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To: straight life who wrote (48167)	10/22/2001 12:26:16 PM
From: Uncle Frank	Respond to of 54805

>> mostly read one of the QCOM threads these days... QCOM is about a company and a market that's dynamic, which is always more satisfying to be a part of that something that feels moribund. finance.yahoo.com You mean you find dead money more uplifting than a dead discussion board? If you believef qcom is going to recover, you should be more optimistic about g&k's in general. Most of their problems are macro-economic driven, so it's reasonable to expect them to recover in a sector like fashion.. Regards, uf

To: straight life who wrote (48167)	10/22/2001 4:16:36 PM
From: EnricoPalazzo	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

Obviously Id had it right when he pointed out the perils of groupthink (right before buying a bunch of SEBL ;). Sorry for your losses, SL, those are severe. I think that I would be a bit harsher on this thread than any of tekboy's three options. To be clear, I bear absolutely no ill will towards any participants of this thread, but rather towards the thread itself, and what it has become. This thread did two very dangerous things. One, it canonized certain members. We all know the four or five participants who are Very Shrewd, Well Off, and offer Sound Advice. In toppling GM from his perch as arbitrator of all things Gorilla, we unwittingly installed some of our own in in his stead. Now look, every one of the thread leaders took pains to explain that they were not the final word on anything, and that everyone should do their own investigation. I don't believe that they were being disingenuous, and I genuinely like and respect all of them. This isn't about them, but about our reaction to them. As a culture, I believe that we threw these caveats aside with the same gusto that we exhibited in praising our favorite CEO's for being conservative (all the while dismissing their conservative stances as so much rhetorical flourish). And then, when our idols turn out to have feet of clay, we turn on them, just as we did on GM, when what we should really question is our tendency to idolize. Second, we have placed too high an importance on eloquence. I think I'm not alone in saying that particularly eloquent expostulations about such and such a company have increased my propensity to invest. Naturally, this places us firmly in the realm of frothy investing; hardly the place we wish to be. Unfortunately, there are just too many incentives to wax poetic here. We all participate out of friendship and altruism, yes, but also out of the desire to be heard and admired. If we're particularly clever, we can get SI to give us a "cool post", or have our message cross-posted to the fool, thus achieving some small fame. It is sincere hope that if things turn around before this thread dies or worse, we will be more cautious and humble. It is my expectation, however that we will begin cautious and humble, and grow fat, complacent and overconfident once we achieve some investing success. ardethan@eternalrecurrence.net

