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Technology Stocks : Adaptec (ADPT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jimbo Cobb who wrote (3695)	9/16/1998 3:16:00 PM
From: Mark Brophy	Respond to of 5944

Re: Gambling vs. investing I'm not disagreeing with most of your points, but do you truly believe that dollar-cost-averaging through weekly payroll deduction into the S&P 500 Index over a 30-year period in a 401-k is gambling ?? I agree - that's investing. But, the problem is that most wealth is held by people in their 40's and 50's. They're depending on it to provide retirement income and don't have time to wait for the market. If we continue with an environment where only 20-40 year olds can invest, we've cut off most of the capital base. Another problem is start-up formation. An entreprenuer will need 3 years before his company has the revenues to go public, but he has no idea whether the market his price his company fairly. So, he'll be starved for capital in the future, or we'll be squandering the capital base on bad projects, as is the case with Internet companies today and floppy disk companies 20 years ago. You seem to be more interested in doubling your money in a short period of time...that would fall into the GAMBLING category...maybe you are calling it all gambling because that is what you are using it for. It depends on what you mean by "short". I believe stocks should find the right price within 2 years. Netscape went public 3 years ago and it's still 3x the IPO price, even this it's obvious that their plan to put Microsoft out of business was badly flawed!