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Technology Stocks : WAVX Anyone? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: WTSherman who wrote (6988)	5/23/1999 1:22:00 PM
From: Jesse Livermore	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11417

Spike Lee, to answer the second first, maybe because the Spragues control the stock with anti-takeover clauses and they were not offered what they believe the company will be valued at in 2,3,5, years. Actually, a presumptuous question as it implies you know there are not, and have not been, such talks. For the first question, I don't want to answer for Snackman (as you did not want to answer for Oliver), but we just saw a very suspicious 50% shake out preceded by bear posters. Indulge us with some well deserved suspicion of new bears until we hit $40 again. It won't be a long indulgence period IMHO.

To: WTSherman who wrote (6988)	5/23/1999 2:23:00 PM
From: Harold Lehman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11417

I would like to tell you about the biggest investment (or non-investment) mistake I ever made. My wife and I were at a conference in either '88 or '89, and I noticed in the Wall Street Journal that a little-heard-of biotech company called Amgen rose 50% in one day because they announced that they received a patent on Epogen, the red blood cell growth stimulator. I didn't buy it because it was too hard psychologically to purchase something that had just risen that much. The above was background. This young company was near their all-time lows, and had just received a patent. A skeptic, like the ones you often see on these boards could say so what, they hadn't even initiated any human studies, not even the preclinical animal studies. They could have said that even if positive results were seen they might be equivocal, that competitors might swoop in with a competing product that's even better, and that they were a long, long way from earning any money, let alone getting a revenue stream. These are all similar, if not identical, with objections I read on this board as well as others. That's why, unless critics really have something incisive to say, I take it with a grain of salt knowing that they'll have to learn the hard way and will never make any big money in the market.

To: WTSherman who wrote (6988)	5/23/1999 2:53:00 PM
From: snackman	Respond to of 11417

I have nothing against negative talk about Wave. I just ask that the negative poster does the DD so that he has the facts. Anyone can say anything true or false. When people come on this thread to save us from ourselves, has no position and tells us all that's wrong about Wave without pointing out the partnerships we have, the time table for deployment etc. etc., it leaves me with a very skeptical taste in my mouth. It is one thing to slam a company and another to point out the problems without slamming them. I don't know about you, but I sure wouldn't take the time to go to a board that I had no intentions of owning just to tell everyone how stupid they are to be invested in this stock. UNLESS, UNLESS, I had an agenda to try and buy the stock as low as I could to make a quick hit with a 5-6 snapback profit. You don't think anything happened like that this past week do you? Nah. Snackman

To: WTSherman who wrote (6988)	5/23/1999 4:21:00 PM
From: Oliver Hahn	Respond to of 11417

I am here to figure out how to evaluate a stock of this nature. Fine, traditional valuations are not suitable. But there has got to be some rational way to balance the risk to reward. Many have said I have no concept of the principle of accepting risk in return for reward. On the contrary, I like to quantify some of the risks and rewards, and what time frame I can reasonably expect the risks to be diminished and the rewards start rolling in. I think snackman is hitting on the rudiments of what needs to be done, claiming a 40% chance of success. However, he provides no basis for making this estimate, and no clarification of how big the success would be and when. And, it is not simple to say the stock price has been bid up, ergo the risk is diminished. We know full well how volatile this stock is. A popular price target thrown around is $100 for the stock. If there is only a 10% chance of hitting that level, this stock is a dog at $10 and a rip-off at $20. Let's take snackman's (or Livermore's) estimate of 40% success and assume $100 is the success level. At $20 per share you will on average only realize double your money, so it is critical to ask how long will it take to realize these gains. I would hope there are some estimates of a justifiable price target, a reasonable time frame, and probability of acheiving those targets. Frankly, given the evidence of product shipments I have already discussed, and that it will take a lot of installed base for Wave to come out of the woods, I find it hard to believe that Wave will not require more cash infusions for a few more years. And I again stress that rolling out a product to the levels that folks are talking about is a much bigger task than anyone is giving it credit. Steve Sprague is not being honest if he thinks 3-5 million chips are going to appear by year end, no matter what his father says. How about we take a vote on the likelihood of just 1 million installed chips by the end of this year? There, that is a quantifiable milestone, and if it is not met then Steve Sprague should be held accountable (such as with a shareholder lawsuit. It is criminal to make wildly optimistic statements when at the head of a public company.) I'll give some thought as to how to estimate the chance of meeting the goals of installing all those chips, how much revenue can reasonably be expected, when will folks give up on their local movie rental store and only go exclusively from the web, how many people will actually go along with it, etc. Do we even have a percentage of each transaction that Wave is going to get? Oliver