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 : Ride the Tiger with CD -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Claude Cormier who wrote (52101)	5/18/2006 11:16:18 AM
From: jpthoma1	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 313056

Don't agree Claude. Managing the company and managing the dollars are 2 different things. Securities Commissions have put in places standard procedures to make sure that management don't use shareholders money as their piggy bank. That's why some independant commitees MUST be created and MUST DO THEIR WORK. They represent us, shareholders. It's not only filing financial papers. I am pretty sure these committees haven't done their job at CKG. CKG is not only halted, but it's delisted too. Unfortunately, I can't go the the AGM. Hope someone will be there to ask questions. You know, people ask questions to God. So shareholders can also ask questions to their their prez! JP

To: Claude Cormier who wrote (52101)	5/20/2006 8:39:12 AM
From: JJJK	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 313056

Hi Claude, I receive your newsletter and scan SI regularly. Generally I have nothing significant to add so it is seldom that I post. Your attitude about CKG's current problems is very balanced and I thought that it raises an interesting issue that I have found is highly productive of profitable investing. The issue is simply one of expectation and disappointment. Investors tend to live in the world of stories and ideas. They have opinions of what may be currently or will be in the future happening relevant to a particular company or industry. That is they form a picture in their mind and invest their emotions and money accordingly. Generally but not always the investor has little in the way of detailed first hand information about the story in which he is investing. Often he likes to think that he understands, but that perception of understanding is more of a mind trap than an advantage. On the other, there are the actual people who run a company and have an intricate involvement with the development of some project. Developing a major project such as a mining company is an extremely complicated, demanding and by necessity error prone project. Anyone that I know of who has supervised the initiation or management of a major project knows that at its best, this process is an almost unbroken string of errors, misperceptions, overlooked opportunities and disappointments. Perfect judgement would of course prevent most of these issues but perfect judgement is in absence in direct proportion to the complexity of any project. My personal observation and conclusion is that good management is generally more about the effective resolution of problems rather than a record of unblemished accomplishment. Professional project managers generally realize this. Those who have not superintended major projects often do not understand this. They are under the assumption that success represents a smooth progression from accomplishment to accomplishment. They simply don't understand that, more commonly, success in project development is an ongoing process of effectively responding to various often preventable disasters. While I don't know the true details of the CKG paperwork problem, what I do know piques my interest simply because it gives me an opportunity to observe RR's response. That response will indicate much more about his management abiliities than the actual fact of the original problem. More generally I have found that this understanding of the fragiliy yet resiliency of project development is a very useful investment tool. There are often big profits to be made when project development snafus disenchant investors. A recent lesson in this occured most dramatically a couple of years ago when Cos.un experienced massive cost overruns in their most recent upgrade. There was a massive sell off in the units and of course a massive rebound over time. As a matter of fact we may be seeing a similar phenomenon with that entity now as the units pull back in the face of the shut down of its new unit. Once again this is a project startup worth billions of dollars and it should surprise no one that there are problems. At any rate my objective is not to talk about COS.UN but rather to view it as a probable object lesson in the context of a discussion of CKG's problems. Of course the corporate scale is different. However I have a strong but not certain opinion that the same principles apply to all these situations. These principles are simple. Basically opportunity lies in the fact that often investors who do not understand the process of project development become disenchanted with their investment story. Their disenchantment is as often just as unfounded as was their original infatuation with the corporate story. This disenchantment rather than any objective criteria precipitates an untimely sale. For those who understand the process of project development, it then becomes much easier to view these problems in context. This sense of context can be profitable. Those who understand the context are the buyers and those who are easily disenchanted are the sellers. In summary, your attitude seems to understand these subtleties of project development and I applaud your balanced attitude. As a long time holder of CKG, I suspect that in time all will be well. If not, that's why diversification is a good idea. John Kernahan