Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: freeus who wrote (4004)	1/7/2002 1:28:04 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12231

<Did you pay off all your debts?> Yep, all gone. The post 911 rally made me a little nervous given the overall context. Maybe another thump down won't happen, but there is enough opinion that we have only seen the beginning of the crunch that I didn't want to be leveraged going downhill. The 5 year S&P 500 graph seems to me to have a wave function to it that is leading to a further big dipper ride down - I'm not totally a subscriber to the random walk idea. I don't see supersonic bargains right now, just fairly-priced shares assuming the world stays on its axis and the markets continue their trends over the past 7 decades and technology continues its trend over the past couple of centuries. To have a load of margin, I like to have what seem to me to be bargains. So, even if the markets all go to zero and QUALCOMM to $1 a share, I'll still be able to pay for a bus to town to get a job and buy groceries for a while. It's a much nicer feeling than being on 70% margin with no visible means of support. We've had two years [nearly] since the market crunch arrived, which is quite a long time to tidy up who owns what, reduce margin debt, print a bunch of money and take a few deep breaths. If the crunch had come in a bang, we could have gone into a self-sustaining collapse, which I worried about since 1996 [discussions with jfred in SI]. But it didn't, so, as I guessed, the crunch would be slow motion with Uncle Al printing flat out and lowering interest rates to force people to do something with their money other than hold it. So far, so good. The glitch in my 3 year plans was Globalstar's failure to change their marketing ideas when they failed to sell minutes at $2 a minute with high monthy charges and expensive phones. Amazingly, Globalstar continues with no resolution of the mess. They are running out of money so the longest denouement I've seen is continuing but must be nearing the end. It's simply amazing to me that it continues to waste away with satellites rusting in space and dollars slipping away on the ground and market growth so far away from balancing the budget that it's not going to happen. Yet nothing is happening [in public view anyway]. The next constellation of satellites should be going up late this year but we can forget about that. What a huge failure of imagination and organisation. Maybe it's a world record of some sort. Rule number one on enthusiasm for life is to treat objects, money etc as conveniences only, not as intrinsic to one's value, not as status symbols. Walking is as much fun as driving. Plain water is as good to drink as Evian. Sure, it's great to have the comforts of life, but Larry Ellison is surely no happier with Katana than before he had it. But of course he really enjoys having it. It seems to me that the process of losing ground instead of gaining it is what gets me. Like building something only to have it fall down again! Who was that guy who had to push the rock forever up the hill, only to have it fall down again. We must learn to love pushing rocks uphill... Because sitting on it at the bottom of the hill is no good. Gee, I love Google. It really knows what I'm looking for. It's knowledge is amazing already. Here's Sysyphus....I'd never read what it was really about... stripe.colorado.edu So, start grinning and start pushing your rock up the hill. Mqurice PS: Note It's is a good apostrophe because It is a name.