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Biotech / Medical : T/FIF Portfolio -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (33)	8/23/1998 1:56:00 AM
From: scaram(o)uche	Respond to of 1073

Perhaps people don't understand how a company like OSIP can hit the skids like it has, given the intact business plan. Yes, the sector stinks from condemnation with an irrationally broad brush, but it's more than that. OSIP is an Amerindo company. Amerindo is a San Francisco investment company that got into really big trouble in Winter '96/'97. They were forced to liquidate positions in biotech. Certain fund managers saw it coming, and actually shorted stuff that Amerindo held. A flood of shares hit the market (there were factors at play in addition to the Amerindo debacle), and the sector has been a toy ever since. To understand just how poorly these guys have performed, go to this site and poke around, carefully....... amerindo.com ..... you will realize that they still haven't stabilized. What does this have to do with OSIP? Amerindo owned 16.1% or 3,446,600 shares of OSIP on 12/31/97. By 8/7/98, that stake had been reduced to 2,009,600 shares. Does Amerindo want to sell their shares at this price? I sincerely doubt it. Do they have to? Take a look at their performance and judge for yourselves. These "managers" have been hurting the sector...... selling into a period of low demand.... for about 20 months. For the health of the sector, we need more diversification in funds that hold biotech. We also need more fund managers that have expertise at the bench and fewer that have expertise with over-sized shoes and big red noses. Unfortunately, we have exactly the opposite situation shaping up. Many fund managers, unable to make good picks in the past, have abandoned the sector. In addition, we only have one pure play to choose from in a biotech mutual fund..... Von Emster's. Von Emster makes comments like (paraphrased) "biotech goes down in the summer". Dogma. When the sector heats up again, a disproportionate amount of the small investor's moneys will go to Franklin and Von Emster. Let's pray that he's better than those at Amerindo. We desperately need less dogma and better stock-pickers. We certainly don't need clowns with leveraged portfolios.