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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (8323)	8/15/2006 9:03:49 AM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 217654

I noticed that you posted on the Softbank thread i only posted there twice--once in 2001, and then 5 1/2 yrs later (to Maurice). i had just been trolling through some of the old bubble haunts to bring back memories of the past mania. the Softbank thread was a great example of that. in my post to Mq, i wrote: "going thru this thread from the beginning is like traipsing thru the Internet graveyard...through the Land of Dreams Dash'd... waking bleary-eyed to another early shift at the Home Despot." Message 22509232 many of the active posters on that thread now have dormant SI accts, indicating that they may not be very actively involved in investing these days. so it goes... Softbank...had an outsized position yeah, most of those who had something to protect when the bubble crshed previously got their bankroll in the tech bubble. i made mine in QBOMB in 1999, and i remember Maurice saying (iirc) that he put his entire life savings into QCOM at the VC stage. if that was the case then he is probably in great shape, even though QBOMB the stock is now but a pale shadow of its former bubble self, down nearly 2/3's from Jan 3, 2000 in nominal terms and down probably at least 90% in real terms, despite nearly tripling from its lows. despite all that, the returns on QCOM from the VC stage must be absolutely fabulous. most of those who "survived" the tech crsh with less fabulous gains than being a VC on the stock with the greatest one-year performance of any SPX stock in history reinvented themselves and went onto better market sectors. mine has been energy since 2003.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (8323)	8/15/2006 1:23:03 PM
From: Seeker of Truth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217654

Right. Both Tobago Jack and I had tremendous sized positions in Softbank. We chatted from time to time about it. In about a year we had sextupled our money and happened to unload within a couple of days of each other. Conventional companies began ganging up on Softbank. In Japan if you are not allied with the ruling party, the Liberal "Democrats", then you don't have a future. So stocks can be thrilling at times, but often I think that rental real estate is the best investment. There is no daily quote. Peace of mind results. Seeker of Truth

To: TobagoJack who wrote (8323)	8/19/2006 7:36:03 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217654

TJ, I didn't get a lesson that prices can go down as well as up. I am VERY long in the tooth and have been fiddling around with shares since the 1960s, when I made a large [for the time] stack of cash which bought me a Yamaha YDS5E 250cc which upgraded me from a very old BSA Bantam Major [150 cc of pure power which could race along at about 40 mph]. I have known for several decades that prices can go down enthusiastically, first noticing the effect in 1974, which I totally escaped. Again, in 1987 I almost totally escaped unscathed, while colleagues were going down like flies. They considered me a simpleton for investing in companies which "made things" instead of in financial management leveraging accounting smoke and mirrors enterprises, which uniformly went broke in NZ. My position in QCOM wasn't as good as pre IPO and in fact, due to the hopeless communications back in the day [1991] I missed the IPO even though I was trying to be in on it. I bought my "wallop" of QCOM in 1994, after the first big price crash - I had to patiently wait 3 years!! Then bought more crunches over the next few years. Bailing out [in part] in the Y2K debacle as you know. I had known the price would crunch and when I told the broker I would not be at all surprised to see $50 a share, when the share had already been at $200 and was around $120, he thought I was nuts [I think]. I explained to him that with my massive risk-taking manoeuve into debt-funded GSTRF [aka Globalstar] I had to be able to survive a combination of Globalstar going to zero, and QCOM down to $50 and still be wearing a shirt [and buying groceries, not to mention living in a house]. As the descent got going in earnest, and Globalstar showed up as having been dishonest in their assertions that they were "on plan" when I bought my massive wallop of margin-funded stock, I considered the overall position, and informed by your thoughts too, which were of course just part of my considerations, but valuable ones, for which I thanked you at the time, I decided to clear the decks, batten the hatches, bail out of all debt, convert to a load of cash as well and so survived quite happily, albeit pummelled in the Globalstar department. Were it not for my efforts to avoid be characterized as a "share trader" in New Zealand tax law, I'd have done much more serious manoeuvres, but would have been rated liable for all capital gains taxes, possibly including a load of unrealized gains. Which would have been very bad. I knew prices would go down [in QCOM] but not how far, so decided to go through the valley to the promised land on the other side, which has been reached. Meanwhile, there is a LOT of fun going on in the intellectual property litigations and Nokia is in the crap. QCOM owns a LOT more than I realized and the GPRS you use is in fact, provided by me - illicitly used by GPRS providers [and EDGE]. I did NOT buy a tranche at $33 as I might want the money for zenbu.net.nz purposes. And there are still capital gains taxes changes being made in NZ so I need to get all that right too. Sitting on hands seems a continued good move for now. QCOM might be owed $110 bn by Nokia according to Jim Mullens' calculations in SI QCOM stream. Which exceeds NOK market cap. As I say, there is a LOT of fun being had in the IPR wars. I am glad that the USA has a big GDP and military services to match. I wonder how Europe will like 20% tariffs on all their products going to the USA [if they don't require QCOM to paid the money they are owed]. What I learned was what I already knew, which is that people including top management of $10bn companies can be suicidally obtuse, obdurate and bloody-minded, and they would rather be like Adolf in his bunker than accept that their ideas were faulty and that they should change their ideas. It wasn't a simple decision for me to keep QCOM as I had to contend with known unknowns such as what the NZ IRD would do too. If not for them, I'd have followed my own advice to others in 1999 to sell Globalstar and wait for management to realize [in a year or two] that they had messed up and would have to lower their prices to something normal humans would accept as being a good price - meanwhile, Globalstar would go through a big valley in share price. Similarly, the market was due for a big crunch, which I predicted month after month after month from about May 1999. You can find said rants in SI archives. Mqurice PS Temperature much more equable now. Positively pleasant. But days shortening. Heading back to the southern hemisphere next week.