Gary:
Wow! I must say, you have to hand it to Paine Webber for not having "sour grapes" about the fact that NITE cut the big deal with Merrill and discontinued clearing thru Paine.
I mean, you would think PWJ would refrain from writing upbeat things about the NITE-MER deal, yet the report seems very objective and unemotional, showing no signs of sour grapes.
Nor would you think PWJ would hint as they did about possible future synergy between NITE and MER (which could potentially strengthen MER) that would make MER an even more formidable competitor for PWJ.
Gary, thanks for posting that piece by PWJ. Did you post that on Yahoo too? (You might have noticed I post as AlanGreenSpam on Yahoo also). Very time-consuming to monitor those boards for substance.
With regard to your question:
---"Out of curiousity, what do you think the chances are that we idle or decline through year end, what with Y2K worries and all, and then race higher in January with a relief rally?"
I definitely think NITE will find its home above $40 in the next few weeks. My guess is that the fuel for this rise will be either:
1. NITE's forthcoming advertising campaign,
2. Perhaps one or more surprise announcements (NITE working jointly with ECN's, more MER partnering, or Options acquisition),
3. A technical rebound.
Whether NITE continues into the $50's depends on the strength of the forthcoming September rally that everyone seems to be expecting. If there isn't a September rally we may see NITE idling in a trading range. Yet this could be broken by developments related to the Oct 21 earnings release (optimistic/pessimistic statements in the conf call).
I'm really on a fence about the Y2K issue "looming over the market."
About 6 months or so ago, I thought there would be a slow, insidious decline in the stock market as we approached Y2K. But since then, there has been so much gloomy discussion about "everybody's going to be out of the market" for Y2K that I think a lot of the Y2K fears are already priced in or will be priced in an orderly manner.
After all, Y2K isn't a exactly surprise event like the 1997 HongKong devaluation! People have had plenty of time to prepare their portfolios for it. At the same time, there will be many adventurous investors who will be looking past Y2K, hoping find the pre- Y2K low, whenever that happens. As the markets are a discounting mechanism typically six months in advance, perhaps now is the pre-Y2K low, for all we know. |
