Hello Eudaimonia.

You started your reply to my last message with a disagreement with one of the points I made.

“There’s a huge element missing in your essay and that is you have not factored in that there were only approx. 25M shares outstanding at the time the stock traded in these ranges. So I would disagree that ‘the investment in Fancamp was hundreds of millions.’”

Thanks for the additional information and your counterpoint. The part of the sentence you singled out—“the investment in Fancamp was hundreds of millions”—could be taken to mean I was talking about new investment funds. However, please take my words in the context of the complete sentence and the preceding sentence. “Actions speak louder than words. For those 51 consecutive weeks of dollar plus trading, the investment in Fancamp was hundreds of millions.”

The meaning of the “investment” I was talking about was “investment” in the sense of investing in a company when you buy its stock in open-market trading. The narrow point I was trying to make was nothing more than: The trading in hard dollars (over 51 weeks) was not insignificant. It was not due to somebody’s momentary misconception. When people put significant sums of money on the line over an extended period of time, generally, it is not a fluke.

You also pointed out “a huge missing element” in my “essay,” the fact that only approximately 25 million shares were “outstanding at the time the stock traded in these ranges.” The additional information you’ve introduced does not invalidate anything I said. But your point is very well taken. I should have included the share count in my message. Indeed, it is “a huge missing element.”

The comparatively tiny share count highlights the point I was trying to make all the more. When people expend a great deal of money chasing a tiny number of shares (over the course of more than a year) that shows their commitment is as strong as can be. It tends to show their thinking was not illusionary. Again, in my message, all I did was remind everybody what we already know, “Actions speak louder than words.” My point is the investors of 2007 and the investors of 2008 were not dummies. Given the entire set of circumstances at that time, paying an average price of $1.80 per share (over the course of 51 weeks) was not as crazy as it may seem with hindsight.

Even given the great share dilution, far more crazy is the trading right now. You can make the well-grounded argument that the high degree of dilution exceeds the—comparatively high or low—degree of improvement in the value of our properties and other assets. So far as dilution, my opinion is that the increased value of our assets (whether commensurate or not) should be part of that discussion.