Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (18665)	11/20/1998 10:31:00 PM
From: Thomas Sprague	Respond to of 152472

Maurice, Please help me before I do it again. I sold some of my QC holdings today. Nine of ten of my investments increased in value today. Need I say more? TDS

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (18665)	11/20/1998 11:20:00 PM
From: mmeggs	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Personal issues aside, the flaw I see in your "conspiracy theory" is this: Given satellite capabilities to read street signs in Moscow, see via infrared through concrete walls, and monitor radio traffic all over the world, what would have been accomplished by flying the 747 over a Sov base? And to throw in what I know, without actually researching, 28 servicepeople were killed when either a Silkworm or Exocet missile slammed into the US ship.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (18665)	11/21/1998 1:02:00 PM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Very O.T. (hog prices) (it is the weekend ...) There is something going on recently with hog prices which I think is indicative of the current huge deflationary forces. Hog prices are down to ridiculously low levels. (And, butter prices have already come down very quickly from their brief "everyone is buying expensive ice cream" induced rally). November 21, 1998 Hog Farmers Want Federal Help Filed at 1:57 a.m. EST By The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- Struggling from a nationwide glut and record low prices, the nation's pork producers have asked President Clinton to head off what they fear will be financial failure for thousands of hog farmers. Donna Reifschneider, president of the National Pork Producers Council, warned that ''if this dangerous situation is not reversed quickly, it will result in the failure of tens of thousands of pork producers and a massive restructuring of pork production in the United States.'' In a letter to President Clinton, she asked that the government buy more pork and that hog farmers be made eligible for emergency disaster loans. She also asked that Clinton establish an interagency task force to help hog farmers. The industry also asked the administration to request that Canada send fewer hogs to the United States for slaughter. And it asked that federally imposed environmental restrictions on a hog processing plant near Tar Heel, N.C., be eased so more hogs can be accepted. The Environmental Protection Agency has restricted the Carolina Food Processors Plant to processing no more than 144,000 hogs a week because of concern about pollution. ''We believe the economic crisis facing America's pork producers must be viewed as a national emergency, warranting immediate intervention by the U.S. government,'' Reifschneider argued in the letter sent to the White House on Friday. The request for federal assistance comes at a time when pork producers are getting record low prices for their hogs. A nationwide glut has allowed slaughterhouses -- flush with supplies and running at record capacity -- to lower their bids. The prices farmers got for hogs fell 39 percent in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and have fallen further since. As of Thursday, farmers were getting $19 per hundredweight compared to $46.50 a year ago. Iowa is the nation's largest hog state, with about 18,000 producers, followed by North Carolina, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Ohio. Most pork producers are not eligible for assistance under the emergency farm package passed by Congress last month. That $6 billion deal was aimed mainly at grain producers and farmers hit by natural disasters and crop disease. Some farmers have also complained that retailers have benefited from the low price problem, pointing out that prices have declined only 1.5 percent at the retail level. Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (18665)	11/22/1998 5:44:00 PM
From: Mr. Sunshine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

*OT* Why was KAL 007 "off course"? Easy. It was flying the shortest distance between it's starting and ending points, which is called "The Great Circle Route" when traveling on the surface of a globe. The great circle that connects Korea and most points in the USA happens to pass over Russian (then Soviet) air space. Using this route saves LOTS of time and money. The Koreans airliners often did this, despite repeated warnings from the Soviets. They figured that the Soviets would never shoot down a civilian airliner, and they could always claim a navigation error when the Soviets protested. The Soviets (or at least someone who held authority to shoot a missile) decided that their warnings had been ignored enough, and made a tragic example of KAL 007. The Soviets were morally wrong, but so was KAL for risking the lives of their passengers in order to save a few bucks. The innocent passengers were the ones who paid the price. South Korea and the USA, as could be expected, made the most of the incident, claiming KAL had made an innocent navigational error and that the Soviets had murdered hundreds of people. The Soviets, as could be expected, claimed that they had shot down a spy plane that had purposely violated Soviet air space despite several warnings. Both sides used propaganda, the inclusion of certain facts, and the exclusion of others to justify their actions and to villify the other side. As to the Vincennes/Iranian airliner: We all make decisions of various levels of importance on a continuous basis. We take information from the past and present, predict the future, make decisions to do (or not to do) something, and then enjoy/suffer the consequences. For example, say I am driving on the highway, and I see several cars ahead of me with their break lights on. I predict that if my car does not slow down, it will hit the cars that are slowing down in front. That is not good. So I slow down. The consequence is that there is not an accident caused by my car hitting those in front of me, and I make it home safe and sound. As another example, take the stock market. Someone can study a particular stock (let's say QCOM) for months, or even years, study the economic climate of the country and businesses the company operates in, and make a solid decision on whether the stock is a good buy. For example, someone could predict "QUALCOMM WILL BE AT $80 BY 8/31/98". Stock will be bought based on this prediction, and the consequences will be that people may make money, at best, or, at worse, lose money. In either event, life goes on. Certain areas of life, (for example, the military) are a little more complicated, even though the basic process is the same. Right or wrong, the decision makers may have between 10 and 30 seconds to weigh multiple, even contradicting, information and to take an action that could kill hundreds of people. On May 17, 1987, the USS STARK weighed the various factors of information and decided not to shoot an approaching Iraqi aircraft. The result was 37 dead sailors when that aircraft fired two exocet missiles at the ship. About a year later the USS VINCENNES was faced with a similar (but different) situation. They had many reasons to believe that they were under attack by an approaching Iranian warplane, and also numerous reasons, many of them figured out afterwards, that it was not a warplane. They took an action based upon their interpretation of the information available. The tragic result was several hundred dead Iranians. Both the STARK and Vincennes incidents are still hotly debated within the U.S. Navy ten years latter. What exactly did the decision makers know? How could they have interpreted that information different? Could they have reacted with better results? Unfortunately, those who have years to question decisions that someone else had to make in seconds are rarely able to adequately grasp the context in which those decisions were made. This is a lot longer than I had intended, but the basic point is this. Maurice, if you cannot make an accurate prediction of the QCOM stock price based upon months of study of relatively clear and accessible information, then who are you to criticize those who need to make split second decisions based upon incomplete and contradictory information? Good Investing to All, STEVE