Waiting for Godot, Guidant and Gillette.

I was planning to put Pulitzer there in place of Godot, but then I wouldn't get a catchy title!

This one is about 3 of my recent "miss"es. Why the quotes ? Because, these are misses by design!

All 3, Guidant, Gillette and Pulitzer were rumored to be targets for a while before the actual takeover happened. But all were richly valued, and the potential for a big pullback on even the slightest bad news was large. That would have been painful, with any follow-on buyout not rewarding the earlier buy sufficiently enough to compensate for the pain. In the end, the wait approach was validated by the relatively small premiums these companies got.

Isn't that excuse enough ? ;-)