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

To: Jon Koplik who wrote (21353)	1/15/1999 11:20:00 AM
From: marginmike	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

The bargains at auction are usially had when bought after the sale. Thus they had no bidder's at all. If there are no bidder's it is unwise to bid when you can make an offer after the auction below the reserve.

To: Jon Koplik who wrote (21353)	1/15/1999 1:25:00 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Jon, being the highest bidder could make me go 'gulp'. It is a very strong indicator of stupidity unless you really know that you know what you are doing. But I disagree with Marginmike that the bargains are to be had after the auction. The best bargains are when the other bidders don't understand the value or the logical high bidders aren't there. I enjoy auctions and get bargains, but they need to be genuine auctions - ie the object is really for sale, not just in another form of promotion. I was getting ready to bid on spectrum in NZ last year [the auction was postponed and will probably be in March]. It was the weirdest thing. It is like valuing Web stocks. You really have no way of figuring out what it really is worth but you know a LOT of money is going to be carried by spectrum holders and Web stocks. But which ones? And how much per MHz and at which MHz and when? I calculated that the 5 MHz blocks they were selling were worth somewhere between $10,000 [a scarcity value price sufficiently high to stop just anyone buying some just for the fun of owning some spectrum if they have zero use for it] and $10m. My bids were going to be at the lower end of that range. As NextWave, Pocket and others showed in the C-block auctions, they too have little idea of what the real value of spectrum is. I suspect George Gilder is right and it has near zero value because radio technology is going to increase the capacity of spectrum very vastly. It is the new cheap and plentiful resource. The new scarcity is brain function. In the space of 5 years we have gone from an information desert to a cornucopia. I used to scan week old Asian Wall Street Journals for pathetic items on QUALCOMM. Now it is a matter of trying to pick out the absolutely most delectable bits. My brain is simply too inadequate to do much more than gaze in bumbling awe at the tsunami of wired and soon to be wireless knowledge and thinking available anytime, anywhere. Methods of improving brainpower are the next vital thing to do. Smart Web Helpers would be a start, but I'd really like to have had less lead poisoning, better parental DNA, better diet, less school [the way it was anyway] and more play time as a child. Anyway, auctions seem to be overpriced [Brazilian telecom privatisation from which Q! had a narrow escape I believe] or a bargain. Comparing the capital outlay for equipment compared with spectrum cost in the latest Brazilian escapade, it seems they didn't overpay for spectrum this time. The value of spectrum comes from the delay in producing the spectrum hunting WWeb Anita [TM] devices. Until then, the inefficient cellphones and other radio devices gobble spectrum on an allocated basis of, "Keep the roads clear - the presidential motorcade is coming through". The idea that the high bidder has 'won' always seemed a weird idea. Especially if keenly fought. Check out Yahoo! 'winners' at $445 the other day; I bet they aren't beating their chests at the moment. Mquarkce Q! $80 31 January 99. On $64 now - in company with a strongly rising market, so not exactly a preference for Q! but it doesn't hurt. Hurry, hurry folks, don't be the one to say the little boy is crying wolf again!!! The wolf is REALLY there this time. Invest in cloning, DNA manipulation, better quality children. That's where the big money will be once we have WWeb on the road. Call it eugenics if you like, but eugenics has been practised ever since women first declined the first male to come drooling, which would have been about the time pollen started falling from Precambrian pines or whatever they were. Dumb eugenics as practised by Hitler doesn't mean that we should throw out the baby with the bathwater.