To: Charles Tutt who wrote (8549 ) 3/25/1998 9:19:00 PM From: gdichaz Read Replies (2) | Respond to
One of the biggest jokes in investing is all the talk of "the market" thinks or does this or that. The brute fact is the market is not like a person - no brain, no body. Can't think, can't act. As you point out the "market" is a huge complex mishmash of conflicting opinions and actions by a mix of program traders with their computer programs, big guys, little guys etc. In the short term a sort of mob mentality seems evident - with emotion, rumor, etc. impacting different stocks and therefore the cumulative mass. Fundamentals and real news are irrelevant in the short run. Sun is one of the strongest examples of how fruitless it is to expect the "market" to react to real news - Sun's victory vs Microsoft for example. Or the major positive news coming from the Java conference re ERCY, IBM et al. Meaningless if the short term is governing - as it always is - in the short term. But a solid company with good management, and steadily increasing earnings which is on the leading edge of several technological trends (fat server / thin client) , and Java with its pervasive future in hand held appliances, embedded devices, smart cards, etc. with a huge and increasing lead in high end servers (where the money is right now) and data bases soon mean that the long term performance of the company is reasonably positive (to put it mildly). Will the stock reflect this future. Who knows? After all price of the stock has doubled over the last couple of years. No question that the Wall Street Journal, CNBC etc. are Microsoft organs so perception is always anti Sun. But which would you rather have perception or reality?. The reality is that MSFT is wounded and on the wrong side of the fat server / thin client trend. Sun is on the right side of that trend (and has Java as a major future opportunity) Enough, All IMO. Disclaimers, etc. Be of good cheer. The interesting question is where will Sun be in a year or two, not today. Chaz
