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Technology Stocks : MRV Communications (MRVC) opinions? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Richard Birecki who wrote (9791)	8/1/1998 5:47:00 PM
From: Saul Feinberg Jr.	Respond to of 42804

Richard, good basketball analogy. and if you can add one thing, as contrarians, we have to have a "Larry Bird the coach" attitude to the game. Whether we are up by 10 or down by 10 (stock price is up or down on a daily basis), can't show emotions, until the game is over.

To: Richard Birecki who wrote (9791)	8/3/1998 10:18:00 AM
From: Robert G. Harrell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42804

Richard, I don't know if you are/were a basketball player or just a fan, but your BBall reference made me think of a basketball analogy that scares me as a MRVC long who has been thinking about doubling his position. <<For those who wish to skip one of my infrequent but perhaps boring basketball analogies, press NEXT NOW>> This year my son's 15 and under AAU team won all their pool play games at the state tournament and looked like this would finally be the year they won state or at least got a trip back to nationals. Unfortunately, their first game in the championship round of eight was against a team from the Orlando area made up of kids from alternative schools for problem kids who would never play highschool ball due to grades, discipline/criminal records, etc. ( and maybe falsified birth certificates--they were huge!!) We lost. They went on to win the championship game by 55 points. There is a good team from a neighboring small town that has everyone from the same school and has played together for years. Because we knocked them out two years in a row, they asked to be put in a different bracket and managed to place third in the state which qualified them to go to nationals in Detroit. Their coaches had no end of fun bragging to our coach that they would have beat us if we had played etc., etc. He finally had enough and offered to play them in a fund raising game to help them raise the $15,000 they needed to take their team to nationals. Our guys had less than a weeks notice and could only practice together once before the game. Only 8 of our guys were able to make it to the game against their 15 on their court but we beat them by 10 points!! Officially they were the 3rd best team in the 4th largest state. They didn't win a game at nationals. Point number one: performance in a niche market isn't necessarily a predictor of performance in a larger market. Second anecdote: After the fund raising game there was a 3 point contest. One of the players from Alachua was in a zone and hit 10 straight. On the way home, I asked my son where was this guy when you played them last season and a few weeks ago in summer league? His response was that the guy was there but he can't shoot that way in game situations. Point number two: It's performance in the real world that counts. 4.0 GPA's at Cal Tech don't guarantee success in the real world. I get real nervous when the focus of the discussion goes heavily to technology and intangibles like the brilliance of the personnel. It brings back nightmares of my experience with C-Cube which is the technology leader in MPEG encoding and decoding. The guys on that thread post every snippet of info that remotely relates to digital video and every nuance of innovation that occurs but most were blindsided by the precipitous drop in earnings in '97. I personally have C-Cube tax losses in '97 and '98. I don't want a MRVC tax loss. I want a big profit and I'll sure feel better when the financial picture is clearer. That doesn't mean that I don't value the technology. I have a question about WDM which I'll post later. It's just my observation that great technology alone won't cut it. Fortunately, I think we have a great CEO in Noam and I'm willing to give him time to get the financials stronger. Bob PS Anyone know what has become of Dan Spillane? He has posted only a couple times about a month ago after a more than 2 month absence. I sent him a personal messge inviting him to revisit MRVC but he hasn't shown up again on SI since I messaged to him.