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I am no doctor, but I do know a little about how the human body works. This knowledge
has helped me stay healthier nutritionally than I might otherwise have, and it helps
me to avoid stress and shocks that could be damaging. Now, those statements might
seem so obvious that they hardly need mentioning. Such is not the case generally
though, as evidenced by the poorer health of people in third-world countries and
even in the impoverished inhabitants of our own country. Just a few nights ago I
read an article by an emergency room doctor that told of an immigrant (illegal,
I might add), who presented at an emergency room with a 2-year-old boy who was lethargic
and pale (normally bronze-skinned). To make a long story short, the diagnosis was
incredibly severe anemia, cause by low levels of iron in the blood. It turns out
the parents had been feeding this child nothing but grocery store milk for nearly
six months. Without iron, hemoglobin cannot attach to blood cells to carry oxygen
efficiently. The boy was basically suffocating along with being malnourished. Contrary
to the popular saying, ignorance is not always bliss.
I am also no professional
market analyst, but I do understand enough about the markets to keep me from being
avoidably harmed by it. In fact, I have never actively traded stock. Many of my
engineering colleagues are quite active in daily trading and while I am not privy
to their successes – or lack thereof – they are very smart people and know what
the risks are going into the game. Such is evidently not that case with all who
invest, however.
Just as there are people who suffer physical maladies out
of ignorance, I found out recently just how ignorant (could actually be stupidity)
some people are about the stock market in which they willingly invest. It is one
thing to take some hits and acknowledge that you alone are responsible for the results
because you alone decided to assume the risk. It is quite another to get burned
by market forces, and then blame everyone around you for it.
Last week, the
NASDAQ-listed company I work for held its annual stockholders' meeting (I am not
a shareholder, but do have some out-of-the-money options). While I did not attend,
I did listen to the webcast after it was over. What I heard astounded me. The first
2/3 of the meeting was filled with ho-hum financial stuff and speeches about how
we performed over the last year (which was outstanding, by the way) and predictions
for the future (which is also outstanding). After the calm came the storm. Person
after person stepped up to the microphone to pound our officers with what I consider
to be insulting, inane, utterly foolish questions, and to deride some of them personally.
The crime? Our stocks that were once $80/share before the tech bubble crash in 2000
and the terrorists attacks in 2001 are, a full six years later, still only valued
at $6. To make matters worse, some of the founding-era officers had had the audacity
to exercise a few options with strike prices of under $1. Surely high crimes and
misdemeanors had been committed. A public lynching was in order, and by Jove, they
were just the people to do it!
I assume since those people are savvy enough
to be investors that they are also sophisticated enough to use a computer to surf
to the free financial websites like finance.yahoo.com (that is where I always go to see what is happening).
There, they can look at market performance charts of the DJIA and NASDAQ since 2000.
Likely without exception every publicly traded company took an awful beating. 9/11/2001
rubbed salt in the wound, further depressing the markets. Some companies never recovered,
while others – most, thankfully – struggled back to their feet and thrive again
today. While 9/11 came without warning, the tech bubble crash was portended by many.
Does the phrase “irrational exuberance” ring a familiar bell?
For years
people were warned about the potential for a major market correction. For years
the stock prices of high-tech companies climbed in value based on astronomical P/E
ratios. It was investors - both professionals and laymen - that pumped air into
the bubble daily. Speculation and hard cord gambling was paying off handsomely in
that era, so the elephant in the room was ignored, so to speak. You know the story:
People were selling their houses and taking out huge loans in order to raise cash
to invest in the markets. Some literally bet the farm…and lost it all. Surely that
is old news to everyone now, right? Have we not moved on?
Apparently, some
are stuck back in the spring of 2000. One lady got up twice to scold us for her
holdings of $85/share stocks, and how she never was able to build that bathroom
off the back porch because of our company (she really said that). The woman personally
attacked (verbally) one of our company founders (who laid everything he owned on
the line to help start the company) for having dared to build a large house in the
country while she was forced to live in a modest city home. Some man all but accused
a couple of our senior staff of being involved in a stock options back-dating scandal
because of the much-below current stock price value of the options that were recently
exercised. Our CFO explained that those options were granted almost a decade ago,
before the market run-up, and before the stocks had split two or three (or four)
times. There is a 10-year statute of limitations on exercising options, and that
time was nearly at hand. It was use them or lose them time.
Yet another complained
that we only take from the community in the form of tax breaks and never give back.
He seemed oblivious to all the programs like March of Dimes, Habitat for Humanity,
and various other charities that the company and its employees and families take
active roles in both during work time and personal time. We also sponsor university
research and hire college interns during the summer. Oh, and we also employ about
1,000 people locally fulltime with higher than average pay rates. There are a lot
of very nice cars in the parking lots (excluding my embarrassing 1995 Mercury Tracer
wagon).
Clearly these people had a bone to pick with our company and they
would take any opportunity to air their grievances – justified or not. Clearly,
they have absolved themselves of all responsibility for their own decisions made
more than six years ago. Our official representatives were as polite as they could
be in responding. Good for them; I might not have been as cordial.
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