John,
Your post, as always, is dead on, and reflected my sentiments exactly. DELL has completely mismanaged investor expectations and the Street AGAIN!!! And this is the fourth quarter in six that they have done so.
The reaction on the stock tomorrow however I believe will be muted as this has been whispered around trading desks for a while now (the reason the stock has been steadily drifting down)and most who wanted to be out of the stock are out. This morning Dan Niles from Lehman also warned that today's anlyst meeting would be a "mixed bag", tempering any enthusiasm.
I had a 5% position in DELL as of two weeks ago, but started scaling down and out as I heard about this possible miss from a couple of hedge funds in NYC, but still left 3.5% remaining as I still trusted MD to deliver today following his recent bullish comments. Needless to say, that trust in DELL management has now completely evaporated.
I should have listened to the traders at the hedge funds and gone short the stock at 36 as they did, but having owned DELL since 1997 I still had a sense of loyalty to the company more than loyalty to the charts <G>. Tomorrow, however, I may sell my position in full. DELL may be close to a value play now, but it will also be dead money for quite a few quarters to come at best. At worst, it will go the way of Lucent.
Best Wishes,
Sam |
