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Non-Tech : Tyco International Limited (TYC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (3457)	6/30/2002 3:22:03 PM
From: Paul Senior	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3770

Yes, plenty of funds invested in WCOM. NADAQ shows 977 institutions. Some value funds in there too. Still, I only saw two value investors publicly suggesting WCOM as a buy as the stock dropped to 10 level- and neither had the rep of the guys suggesting TYC now. Certainly if somebody doesn't know who(whom?) to believe, then a good tactic might be avoidance. And it just may not be possible to know all the relevant facts about the TYC situation until it is too late. As you've said, why involve yourself when there are so many other opportunities around with other stocks that are not tainted? That seems like good advice. Certainly TYC is a difficult, complex situation. I chose the ship/deck chair metaphor purposely to bring the Titanic to readers' minds. For me, I've been on lots of these excursions - it's hard for me to recall a recent sinking ship that I've not been on. (XRX comes to mind. Although I have been on the recent capsized or sunk WCOM, ELAN, FLEX, AOL,GBT, SLI, LDP,others.) That's not deterred me much. I'm VERY diversified in my investments, and for now, that's enabled me to continue sailing. When several top-rated value investors come to the same conclusion about a stock (and come into it from their different perspectives) and buy it, my impression is that they are mostly right. (I have no empirical data backing up my assertion.) I am then generally willing to bet with them. My biggest problem in doing that is not that they are wrong, but that I don't have the patience or subsequent information to know when to sell. Paul Senior

To: Dale Baker who wrote (3457)	6/30/2002 9:24:45 PM
From: BMcV	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3770

>>I have no opinion in TYC because I don't know who to believe. But WCOM is a telling example, IMHO. << Yes, but you could make the same "argument" about every publicly-traded company, couldn't you? Every large company is heavily owned by institutions, every buyer of a stock thinks it will go up, fraud by nature is a surprising discovery. KO may be next. TYC has been besieged with allegations of accounting issues, though none have ever been proven. The accounting at WCOM was never questioned, until the admission of fraud. So perhaps a more compelling claim could be made for the inoculatory powers of public scrutiny.