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Biotech / Medical : Biotech Valuation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doc Bones who wrote (2804)	2/4/2001 8:40:46 PM
From: Biomaven	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 52153

Thanks, Doc. I'll try to take a look at some of the links - they sound interesting. The first "beating roulette" story was written up as a great book, The Eudaemonic Pie by Thomas Bass. I believe it is now out of print, but try to get hold of it if you can. It describes the often funny attempts of a bunch of hippy-types to beat roulette using one of the first microprocessors. The processor was programmed in machine language (because that's all that ther was at the time) and at one point was hidden in a shoe. One of the amusing aspects was they didn't believe in traditional capitalist structures, but were forced into coming up with something analogous to a company (their "pie"), complete with analogs of "investors," "founders" and "employees." Bass more recently wrote a book "The Predictors" about the attempts of a bunch of quants (including Farmer) to beat the market. (It's a longer version of an original article in the New Yorker magazine.) Worth reading, but nowhere near as much fun as his first book. One frustrating aspect of the second book was that it was left fairly unclear to what extent they finally succeeded. I've seen claims that a substantial portion of the daily stock volume (I vaguely recall something like 10%) was at one point trading by the quants' computer programs. My study of the biotechs (in particular the interrelationships among the biotechs, the pharmas the Dow and NASD) leads me to believe that there is a lot of automated trading happening in biotechs as well. Peter P.S. I now see that a first edition of The Eudaemonic Pie in poor condition is offered for $86 on Amazon, so I suppose it must have achieved cult status.