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

To: Stock Farmer who wrote (53336)	5/23/2001 9:50:08 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 77400

John, you are absolutely correct that gloating over a few weeks gains is ludicrous if you are a long term investor, which I am. Of course, on the flip side, gloating about short plays that one made over the last year is also ludicrous if you are a long term investor. I've been a holder of Cisco for more than 4 years now, so I'd say I'm a long term investor. I still have shares that I have never flipped. The shares that I flipped from $20.5 to $16.5 were a small portion of my total Cisco holdings. But I just couldn't bear to pass up an opportunity that was as obvious to me as the sun during the day. But I did it with a small enough number of shares that it was a small risk to my long term holdings. Having said that, I still think you are caught up in irrational pessimism. You are letting yourself get too mired in your numbers. I agree that everyone should do their research and due diligence and crunch the numbers. But what I have demonstrated to you time and again is that whatever your end opinion is, you can justify it with rational numbers. It always boils down to assumptions, which you can't really argue over. It's like arguing with an Atheist. He doesn't believe in God and no matter what you tell him, you can't change his mind. Assumptions are like that. Your assumptions include that Cisco's PE will be lower than 20 five years from now. My assumption is that Cisco's PE will be higher than 40 in the same timeframe. You assume that Cisco's net margins will sink below 15%, I say that they are already putting in measures to bring their margins back in line with their 20% goals. You say that Cisco has a snowballs chance in hell of getting to $50 billion in revenue by 2005. I say the chances are quite good. All those assumptions change the numbers and our price forecasts. There's no point in arguing about it, since our assumptions are completely different. We can argue about the symptoms all we want, but they don't make a bit of difference if we don't eventually focus on the root cause. The root cause of my assumptions is ultimately that bandwidth demands will catch up with supply very shortly (within the next year) and growth will resume for companies like Cisco. It's as inevitable as death and taxes. You don't have to believe that, but I do, thus my assumptions and conclusions.