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Technology Stocks : InfoSpace (INSP): Where GNET went! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (25627)	3/15/2001 12:57:54 AM
From: Roger Sherman	Respond to of 28311

KLP, that was a GREAT re-post (of a post)! And, IHMO, it wasn't OT at all! Message 15498120 Taking just two excerpts from that post: EXCERPT ONE Advisor 1: "Intellectual capital" is one gimmick. It's supposed to be tied to all those smart people a company has working for it - the same ones who are now leaving. So it's backfiring. As soon as these employees start to realize their options aren't worth the paper they're printed on, they walk. Or they get canned because now, suddenly, they're not "capital" any more - they're just "overhead." Poof! Intellectual capital is history. EXCERPT TWO: Advisor 1: The second accounting gimmick that's backfiring is trumped-up sales - sales that weren't really sales to begin with, that are now going up in smoke. Barter was the primary device. For example, Internet companies bartered ad space on their sites for ad space on other sites. Granted, this was a slick strategy to gain exposure on the Web. They didn't have to pony up millions of dollars for ads - all they had to do was offer space on their own website. But now get this: Even though it was strictly barter, many companies still booked it as "revenue." So, to the investor, it looked like they were racking up big bucks for all that ad space they "sold." ********************************* I'm finally coming around to the opinion that we innocent stock investors have been subjected to a MONSTEROUS STOCK MARKET SCAM in the past two or three years by many DOT.COM companies...no matter how careful and thorough "investors" they did their DD research on any particular company. Heck, in general the U.S. economy is still in pretty good shape, unemployment rates are still near record lows, and (lets face it) interest rates have been extremely low historically during this entire period (remember the days of 21% interest rates). And yet, many DOT.COM "insiders" walked away with millions (if not billions) of the "investors" money, while their great world-changing "Next-Big-Thing" companies dropped up to 98% (like INSP) in value*...IN A SINGLE DMN YEAR. Remember the good-old-days. All you needed to do was buy some MSFT once a year...and a year later it had most often doubled in value. And when the Chairman/CEO of a company "hypes" the investors and ANALysts with comments like, "We will be the world's first trillion dollar company," all the while selling shares in his own company for about $400 million in personal "profits", while the value of his company's stock value drops from $138.5/share to a little over $3/share. It does make one wonder just what the h*ll has been going on! IMO, investors have been completely screwed the past few years by master con-artists and stock scamsters, while many "insiders" walked away with fortunes of ill-gotten gains. But then again, I could be completely wrong...as I'm having a "rare" bad day today. Perhaps I'll feel much better tomorrow, and be back to my normal cheerful self...although I somehow doubt it. I just hope somebody REALLY "investigates" the entire "DotBomb" fiasco. Many innocent "little" people were really screwed. Roger