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June 30, 2008 Dear Friend, Research reports on Alcoa and Weyerhaeuser are enclosed. We cut our second-quarter Alcoa estimate to $0.58 from $0.65 and cut our WY price target to $75 from $80 (in sympathy to timber values), and rate each Neutral. Yesterday our marketing manager, Frank Cavallo, googled our firm and found that our May 6, 2008 research report initiating coverage on Mercator Minerals had been posted in its entirety on http://www.stockhouse.com/ by someone "bjorn3d2b" on May 20, 2008 at 11:35 am. Does anyone know who "bjorn3d2b" might be??? We have looked for other security lapses, and have not found any other of our reports posted on any bulletin boards or web pages. We take security very seriously. In paragraph #8 of our standard customer agreement (see http://www.veryindependentresearch.com/ a subscriber member") we reserve the right to "encrypt" our research reports to prevent electronic forwarding, downloading or printing. We are investigating such protocol. My colleague, Joseph Reagor, has developed a ten step encryption algorithm using Adobe acrobat 8.0 and interacting with our bulk email vendor, Client Instant Access. Joe will be phoning a few of you to test it out, and we apologize for this inconvenience. We have been approached in recent months by Wachovia Securities, Kellogg Partners, Calyon and Monument Securities each of which have offered to "market" our research, sponsor our conferences or similarly interact with us. We have eliminated Kellogg Partners from consideraton, but continue dialogues with the others. Under no circumstance will we tolerate any arrangement in which salesmen or brokers can electronically forward our reports or facilitate "free samples." We consider it vital to restrict access to our research for it to be valuable, and do not want to approach anywhere near the maximum 150 client distribution cited in our customer contract. We have also attached a power point presentation on our company, which we prepared for a June 25th "company retreat" and brainstorming session with a few friends as well as our discussions with financial institutions that approached us. Faithfully yours, John C. Tumazos |
Copyright © 2008 John Tumazos Very Independent Research,
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