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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frost Byte who wrote (696)	11/22/1997 9:13:00 AM
From: Paul Weiss	Respond to of 29970

Well, I finally did it. I am the proud new owner of an equity position in ATHM. I just wasn't willing to risk not owning any of this company. Since I have no idea where it will trade a week from now, or three weeks from now, I just gotta take my chances. Besides, I have no intention of selling for many years. Either it plays out into a brilliant investment vehicle or I will end up throwing away my money. I don't for a moment expect ATHM to be dull or stagnent. Is it worth $2-3 billion? Hell no. It's the potential I'm buying, and that I believe to worth much, much more. Regards, Paul

To: Frost Byte who wrote (696)	11/22/1997 10:50:00 AM
From: ahhaha	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 29970

They said the same thing about MSFT for many years. MSFT used to fluctuate wildly between 25 and 50 in'87-'88. Now you look at it on a chart and that price action is crushed out. You can't discern it. Looks like a straight line. Equivalently it was fluctuating between 2 and 3. When I was a money manager you should have heard the derogatory comments said at the institutional level about MSFT. None of which was true. I also was developing on MSFT products way back when and the reality was entirely different from Wall Street belief. Wall Street is the last to know. That's why you'll have a great company and it goes nowhere in share price even though the earnings are cooking. Wall Street hasn't told its mindless hoards of Battery Marches (a computer only decision institutional fund) that it is ok to buy. Without such sponsorship the experts have to be dragged kicking and screeming to admit a buy. We are fortunate as individual investors because we aren't constrained by the inertia of size and mass stupidity. I will admit that in the last 7 years the mindlessness has reduced, but only because the premium to perform has increased, so money is discovering where tangible results are developing. There is no question the price action in ATHM is horrible. It looks like it's about to make a downside breakout with a target of 13. Completed an Elliot wave six count cosolidation with help from the recovery in the Generals. ATHM is not alone, most of the tech sector is similarily plagued. When the Generals start down again, whooowhee, I'm gonna get cleaned. But only if I sell. I don't buy or sell on my ability to read charts or predict price. Who can predict a random walk? Don't think it's random? Well I have 23 years of intense and extensive trading experience and 15,000 option transactions under my belt. I have astounded many people with my uncanny ability to perceive the direction of price. I have been rich 8 times. The outcome? Down 39 G's net. I consider this to be a truely outstanding performance. No one comes close since I never shorted an option in all the years in my own account. In stock it has been much better, as long as I bought and held, because with all my ability I, in the end, had to admit I couldn't succeed in predicting the future. Same is true about predicting earnings. No one can do it reliably. It isn't do-able. The future does not exist now so how can you know it? If I drop a rock, it will hit the ground with 99.999...% confidence. Note I didn't say 100%. But you can't take this form of causality and extrapolate it onto an n-body problem. In the world of human affairs n is practically infinite. Mathematically we can't even solve a n=3 problem in general. You often see the market make a larger than standard deviation so the media and pundits have to explain it. They thrash around looking for the culprit. Sometimes they can't find anything macro so they find some individual company which happened to move more than others because Battery Marche irrationally dumped and report that, "selling for unknown reasons spooked a skittish market today sending...". You'll never know why anything happens. There is a limit to how fine you can meaningfully examine history just like in quantum mechanics there is a limit to how accurately you can predict the outcome of experiments. We don't need to know all this trash. Want to be successful? Throw away charts and don't pay attention to your stocks. I pay attention because it gives me something to do. Boy, do I have to resist my "great skill and ability" from shooting myself in the foot one more time. That is the issue with ATHM. I won't buy more ATHM if it takes the plunge. I don't average down. If it bases (whatever that means), and starts up, and the fundamentals haven't changed , I will buy more. I can tell you this. Friday the persistent block buying action continued like it has for weeks. It is possible that the same buyers are also small lot sellers. I used to do the same. Manipulate the market down to amass a large position at a good average price. If you have big dough, it's alright to average down because averaging is part of the charade. Then with 30 minutes to go and the COMPQX fading the stock gets hit with smallish 3000-5000 blocks. That tells you nothing. I also can tell you that every institutional manager would love to buy this company at lower prices so they, like me, are praying that Battery Marche will take it down. Don't be surprised to see the Generals getting blasted and ATHM sinking a little and then a slight reprieve; lo and behold, the stock is at 24 in a market where "smart money" is on the sidelines. The general market downside keeps you from getting aboard since you "know" its going lower. You can't win this aggravating game. You have to hold your nose and take a position. You don't know if ATHM is going to work out. You have to take risk when perceived risk is high. When it's easy to buy(read safe and approved by the Lady's Home Journal), real risk is rapidly rising. Should you buy this company? I don't know. Have you done your homework? My wild guess is that ATHM is much more valuable than MSFT. It took many years for MSFT to grow to its current size. The only way to end up with a pile is to be right and hold. Is it important or even significant to end up with a pile? NO.