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Technology Stocks : MRV Communications (MRVC) opinions? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sector Investor who wrote (13211)	5/4/1999 10:57:00 AM
From: Robert G. Harrell	Respond to of 42804

Sector, Thanks for all your great posts. I was out of town when the insider discussion took place and the new round of China deal excitement took off before I could add my thoughts. While things are quiet, I'll jump back in. First, here is an example from another excellent thread that reminds me of this one because it has a small number of extremely well informed investors who post regularly. Message 8960451 Message 9003081 Take a look at a chart of APW. It spiked up within hours of the first post. Obviously other people saw the same insider transactions which were posted. I can't find a copy of the E-mail which I sent to Noam in early Sept. suggesting that he buy back the shares he had previously sold, when the stock was much higher, at about 20 cents on the dollar. However,as I recall, he could have bought back all the shares previously sold and have roughly $2million left over. If I had $2million, I would put it on automatic pilot in the mechanical investment strategies which have done extremely well for me and spend my time breeding flowers and doing church work waiting for my son to finish his education so I can go to a 3rd world company and fulfill my dream for the rest of my life. Admittedly, I don't live in CA, my house is paid for, my daughter is through school and practicing medicine and my son will go to college on an athletic scholarship, so $2mil seems huge to me. My point, however, is that Noam is a wealthy man and can afford to buy back shares. He could have bought back half of what he previously sold and have $4mil left over. The important thing, as already stated by many, is the symbolic message sent to the market. I would even be satisfied with the knowledge that he had put his own money in one or more of the startups. Third observation: I can understand the skepticism of some people about the 3 satellite companies because I have owned shares in some companies with tricky CEO's. Ess Tech is one example. Fred Chan has been very good at pumping up ESST stock, selling near the high and then putting the money outside the company, like a big investment in an offshore chip foundry. Another that comes to mind, is Thrustmaster. This company had a board stocked with cronies from a previous company that went sour and who were very willing to screw the shareholders by re-pricing options for the executives. I'm not saying that this is what is happening at MRVC. I have more shares now than I did during the disaster last summer. However, I can understand other people's skepticism. Enough rambling about the past. I have another post I want to construct about some stuff I read in the Gilder Technology Letter which is much more relevant to today. Regards, Bob