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Technology Stocks : Avant (AVNT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: vegetarian who wrote (1838)	12/25/1997 11:03:00 PM
From: Eric Klein	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3441

I don't think that many people, even professional investors, have seen a high tech company of this size get caught with their hands so deep in the cookie jar. There are always lawsuits between hi-tech companies for theft of trade secrets, but these guys literally stole source code and created a company from it, really quite a different kettle of fish from the normal run of the mill larceny. Can anybody else name a hi-tech that has recently been put out of business for theft of intellectual property? It's a real possibility that AVNT will essentially go out of business as a result of the CDN and other lawsuits. It just doesn't happen that often. Most people are in a state of denial or just sheer disbelief. There's a lot of complacency in the markets right now (not news to anybody, I suppose). Although to my mind, the felony arrests of the company officers should have given everybody a real big hint that serious problems lie ahead. What I can't figure out is why it was bid up from March when it was 10, to July and August when it made it back above 30! What were the buyers thinking?

To: vegetarian who wrote (1838)	12/25/1997 11:07:00 PM
From: Brad Davies	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3441

MC The institutional ownership doesn't concern me in the least. I have met some "institutional fund managers" and they are not as astute as one might expect. In fact, I think that if the masses ever met the people they entrust with their money, they would pull their money out of some of these funds quickly. People buy into a name like Fidelity, and have no idea what kind of person is going to be making decisions with their retirement dollars. Without these idiots, though, we wouldn't be able to short at these levels. They are a blessing in disguise. With respect to Avant specifically, if you thought that the litigation would not have a material impact on them, then they are a buy at these levels based on earnings and growth. To be short, you have to believe that they will be badly hurt in the litigaion. I do. Best of luck, Ron

To: vegetarian who wrote (1838)	12/26/1997 11:48:00 AM
From: Jonathan Greenberg	Respond to of 3441

MC, Amerindo owns 6.4 million shares. FMR owned over 2 million shares last time I checked. With the power of these two funds, do you think they could hold up the price to make the year end stats look a bit better? Amerindo was still buying in November, not sure about FMR. Amerindo is already known as one of the worst performing funds. If you knew you had a year to deal with a potential 140 Million dollar loss, wouldn't holding off this loss for a few weeks/months make sense? The reality is that the stock has been running up and down (on the way down) and with the volatility, I'm sure the fund managers have been playing the stock to salvage what they can out of this disaster. But it ain't that difficult to hold the stock up when you have the resources of a large fund with a lot at stake. When they let go, look out below. I think '98 is going to be very profitable for any AVNT short. For those of us that went short in the 30's, I just want to say...yeah! JG