While investigating Speech Recognition some three years ago, I first encountered LHSP. Their position, at the time, I would best describe as being a "player". They were a real company with real products for sale. There was always a question as to just how much was being sold, because Belgian accounting standards were "lax". Having products that received respectable independent reviews and having "long term" (measured in years) on going product oriented relationships with the several high tech titans creates a belief that not only is there a real company here, but a "player". Three years ago, I decided it was premature to "put some money" into speech recognition. But I kept a "back burner" open file and waited. There was a change in 2K. Because of both software and hardware (P4 and RMBS) developments, speech recognition while not yet ripe had the right "weather conditions" to start "softening". On the corporate front there were significant developments. Just as speech recognition acquired the technological underpinnings necessary to "take off", significant mergers were occurring. Early on the chief beneficiary of the consolidation seemed to be LHSP. While the Dictaphone merger was interesting and certainly lent more credence (to this company I had assessed as a player three years (a long time in techland) earlier); the Kurzweil merger tipped the scales for me. Kurzweil was a company I had waited to IPO (I love to use IPO as a verb), and now it was being absorbed by a company that looked like it (LHSP) was on the verge of becoming a behemoth of speech (recognition, automatic translation, etc). They still had what I considered to be "murky financials", but as witnessed by the mergers LHSP not only was a player but they had been a player for some time that was apparently only getting stronger. Sure I couldn't "get at" their financials, but surely with the financial probing associated with all of these mergers, if anything "funny" was going on, it would surface. Surely "good solid" American companies (with American accounting) will satisfy themselves (with a level of DD, I cannot hope to emulate) that LHSP is legitimate. <Right!> The worst case scenario - that they were a fraudulent sham - was still there, but I erroneously attached a trivially small probability to this case. It would require just too many people being fooled for too long. After the Kurzweil merger, when on a dip a good "buying opportunity" presented itself I took a small "starting position". The position was small not because I was worried about LHSP, but because I saw no reason to hurry. Even as late as when it first fell into single digits I added (slightly) to the position on the theory that even the Dragon (Kurzweil) assets were worth a significant amount. Even though the amount of money is not that large, I'm the type that finds all losses painful. So the "post mortems". Clearly for me a component of my error was keying too strongly on the duration of LHSP's "player" position in the tech hierarchy. All shams are not the quick ephemeral type. If there is a way to hid in the shadows, some creep will find a way to exploit the "situation". Stocks in general and foreign stocks in particular are a "caveat emptor" game. Nothing new. It's just interesting to be so rudely reminded. ----------------------------------------------------------- Well that's what I was going to post earlier this month. Since then I see LHSP got their Concordaat (assume that's the Flemish spelling) and that Phillips may be interested. Meanwhile I'm still interested VR (voice recognition) and am "lookin' into" SPWX, NUAN etc. Thoughts? "Live 'n' learn." lurqer