Investology

See part 1 for question and answers 1 through 5

One question related to Ecompark. Do you think it is worth buying at toady’s price ($2.24 at Jan 24, 2000)? If so what is your % increase from now until June. I purchased at $1.01 a while ago and have sold some since then to cover my initial investment. Wanted 25% return, which I got a couple of weeks ago. So now the remaining amount I still have is purely profit. Thanks for your great analysis & tip. Would u purchase more today? By GC

Ecompark (EKP/CDNX) is one of 7 Internet incubators I have been tracking. EKP is an old favorite of mine, the only company that I have visited personally. As you know, I don’t like mutual funds but I think incubation is a better business model and that is why I have investments in these incubators (CMGI, ICGE, EKP/VSE, PNP/TSE, EQS/VSE, IX/VSE). They have served me well so far.

Besides the AMEX and the NYSE, there are 4 markets for a company to list its shares in the USA:

Nasdaq Vrs OTCBB

Please double click on the archived commentary link (top left corner of the main page) and this will take you to a list of every article that I have sent to my readers.

On the prospects of RRL, I do not see any significant appreciation in the short term. RRL will move aggressively once Zero Knowledge (another favorite of mine) announces its IPO plans. At that point, many investors will realize how undervalued RRL is, and that is when the stampede will begin.

Ultimately, the software may either be licensed to browser makers or sold to individuals who want to remain private on the net. Currently Zero Knowledge sells its version of the privacy software for $USD49.95 after a 30-day free trial. RRL can do the same at some point.

Watch this company very well, there is a slue of complementary products to be released in the near future. These products will be bundled with the privacy software.

I have mentioned Cell-Loc (in same sector as Sigem) so many times in the past and actually enjoying tremendous success (investment-wise) with them and have researched their version of cellular location in particular. Maybe you can tell us more about Sigem and we will post it for other readers.

FMI is a leader in its field. In these columns, I have mentioned so many of todays leaders and also Future Leaders (FLINT) and readers have come to enjoy huge gains from these calls. I have no doubt about the ability of management to deliver on its promises and the strength of FMI’s product portfolio.

The price fell from $17.80 (Dec 20, ‘99) to $7.50 (Jan 11, ‘00) because of a badly worded press release on Dec 20, 1999 about the ADD product, a sidekick product for the company. This reminds me of the famous "briefing" conducted by Nortel in Oct ‘98 which led to a 50% depreciation in the following days.

I’m XXXXX’s wife. I bought a whole bunch of DLSC and I heard you have some as well. Would you sell them at current run-up. What should I be looking out for? My broker kept telling me to hold on to them since he seems to know something but he wouldn’t tell. A clue he gave me was that it would be trading on the big board next month. Would you know what the implication of trading OTC as opposed to on the big board. Appreciate any insight.

I took a position in this company on Sept 22, 1999 at $3.55 and since then have seen this stock hit many 52-week highs. It’s currently yo-yoing between $10 -$12.

Are you in Sikaman Gold Resources (SKG/TSE) ? It’s going to hit $10 a share- SG

SKG/TSE currently has 175,438,000 issued shares and closed on Friday at $0.57CAD, giving us a market value or cap of $100M. At $10 a share, you are saying that SKG is worth $1.8 billion in march 2000. I do not believe it’s worth $1.8B despite being the first to introduce wireless online shopping in Canada. It is not a leader in its field and there are no big barriers to enter e-commerce or online shopping.

Another EKP is EQS/CDNX - $0.75. I have not had the chance to visit them yet to listen and learn their story. I also like Pinetree (PNP/CDNX) - $10.80 a lot, but the real quickie is PXC/CDNX - $1.28. It’s going to be volatile

My keyboarding skills are not very good hence I can’t put all my ideas on the site. The objective is to find tomorrow’s giants today or long before Bay/Wall Street does. Sometimes it takes more than one year, in others it could be less. You mentioned Vasogen. I profiled Vasogen in 1999 and the Financial Post profiled it almost 12 months to the day. During this time, the stock I purchased for $1.75 has gone up more than ten times.

Some of the stocks are not on the site, because they were private conversations with individual investors and I tend to think they should remain private. The criteria I use to select stocks are noted in a previous article.

Margin is the term used to represent the amount an investor has to deposit when he asks a broker to buy securities on credit. For example, 30% margin means the investor only has to have 30% of the total investment outlay in his account at the time that he asks a trader to buy him a stock with 30% margin.

An investor’s order to a broker that sets the selling price of a stock below the current market price to protect profits that have already been made or to prevent further losses if the stock drops. It’s a kind of insurance policy.

I cannot answer this question as aptly as Don Tapscott (one of only 2 writers I enjoy reading every week, the other is Diane Francis) did a few days back and hence I have provided a link to his article. Don is the chairman of Alliance for Converging Technologies

If you buy more of a security at a price that is lower than the price paid for the initial investment, to reduce the average cost per unit, you are averaging down.