pointers plz..., page-10

Monavale,

I'm no expert myself, but I'm getting a better idea of how I can minimize my risk, which basically means knowing as much as possible about anything my money's in.

How best to do that is still unclear to me. One thing anyone can do is be all over the announcements. Not a day goes by where I don't scan for new ones at least once. I think that's a minimum. That cliche about "set and forget" (or "buy and hold") means nothing. Why would you leave it all to chance when you put hard earned money down? I AM interested in leaving my money invested long term with a company. That would be ideal, however, I feel its a must to keep gathering all the available information and keeping on top of things. If you're not prepared to do that you're taking dumb risks owning shares in businesses.

I have an account with Comsec. If you go into the Company Research tab there's an option called Forecasts, and at the bottom of that page it tells you who the Contributing Analysts are. Of the two who follow Zicom one wouldn't return my call. The other guy seemed keen to talk. My take on him is that he's done all this research on the company, but relatively few people are interested. Compare the number of brokers who follow BHP with small companies like Zicom. There are hundreds of analysts who can chat all day about the big australian, but most of them wouldn't know who ZGL are. Perhaps this guy was just happy that, finally, someone else was interested in this company.

As for ringing the company, one thing i don't know but need to learn, is exactly what you can ask without compromising either yourself or person you speak to. That would be good to know. The Zicom guy gave me nothing, virtually. Quite rightly he just said he couldn't say anything that wasn't released yet. I wasn't overly pushy.

I have exchanged emails with two CEO's of small businesses who responded quite promptly to my questions, however I can't imagine getting through to Marius Kloppers. He's getting hammered every day by hundreds of analysts and institutional shareholders, but smaller firms have less overhead in that regard so are more accessible.

I bought my ZGL shares for 24c, and when I bailed out I got 23c. I think it'll work out longer term, but I've got some shorter term financial commitments that meant I couldn't leave my money sitting there without a result this year. Having said that, if the pricing gets silly, I'd love to buy back in (those other concerns willing).....here's hoping for a silly price in 6 months time or so.

Hope that helps