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

To: hpeace who wrote (10359)	12/6/1997 12:55:00 PM
From: Brad Zelnick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

Saw Wall Street Week last night and noticed that Ruikhuyser(sp) was defining terms like PE so viewers might recognize them. Unfortunately, he didn't look at the meaning of them. The PE in my newspaper is derived by dividing TODAY's price by LAST YEAR's earnings. Now what's that mean? And by the way what ARE earnings anyway? Value Line seems to be a Roshomon type of experience. I blacken all the projections on the numbers and the graph. I X out all the analyst's prose. Its sort of like reading the footnotes in the Annual Report, but in a standard format. Before you quote the analyst's words, I suggest you consider the source - at the bottom right hand corner of the prose (which by the way is the same number of inches for all companies in Value Line - kinda like Readers Digest.) you see the authors name. Call her up. See what kind of knowledge depth you're looking at. Or to be sneaky, look up the author in a data base and see what kind of assets are listed. Turns out they are making money writing about the stocks, not investing in them. Hmm. Meanwhile, back to the CPQ forest. It seems that many here see this company as a box maker, not a systems solutions company. I would agree that as a box maker, they're going to have trouble beating people who rep them from dorm rooms and corn fields. I'm not sure that they can hook up cables better than a screwdriver shop in east LA. But deep in their hundred acre wood they are trying to integrate with TDM. TDM has never met a credit card or a stock transaction that they didn't like. If CPQ can get it right and appear at an ATM near you, who cares if PB sells machines with two CD-ROMS for the price of one? Hey Bilow, how 'bout I send you my address and you cut out and send me all the parts of the Value Line report that you don't read? Then we'll compare returns at the end of the year. Last time I looked, buy low-sell high was a euphemism for market timing. I have yet to meet a timer with long-term above average returns. The prizes in economics are all for efficient market theorists, none for timers. When you think about it, anyone who can win despite paying transaction fees, spreads, time premiums in options, and the final insult: taxes, must be an unusual investor indeed. In fact if you are able to beat the average long-term doing this, in my opinion you shouldn't hide your initials on the solder side of an add-in card. You should be allowed to initial all the foreheads of less clever investors. JMHO