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Technology Stocks : QUANTUM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: William T. Katz who wrote (5891)	12/2/1997 3:05:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9124

May be but it is "common operating proceedure" for company managment to attend this type of meeting, and you know the questions that will be on every analysts and institutional investor's tongues. This meeting was likely scheduled before the recent concerns arrose but it would be proper for managment to issue any statements they may have prior to the meeting rather than after. The obvious result of any pending announcement will be that the managment will discuss it in San Diego and word will spread from there throughout the "investment professional" community before it goes public. I hear the Sargeant Schultz sydrome again "We did nooothing (wrong)" - just following standard operating proceedure - orders. This is all coincidence and speculation at this point. But anytime you have a chance to sit face-to-face with management across the breakfast or dinner table, I would think that a clarification of the current situtation is almost certain to come out. Skilled analysts have ways to get the information they need to piece the picture together. I asked the office of the CFO if any announcements were due to go out and the answer was not any at leat until managment is back from the DMG conference. They are going on to San Francisco tomorrow and will be back at the corporate office on Thursday. Maybe we will see an announcement by Friday or Monday. As far as lawsuits are concerned, please save your energy to get favorable legislation passed in your state and in Congress to require companies to make all disclosures public via equal access channels. Once laws requireing fair and timely disclosure are in place, then the investment industry shuffle will be less likely to occur. Until then, lawsuits primarily benefit the legal profession. Can't entriely blame management - they must "play the game" in satisfying the investment community and until that game has changed I think the small investor is at a definit disadvantage.

To: William T. Katz who wrote (5891)	12/2/1997 3:08:00 PM
From: William, III	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9124

There is no way QNTM executives are privately telling money managers or anyone else anything that we aren't privy to - unless QNTM execs are into taking bribes. Why else would ANY company executive illegally tell certain people of poor news to come? It just doesn't happen like in the movies or as conspiracy theorists would like to believe. Besides with QNTM being 80% institutionally held, any news would be put out in a press release where they would have the opportunity to spin the news as best they could, not by leaking info here and there and dying a death of a thousand cuts. If QNTM doesn't make a pre-announcement by next week, you'd have to think we're in the clear. They wouldn't wait until the last couple weeks of a quarter to announce that the ship is taking in water. Remember this ain't Bre-X we're dealing with!

To: William T. Katz who wrote (5891)	12/2/1997 6:33:00 PM
From: space cadet	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9124

There was just a front page article in yesterday's WSJ about asyt. Some time last year I believe the management team at asyt flew out to NY to coax a big money manager into not selling his asyt stock at that time. (And they spoke with other managers as well). So these private meetings go on every single day of the year and if you are a small time investor then its tough luck. I'm not defending the practice, I agree, it sucks, but that is the way it works on the unfair casino known as the stock market. Incidentally all along I have been predicting that qntm would settle in the low 20's and we are finally just about there. I think now is a reasonable time to start accumulating stock in qntm, but I'm not because I still think it will most likely hit 21 first and also I don't think qntm is going anywhere for a good while. I expect we will trade between 20 and 26 for the next 6 months and I don't expect qntm to hit 30 for a long time. So I don't think there is much rush at all. Of course, my predictions are all based on qntm holding the line at 20. If 20 falls then all bets are off and no telling how low qntm could go. But I'm not worried about that. I think that 20 is a fair value for qntm and that over the course of a couple of years it could double for those people with enough patience, assuming nothing is seriously wrong with qntm. I missed playing the very profitable short term trading game with qntm between 26-30. Congratulations to all those qntm traders who did so and now are playing with the house's money. I knew qntm was going lower and stayed away but in retrospect I should have bought puts on qntm whenever it hit 30. Well at least I'm learning...

To: William T. Katz who wrote (5891)	12/2/1997 9:10:00 PM
From: Myron Z.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9124

If this turns out to be true, let's post it on this thread and organize the suit. I hope not though.

To: William T. Katz who wrote (5891)	12/3/1997 12:56:00 AM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen	Respond to of 9124

If QNTM is meeting in private with people and those people are then selling, I would be initiating a class-action lawsuit. You may as well call a lawyer right now then, because this stuff happens all the time, particularly in tech stocks. I'm guessing the SEC considers analysts to be "the public", since then the analysts convey the info to the masses. Of course, the downgrades won't come out in public until the institutions have unloaded, driving the price down to very near the bottom. Eric B., CEO of 3Com has privately gave bearish forecasts to analysts many times in the past year. The odds are stacked very high against the individual investor in favor of the big brokerage houses. I agree it should not be this way, but there are probably political reasons why the SEC allows this to go on. Incidently, sometimes even some analysts are not told the info. This happened with Cascade Communications. They had an official conference call, then afterwards privately gave some bad news to selected analysts. I don't remember his name, but it was an analyst with DMG who was so angered by being left out that he sold off his entire position the next morning, in the fund he managed. DK