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Technology Stocks : THQ,Inc. (THQI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Todd D. Wiener who wrote (6443)6/26/1998 4:47:00 PM
From: Jim Willie CB  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 14266
 
Todd,
My comment on <<splits of 2/1 indicating mgmt expectation of 100% earnings growth in 10-18 months>> stands. You move from THQ (small cap, microcap?) to godzilla cap in your attempt to make my comment seem foolish. Coke, Disney, Exxon are companies each with at least, what $50 billion in sales, maybe 400-700 times THQ sales. Try citing some examples of companies under $500m in size.

I realize you are on top of the scene. But lets compare apples with apples, not toads with wooly mammoths. In the process you look silly moving from extreme to extreme on the equity landscape.

Woodland,
Some reasons to remain short, or add to losing short positions

1) believing you are smarter than stockholders & market
2) listening to profoundly misguided and stupid people
3) living in some arrogant ivory tower
4) having next to zero knowledge of the industry
5) being out of touch with the world of fun
6) being emotionally involved with the position
7) believing history (price chart) must repeat itself
8) believing great companies dont reap rewards
9) being a proud fool jackass, unwilling to admit failure
10) see reason #1

Cover your nuts before some squirrels chomp on them from a much higher tree.

/ Jim Willie



To: Todd D. Wiener who wrote (6443)6/26/1998 5:52:00 PM
From: Kelvin Taylor  Respond to of 14266
 
To all:

Here's a new quote site I found recently with 100 FREE real time daily quotes and intraday charts.

www4.quotecentral.com

I find the chart easy to read and the quote info includes total volume plus volume for the last executed trade.

The site also includes a comprehensive company report with an historical price chart for the the past 5 years.

rapidresearch.com

You do have to register to view the quotes, but its free.

Kelvin

P.S. NOTE: A Java enabled browser is required to use the historical price chart.



To: Todd D. Wiener who wrote (6443)6/26/1998 10:22:00 PM
From: JoCo  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 14266
 
Todd: Thanks for all the great insight. I'm mostly an admirer from afar rather than an active participant due to time. Interested in your opinion on Bear Stearns coverage, which has been widely rumored on the MF board (not entirely without basis since some of the guys at E3 saw Bear at THQ's location).

It would seem to me that Bear Stearns is an awfully big firm to be covering a microcap such as THQ. However, Bears current interest could lie in an investment banking relationship that could take THQ to "the next level". I have become convinced that the THQ management team could probably successfully run almost any company in its field (perhaps except EA) so maybe an acquisition of a larger competitor is not out of the question. Acquisition of franchise titles that could be PROFITABLY marketed and converted to multiple platforms (current and future, thanks to GameFX acquisition) would be an interesting challenge for Brian and company.

This is stretching the envelope a bit but Brian supposedly has a bunch of deals on his desk, so perhaps he will pull a rabbit out of his hat; he may even be loaded for Bear ;). Any thoughts on this type of direction for THQ? Interested in your thoughts.



To: Todd D. Wiener who wrote (6443)6/29/1998 1:21:00 AM
From: Marc Newman  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 14266
 
Todd, thanks for the chart. I was looking more for some play-by-play from some of the fine writers on the thread. You know, about how the longs stormed over the gunwales and the shorts sank beneath the oil-black waters, never to be seen again. That sort of thing.

In terms of the small cap discussion, this was on TSC last week:

thestreet.com

It's a quant article showing that the reason why big mutual funds can't play in the small cap arena is the high transaction costs. Essentially big money moves a small, illiquid stock too much. But hey, for those of us with under $3 million, we're set. :)

I don't think it is a question of sticking with small caps to try to get some kind of historical 2% outperformance over big caps. It's a question of following your method of finding the handful of companies that are great bets and trying to hit some homers.

An excerpt from the piece:

BARRA notes that any measure of trading cost will be greatly
underestimated because of the tendency of
portfolio managers to submit
trades in a realistic fashion. Portfolio
managers want their trades to be
filled, so most large orders are naturally for
large-cap, liquid names. The
opportunity costs associated with such
self-censorship are substantial.

Investors managing less than $3 million in
assets, on the other hand, can
establish a meaningful investment position in
small, illiquid names
relatively quickly. Why do individual investors
focus on smaller stocks than
the pros? Because they can.

A model developed recently by DLJ adds an
interesting and useful twist to
the measurement of market impact by splitting
the cost into two portions --
the direct impact from the trade and an implied
cost associated with the
time the trade takes to complete. In a study of
billions of dollars of
transactions, DLJ found that the timing cost
was six times more significant
than the direct market impact cost.
Specifically, the cost of commissions
plus direct market impact was $0.05 per share,
while the cost of delay in
filling the order was $0.30 per share.

I see this as an exciting finding, because it
highlights the advantage
enjoyed by individual investors in regards to
overall trading costs. Because
of the integration of the small order execution
system (SOES) into the
online brokerage trading mechanism, individual
investors can usually get
a transaction filled promptly at the asking
price. This cuts out the timing
cost, which according to DLJ is 85% of the
total trading cost.

Put another way, individual investors enjoy a
7-to-1 advantage in trading
costs by managing their own account rather than
pooling their money in a
mutual fund.