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Strategies & Market Trends : From the Trading Desk -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JERRY GACH who wrote (2458)	1/27/1998 7:50:00 AM
From: steve goldman	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4969

Jerry, Re: contacting companies for info... I am a big fan of keeping in touch with the companies I invest in,if possible. Remember, I am a professional who is also responsibile for others' money and does this fulltime, so I have to spend time tracking these insiders down. Nonetheless, the individual investor should be able to do the same due diligence in a less time consuming way. This can be done through being on their news release fax list, their news release email list, by listening to earnings and other corporate conference calls andby the occassional call to the company. You would be surpised at the wealth of information you receive that most individual investors don't, good and bad. We are on many companies fax and email lists and get tons of information each and every day. Most of it never hits the news wires and some hits the news wires later. Remember, if you are relying on news wires to get your news,they you are at the mercy of their management deciding what is worthy and what is not. At larger companies, CEOs won't generally speak to individual investors and they shouldn't. Their responsibility is to manage the company and guide its day to day operations. Nonetheless, most companies have some individuals who are responsible for shareholder concerns, a Investor relations person or the CFO, etc. While I usually find it helpful talking to an IR person, I personally like talking to CFOs the best. They have a clearer picture of the earnings and the quarter's progression. A number of months back, I had invested heavily in S3 when the stock was 9. The CEO then had made comments that pricing pressures were moderating and as well made a fewother positive comments. The stock took off and climbed upto 16,18 in a few weeks. I got out early based on a conversation I hadwith the interim CFO who, during our conversation, was overly playing down the CEO's comments, and really did not have one positive thing to say about the quarter. I sold all my stock, took profits and, unfortunately for shareholders, the stock collapsed to 5 on bad earnings and a restatement. In retrospect, I would never have been out of the stock if I hadn't spoken to the CFO and gotten that certain "feel" that things were'nt yet backon track. Re: Your questions: Clearly, each and every company is different. I think most IR and CFO's will discuss the quarter in generalities such as "its been sluggish" or "we haven't adjusted our models". remember, they don't say anything, they don't get sued later on. On think lawsuits have clearly created signficant pressure to not reveal any information that might later be damaging. After all, telling Mr.investor of 200 shares that your company is doing great is not going to "run" the stock ,but might get the CFO a lawsuit later if things don't playout. Very rarely (almost never) will they discuss clients or actual figures. These are left to the conference calls. They might discuss the linearity ofthe quarter, or inventory channels, again, all in relative and general terms. I usually like to ask questions about cash flow, and am willing to take relative answers (cash flow isup, down). You can ask questions about receivables, payables and again, must be willing to accept generalities. Even without getting into specifics, you can extrapolate the postiion of the company in management's tone, the words they use, the way they pause or get excited. After all they are human and can't not truley mask what they know is a bad/improving business model. Without exception, conference calls and discussions I have with the corporate management are the best indication I get of the prospects for a company. Specifics usually are answered in the conference call which is why I think our free chat session analyzing conference calls, this saturday at 3pm est. is going to be valuable. yamner.com Regards, Steve@yamner.com