X-Message-Number: 1124
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 92 01:00:11 EDT
From:  (Perry E. Metzger)
Subject: CRYONICS: Alcor's Investment Management

Not for sci.cryonics

In Re: Eric Klien's message about Alcor procrastinating on the
investment recommendations being made;

The situation (as Eric has described it; I pass no judgment yet on the
accuracy of his report) sounds horrible. I can understand Alcor
wanting to study the committee's recommendations, but waiting even
more than a few days to make a decision on any of them is madness. In
investments, timing is everything. Procrastinating a month on a
purchase or sale makes the committee useless. If Alcor feels it does
not have the expertise to study the recommendations in a timely way it
should get out of the business of managing its own funds and hire a
money manager; if it wants to manage the money itself it MUST deal
with recommendations as fast as possible; within a day or two at most.
If it isn't capable of doing that, it isn't capable of reacting fast
enough to manage its own funds.

Haste is never a good thing, but we aren't talking about conducting
massive fishing expeditions on companies prior to investing in private
equity placements; we are talking about open market equities
transactions where you can learn everything obvious there is to know
about a company in six hours given the last few annuals and 10Ks;
allowing a couple of days of time is very generous given that the
committee has prescreened all the recommendations. Could someone from
Alcor comment on why most of the proposals are being ignored?

(I don't want this to sound hostile; I understand how thus far this
might not have hit home. I'm just pointing out that managing a few
hundred k of the most important money you can imagine, the one and
only lifeline for dozens of completely disabled patients, is not a
joke, not a matter for amateurs, and certainly not a matter for
procrastination. I understand that given the pressures that all the
recent suspensions have created this issue may have fallen by the
wayside, but it can't be allowed to fall by the wayside in the future.
Either someone has to be given a mandate to treat this as a high
priority, or a fiduciary has to be appointed.)

Perry Metzger

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