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To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (137353)	1/21/2002 5:34:28 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (7) \| Respond to of 164684

Please read this post very carefully. The issue I have raised is not whether or not some investors have more risk tolerance -- that is absolutely not the issue and focusing on that belief makes you miss the real issue. The real issue is whether or not the investment system has any integrity. Let me tell you why I think it does not and explain the role of the 'Bill's' of this world. A handful of people saw in the internet a golden opportunity to divorce the concept of "investment" from the concept of "reality". Why should there be any need to have anything of value underlying a stock? Why shouldn't stocks just be fictitious companies, conjured out of thin air and given names and then traded back and forth to astronomical prices? Think of it as a game where investors gamble their money and win or lose, but the things they bet on have no meaning or value in and of themselves -- no more meaning than the numbers on a roulette wheel. In this world the IPO rules and valuation no longer has any meaning. The press release rules price. The "story" rules the price. Valuations mean nothing. Words mean nothing and no words can be too extreme -- "unstoppable tornado", "core monster", "unlimited potential", "screaming buy", "steal of the century" -- all are equally meaningless words to describe nothing about the companies or their real prospects as companies because that just does not matter in the brave new world of the "new economy" investor. These are not "investments" in any sense of the word. Enron is sign of the times -- a company constructed with smoke and mirrors that was useful in bilking billions of dollars from investors and employees. You blame accountants? You are wrong. People wanted to gamble and Anderson just provided the grease for the roulette wheel. The brokers helped. The 'analysts' helped. The TV commentators helped. Everybody got on board. You say that Bill does not throw darts -- of course not. He plays cards and thinks he can beat the odds -- and the odds are horrendously bad. Bill is a sucker who thinks he can beat the house. Bill is not some intellectual leader. He is not a visionary. He is not a stock picker. He is not even a good card player. Bill bought the BS of the 'new economy casino' approach to the market. He bought it hook line and sinker. At first he made money doing it. He became more bold. He repeated the trashy BS he read on line and heard at meetings and fed it to this thread like it was some kind of marvelous new insight. When stocks like AMZN went to absurd valuations he chided you because you did not "get it". What you did not get is that this is not investing at all. It has nothing whatsoever to do with investing -- that is the whole point. When the players agree that reality no longer matters there can be no fraud -- the whole system is a fraud. Bill is a meaningless loser. His losses have not ruined him yet and perhaps never will. I don't care. What I care about is what Bill stands for. Gambling in itself does not convey how corrupt this is. Gambling is simply high risk. This is not just high risk. It is a fraudulent use of the concept of investing. It uses fraudulent words like "core monster" and "unlmited potential" to sever the relation between the stock symbol which is traded on the exchange and any reality of underlying value or assets. That is why the concept of valuation is treated with contempt by 'new economy' investors. Valuation is an old economy concept, connected to investing and reality. Gilder gets it. Bill gets it. But guys like you don't get it and then defend these guys because you think they are just investors with a higher tolerance for risk. They are the spokes-people for a brave new world where there can be no fraud because there is no reality. Stocks with no earnings work best for these people because there is less risk of applying any investment discipline. Same goes for IPOs. We did not have a bubble because of interest rates. And the bubble did not break because of interest rates. We had a bubble because greed temporarily blinded people to the fraudulent nature of so-called 'new economy investing'. The bubble burst when the house of cards collapsed -- as was inevitable. I won't bore you with the damage done by this. If you do not know anybody who screwed themselves royally and lost their life savings while racking up six figure credit card debt while trying to make margin calls well good for you. But millions of suckers eagerly screwed themselves. All we can do is hope most of them have wised up with whatever they have left. A few of them can hardly wait for the casino feeling to catch on again -- exchanging hopeful and encouraging words about how the good old days are coming back again. Whether or not you blame the gambling addicts is up to you. Just don't defend this fraud by call it a 'high tolerance for risk' one minute and then wonder what happened to the honesty and integrity of the financial system the next minute.