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To: Grashopper who wrote (9408)	1/13/1999 1:57:00 AM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10786

Larry, I'm confused. Did I miss the posts on this board where someone said we were all crazy for expecting publicly traded Y2K companies to be significant beneficiaries of the estimated $200-600B cost of fixing Y2K? As I recall, the old argument went something like this: 1. Add up all the publicly traded Y2K companies. Let's stretch it and say there are 100. 2. Let's assume that business "only" ends up giving 1 out of every 10 dollars they spend on Y2K to these 100 publicly traded Y2K companies. 3. Assuming every company gets an equal share, the average amount each Y2K company should get is $200M-$600M. 4. Since [insert favorite company here] is one of the better companies, and since 10% is such an ultraconservative figure, we all will be rolling in dough "real soon now". 5. Throw in the inevitable panic and even pigs will fly. Y2K gurus were sure of it and spread the word at conferences. Principals of Y2K companies were sure of it and told investors. And we investors were so sure of it we posted as such day after day on SI. Were we right - ANY of us? So far, NO! Did ANY Y2K company come out and tell us things were not as rosy as everyone thought in the Y2K remediation business? NO. The only warnings were from companies who were a mere matter of weeks from reporting their quarters. Those companies halved the next day and have pretty much continued to decline ever since. As stocks rarely move sideways, it's not all that difficult to be "right" when the odds are an even 50/50. And as stocks rarely go in one direction forever, if you guess one direction long enough you are almost always right. Big deal. One last bit of logic: If twice as much code -- in general -- had flowed to Y2K companies in '98, would you have expected ALYD's stock price to be much higher right now? If the answer is "yes", then you pretty much just confirmed to yourself that you really think ALYD's current price is as a result of code flow, not inept management. If you want to go so far as to argue that wrong=inept, then I'd say the whole sector is inept not just ALYD. - Jeff