To: straight life who wrote (48167)	10/22/2001 6:30:57 PM
From: Bruce Brown	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Straight Life wrote: I bought RBAK @ 120, it was down from about 200 (I bought ITWO as well, somewhere around 50) mostly because of the numerous discussions on this thread (and Value Line had an excellent review as well) Bruce Brown in particular had a lot of good things to say about them, wrote quite inspiringly about the whole NGN area. Anyway it went to a buck and change. And I have a thousand shares. And Bruce Brown starts writing about technical analysis and Stan Weinstein and the like. Now, I'm casting no blame, Bruce (and by extension the whole thread) is free to evolve in any way he will, maybe I misunderstood him (and others) all along. Hard not to respond since you mentioned my name a few times in that post. To review: I mentioned the next generation networks edge 'game' that Redback participated in along with Cisco, Nortel, ONI Systems, Unisphere, etc... back in August of 2000 in a series spurred on by an investor who was interested in finding the best of the best company to invest in throughout the entire broadband area. The games were no secret at that time and I simply divided up some of the more well known niche segments into core, edge, data storage networking, fiber, optical and the semiconductors used in all of those segments for purposes of illustration. From each of those segments, the goal was to find a top candidate from each game and then narrow all of those down to one choice from all of the subdivisions which had the potential to be a possible investment for a person on the broadband board over at the Fool. His original post is here: boards.fool.com "I'm trying to find out who the top five players are in providing broadband communications services. I would like to begin researching them in order to invest in one. Does anybody have suggestions as to who these players are?" So I wrote the segmented posts concerning broadband in hopes it would help that poster find a path to research, discover and choose on his own how to look at a particular niche segment and uncover if there was or was not an investment possibility within from some of those players. I don't remember if that particular poster ever made a decision on a company within the broadband space or not. However, we never reached the point where a top 5 were chosen and then narrowed down to the top 'one'. What was it about Redback Networks that you found compelling enough to make your original purchase? What did you find compelling enough at Redback Networks to keep the stock all the way down as the CFO and CEO resigned, the delivery of the key ASICs continued to be delayed and the fundamentals fell apart? After those posts were made, we now know the arrival of the reality that the telecommunications industry was burdened with debt, there was overcapacity in the equipment makers and a turn in the economic business cycle was underway as the bear market continued to unfold for technology. Many of these things were already well under way by the time I discussed the edge network game, but the reality caught up to all of us a few months following those August 2000 posts. I was caught as well and eventually hit my breaking point back between December of 2000 and February of this year. Of course, i2 comes right out of the original manual from the chapter that discusses supply chain management software back when i2 was a small cap the first time around and their acquisition write offs were not more than their total market cap. The manufacturing sector which has been i2's bread and butter target for supply chain solutions over the years, just completed it's 14th consecutive monthly contraction. You list the following stocks in your profile as your favorites and I provide the current % from their highs: qcom is down 76% from its high gmst is down 86% from its high ntap is down 91% from its high cree is down 89% from its high jdsu is down 95% from its high sebl is down 86% from its high kopn is down 74% from its high sndk is down 93% from its high The two you mention above: itwo is down 96% from its high (down 91% from your purchase price) rbak is down 98% from its high (down 97% from your purchase price) My point is simply to say that we are talking about stocks that are down 74 - 98% from their bubble highs at this point in time. We could also run through the likes of Cisco (as it dropped from $82 to $11), Intel (as it dropped from $75 to $18 and change), Oracle (as it dropped from $46 to $10), Microsoft (as it dropped from $120 to $40) and Juniper/BEA Systems/Rambus/Brocade/EMC/Sun Microsystems/Ariba/CommerceOne/Ciena/Sonus/Sycamore/Echelon/Citrix/Veritas/Agile/VeriSign/Broadcom/Arm Holdings/Nokia/Dell, etc... to see that no man was an island in the past two years. Whether individual investors talk or write inspiringly about a company or companies within technology, one should be careful with those comments. Likewise, the same should be true in regards to comments on technical analysis, long term buy and hold investing, trading and right on down the line. Although I have spent nearly 11 to 12 months studying things related to price/volume action and technical analysis, that doesn't mean Mamis, Weinstein, Sperandeo, O'Neil, Hutson, Schwager, Bulkowski and Lefevre are going to help me any more than Moore. However, it was a study period that was long overdue for me. BB

To: straight life who wrote (48167)	10/24/2001 2:24:50 PM
From: Uncle Frank	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

>> Inspiring stories are out, dry as toast discussions are in. I've got an inspiring story about a long term investment <gg>. My 28 year old daughter just called to tell Aunt Nancy and me the result of her performance review. She got promoted (again), and received a 15% raise. In the last 5 years she's gone from a temp admin at a high powered high tech PR firm to an Account Manager, which is just one level below VP, and her compensation has gone up 4 fold. We hear a lot about layoffs these days, but Corporate America is still alive and kicking, and scrambling to secure a bright future. And they're still investing in their top performers. uf@longtermproudparent.com

To: straight life who wrote (48167)	10/30/2001 4:37:29 AM
From: Bruce Brown	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Straight Life, You might be interested in Redback's official announcement yesterday of their new SMS 800 aggregation product (software/hardware intensive product). biz.yahoo.com Things in place include: New Management Kevin DeNuccio, formerly of Cisco, is now at the helm as CEO. Dennis Wolf, of Redback, is at the CFO position. Both have been speaking to investors on the prospects for their company and the new generation IP product. You can view it all and read about it on the Redback.com home page. redback.com New Product SMS 800 is their long awaited delayed product which brings carrier class IP to the metro optical network. Management announced that they have 3 customers for the new product and 15 are currently in beta trials. Fundamentals Credit rating remains 'dicey' and the cash burn rate of $50 M per quarter is not a friendly one at all with $247 M in cash and $500 M in debt. In addition to all of that, we know that the carrier spending rate for equipment has been going in the wrong direction for quite some time and the game is intense for the players to capture market share. A recovery in carrier spending for certain products as well as acceptance of Redback's new SMS 800 will be key to improving fundamentals as Redback fights for market share in their respective games. So, investors are left trying to value the future business of the SMS 800 product line and what it might do for Redback. This article captures a few thoughts about Redback's product and hopes for that product: thestreet.com BB