From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@cox.net)
Date: Sun Feb 10 2002 - 14:28:47 MST
I agree, doc, that pseudoscience can be useful when time is short. Just
remember, though, if something important hinges on the facts, be wary of that
low-calorie, empty/lite pseudoscientific snack that comes at us so hard and fast
in these "media-enriched" days. Be ever mindful of that "man behind the
curtain", controlling that "content-rich" multimedia stream. Pertinent facts are
easily obfuscated by these wizards.
I just get the "feeling" that, upon deeper inspection, one would not find such
strong correlative relationships between the length of companies annual reports
and their stock performance.
For bootay assay, however, pseudoscience is a jim dandy tool. Tea leaves and
ouija boards can also help, especially when drunk, in evaluating two, equally
and eminently fuckable choices.
To choices,
Walter
Dr Sebby wrote:
> ....i dunno walter, if you're calling b.s. on all such notions, you'd have
> to include this common logic as false too; "if a chick is wearing a
> sweatshirt wrapped around her waist and covering her ass - we can assume one
> of two things, she wants to avoid attention/harassment or she has an ass
> that SHOULD be hidden from view. since the vast majority of humans tend to
> be attention whores and like to show off our good qualities, we can assume
> that nearly ALWAYS, the motivation is going to be to hide that big fat &
> nasty bootay)"
>
> ..it IS pseudoscientific, but sometimes such things can be helpful if time
> is short:)
>
> drsebby.
>
> ----Original Message Follows----
> From: Walter Watts <wlwatts@cox.net>
> Reply-To: virus@lucifer.com
> To: virus <virus@lucifer.com>
> Subject: virus: pseudoscientific infotainment
> Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 11:30:34 -0600
>
> I hereby coin a new phrase, followed by a flawless specimen of its ilk.
>
> "pseudoscientific infotainment"
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> New Earnings Fear: Verbosity
> By Joanna Glasner
>
> 2:00 a.m. May 9, 2001 PDT
>
> Whoever coined the phrase "length matters" probably didn't have
> technology earnings reports in mind. Maybe they should have.
> New research from Merrill Lynch finds a strong correlation between the
> length of a tech firm's annual financial statements and the company's
> performance on the stock market.
>
> In most cases, researchers concluded that companies with longer reports
> perform worse.
>
> "Oftentimes, the longer the document, the more messed up the business,"
> wrote Steve Milunovich, Merrill Lynch's global technology strategist, in
> a study released Tuesday.
>
> He found that companies with long annual reports, known as 10Ks, often
> used the space for detailed explanations of write-offs and other unusual
> items that dragged down earnings.
>
> To carry out the research, Milunovich compared the file sizes of annual
> reports submitted by companies in the Merrill Lynch 100 technology stock
> index. He then compared that data to the performance of the stock in
> their most recent fiscal year.
>
> The findings? The study concluded that 83 percent of companies with the
> shorter annual reports (those occupying less than 300 KB of file space)
> outperformed the index.
>
> On average, stocks of companies in the under-300 KB group, which
> included Adobe Systems (ADBE), Sungard Data Systems (SDS) and Unisys
> Corp. (UIS), declined by
> 52 percent in their most recent fiscal year. Although they didn't
> exactly do well, the group's performance was above average for firms in
> the index, which took a beating in 2000.
>
> Companies with long annual reports (over 500 KB), on the other hand,
> sported an average decline of 77 percent in their most recent fiscal
> year. Only 18 percent of companies in that category, which included
> underperformers Lucent Technologies (LU), Nortel Networks (NT) and
> Brocade Communications (BRCD), outperformed the index.
>
> Researchers advised that the results be taken with a grain of salt.
> Often there are other factors besides complicated explanations of losses
> that can account for a lengthy annual report. In the case of AOL-Time
> Warner, for example, myriad pages were required to explain the process
> of merging the Internet and media behemoths.
>
> Also, there are exceptions to the generalization that long reports
> signify poor performance, and vice versa. Cadence Design Systems (CDN),
> for example, filed a
> 508 KB annual report and only saw its stock drop 10.4 percent in fiscal
> 2000. Foundry Networks
> (FDRY), which filed a 245 KB report, saw its stock plummet 94.8 percent.
>
> Even so, Milunovich believes there's a lesson to be learned in all this
> Kilobyte-counting. Investors, he said, should beware of annual reports
> with too many footnotes. It's not that all footnotes are bad, he said,
> but in general, the longer the annual report, the more complicated the
> business is, and the more issues that need to be explained.
>
> Merrill Lynch cautioned, however, that the experiment was "less than
> scientific." Only 48 of the 100 companies in the index were included in
> the study. Others hadn't yet submitted annual reports, had irregular
> fiscal years, or were based outside the United States.
>
> --
>
> Walter Watts
> Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
>
> "To err is human. To really screw things up requires a bare-naked
> command line and a wildcard operator."
>
> DrSebby.
> "Courage...and shuffle the cards".
>
> _________________________________________________________________
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-- Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc. "To err is human. To really screw things up requires a bare-naked command line and a wildcard operator."
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