Replies to post #34596 on InterDigital Inc (IDCC)

[Learning2vest]

Danny, beg your pardon, but I have a serious disagreement with something you said in the ref post. You were way off the mark when you said "I don't have a lot to add, but..". I think you had a lot to add, and that you did. Thanks!

My opinion is based on what you went on to say in the rest of that post. IMO you shared some of the most valuable insight we have been able to understand so far regarding how the powerful institutional investors on Wall Street actually do their decision making. It's in the following excerpt from your post. Much appreciated!

"I'm about to make some generalizations about professional money managers that I recognize have numerous exceptions but I don't think they would refute my basic point. These folks are very disciplined in their approach to investing money and are all about diversification .. they don't bet the farm on anything no matter how great the potential pay-off might appear to be. They don't use leverage and they don't play "beat the clock" with options. They think in terms of building a balanced portfolio rather than picking the very best stocks. Their goals are long term and expressed as average annual returns in the 10%-20% range. They use a top down approach (i.e. start with an economic forecast) to build their portfolios rather than bottom up (i.e. start with picking stocks). They expect to have some losers and understand that some of them might even be big losers. They understand that analysts are going to make mistakes and focus on their batting averages rather than any one time at bat. They are especially willing to cut an analyst some slack when he or she is wrong for the "right" reasons (something happened to make the forecast wrong that no reasonable person could have expected .. like litigation to resolve NOK/SAM). They are much more concerned about the likely final resolution and willing to hang in there for it to come than worried about any missteps that may happen along the way. The sell-side analysts understand all of this about their institutional clients and go about their jobs with that as a foundation. They all speak the same language and look at money management the same way."