Re: Geron as an investment [Was: Re: Telomerase and cancer ]

Max More (max@maxmore.com)
Thu, 09 Dec 1999 09:59:39 -0800

At 10:40 AM 12/9/99 -0600, Lee March wrote:

>Having said that, and again speaking only for myself, I would not try to
>buy an IPO on its issue day. The real money is if you can buy the
>shares before they go public and sell on the opening when they issue
>100-200% above the prepublic price.

In the care of LNUX, it opened up about 1000%. I believe this is a record.

> This massive selling by the
>subscribed buyers is what causes most IPO to crater the first day,
>expecially the first few hours. Let them freefall for a half day or so
>until they firm up, and if they are a real company, like redhat is, they
>will start to climb again and you can buy and make a lot of money. Most
>IPO's take weeks to get back to the price they went public at.

I agree completely. The only way to make money on the first day of an IPO like this is to wait for a (possible) fall from the early peak. I'm not sure this one will fall much, and it's so highly priced already that I doubt it's a good longer term investment. It's already higher than RHAT (which has been public for over three months).

>(Portfolio up 188% MTD...)

Okay, Lee, give! How did you do this? And what about YTD return? Did you do this with options? Or do you have just one or two superperformers in your portfolio. The reason I'm very please with my 103% YTD gain is that I have not used options, and there are 20 stocks in the port, so it wasn't a matter of getting lucky on one stock.

Onward to transhuman wealth!

Max