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.

Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (23259)	9/10/2002 2:06:11 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 74559

<Weren't you on margin not too long ago in the 40's (higher?) At $3/share you would be broke with no cash to buy anything. Mountains of money? Isn't QCOM losing money? How do you pay dividends with no earnings, especially when stock options are causing further dillution?> Cool, more questions. Sorry everyone, I have to answer ... hehe. I was on margin near the top! I'm an international high wire dare-devil artist. The broker even said I could go much more, but I told him that I had to be able to cope with Globalstar going to zero and QUALCOMM to $50 [that was in March Y2K]. Well, blow me down if they didn't both do that. But I was watching quite closely and escaped by the skin of my teeth. Thanks in part to reading Jay's mindless rantings, some of which seemed to me to possibly have an element of truth which could perhaps occur not necessarily to my advantage. Therefore, I conducted a strategic retreat, bailing out fully from my dearly beloved Globalstar [I had help from wild colonial types such as Geoff Goodfellow, a perspicacious refugee from Silicon Valley whose Alcohol Bar, which was funded by me [via him shorting Globalstar], is presumably under water in Prague]. I also, to ensure margin for error rather than margin for the broker, sold off half a Tonka Truckload of my Mighty Q! To ensure profitable opportunities didn't go past me, should my luck return to its normal full strength, I sold enough to give me a Mini-Me Moneybin of cold, hard, [well, it's pixelated in cyberspace somewhere so it's not all that hard], cash in the form of my great idol Uncle Al's "In Uncle Al We Trust" greenbacks. Actually, it says "In God We Trust" on the money rather than "In Al We Trust" so it makes me a bit nervous, especially when God so evidently doesn't give a stuff about Americans in particular, or even Uncle Al, and definitely not me or the little stash of Al's cash that I hold. The anniversary of 911 reminds me that corporeal glory is tenuous and ephemeral, nature is indifferent and there is a matrix of malevolence. So, I am fully repositioned. But watching closely for signs of deterioration of a quick or slow nature. Boiled or barbequed are not my preferred states. I can survive zero for Q! I can survive zero for the USD too [having made a strategic retreat from USD over two years ago]. I can even survive a tsunami from an incoming comet if the waves are less than 60 metres high and I'm not slurping a latte on a sunny day. I can survive any volcanic eruption too, provided I don't happen to have picked that particular day to slide down it's slopes [Ruapehu] or swim in it's crater lake [Taupo] or am bicycling past the waterfront when another phreatic eruption pops [Auckland waterfront]. I'm working on my telomeres too, but Geron seems to be making slow progress, so I'm nearing the end of the mortal conveyor belt, even if such 3D physical violence doesn't get me first. So ironic to survive all the mayhem, only to die of lack of telomeres in bed at 100. At 53, a good prime number, I'm not in my prime but still have a few sunrises to go, so can't stop ducking and diving yet. QUALCOMM has $2.4bn in money, which I consider to be a mountain, though some might not. They have been losing money, but that process has stopped. Without the bad investments, they are right now stacking up $1 a share and with 800 million shares, that's about $1bn a year. Which I also consider something like the Southern Alps in terms of a mountainous chain of money coming in. With a 20% growth rate, more and more will drop straight to the bottom line. It's not like making fertilizer, where 95% of the production cost is input costs. Software is cloned for 100% margin. ASICs are cloned for 60% margin. Royalties are 100% margin. If they double their sales results, their profit zooms - it doesn't just double. Since there are only 130 million CDMA subscribers now, and there will be a billion or two by 2010, replacing their handsets every 2 years, I think there is possibly a large rate of profit looming and mountains of money. That will be more like the Himalayas than the Southern Alps. It won't be hard to pay dividends. They are already wondering what the heck to do with the mountains of money that they have in the bank, as well as that streaming in every day. Stock options are diluting shareholders at a passable pace. Thanks for asking. I am ready to help any person desperate to sell QUALCOMM shares if they seem unable to find any other buyers. I will kindly borrow some of Uncle Al's freshly-printed to help him out too and to enable me to help even more of the desperate sellers if they should be unable to find buyers at $8 or $3. Noblesse oblige, Mqurice