To: qveauriche who wrote (123648 ) 8/30/2002 10:10:52 AM From: Wyätt Gwyön Read Replies (5) | Respond to of 152472 since around August 15 the "smart money" had been pouring into QCOM, these kind of fables pop up a lot, don't they? doesn't everybody remember LG coming on this thread and saying what a great buy QCOM was in the 40s--right before it plunged to $24? smart money is a joke. they just mean institutional money. but institutions underperform the market. is that smart? how do they know the money is smart? are there little tags on the smart money? in fact, there is no such thing as smart money, and even if there were, you wouldn't be able to measure it. why? because if you could measure it, that means you've already got it figured out. and if you've got it figured out, then everybody's got it figured out. which means it has no edge and is not "smart". "the spoken DOW is not the true DOW" kind of thing. there are certain people who post on these threads that follow these fables with great passion (not you, qveau). i remember one in particular who said the smart money was buying Global Crossing in early 2000, on the very day when i sold out my position at $55. perhaps that person rode GX all the way into the toilet because that's what the "smart money" did. (it's certainly what Gilder did.) there are whole web sites devoted to assaying and tracking the smart money. but if their money was so smart, why aren't there more Warren Buffets? there's only one. in fact, most institutional investors are not good at investing; they are only good at sucking money out of their clients, who would be better off in a low-cost indexed/passive portfolio. in the sense that institutional investors, as a group, get a lot of money for delivering less than nothing, i would agree that they're smart. but i doubt that's what CNBS meant.