Re: 3/19/01 - Thom Calandra's StockWatch: Tokyo Joe on the London stage
Thom Calandra's StockWatch: Tokyo Joe on the London stage
LONDON (FTMW) - Joe Park is a CEO and chairman these days. Says so right on his calling card.
The man who came to symbolize the quintessential Nasdaq day-trader and stocks tipster is, like many CEOs today, lamenting the state of his business. Park's Tokyojoe.com has sunk to 600 paying members from 4,000 at its peak a year ago.
"That's 600 people paying $200 a month - not bad for this market," said Park, who took time before a London speaking engagement to share his thoughts on Nasdaq, the Dow and the depressed state of the individual investor.
Tokyo Joe, at the age of 50, has had more notoriety than the former Korean economist banked on when he set up a day-trading shop on the east side of Manhattan in 1998. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Joe Park, whose full name is Yun Soo Oh Park, in January 2000, saying he had touted a stock to his customer without disclosing he'd received shares from the company.
Tokyo Joe, through his Societe Anonyme investment club, collected membership fees amounting to more than $1.1 million from July 1998 through June 1999, the SEC claimed. Then he dumped shares he was telling his clients to buy, the regulatory agency charged.
Park says he is settling with the SEC and that his mistake was not disclosing his every activity to members. "I sell everything I own at the end of the day anyway," he says. "All cash. No angst. I think this market dictates it."
As his lawyers deal with the SEC in Washington, Park is sending out 30 to 40 e-mails a day to his paying customers. His tokyojoe.com, a New York City corporation, has five employees.
"I want to teach people how to control their fear and greed, and how not to try to hit home runs any more" says Park, wearing his trademark microscopic sunglasses.
Park says he still turns a trading profit of $5,000 a day. "That might sound funny when my lawyers charge me $500 an hour," he says. Park mostly trades in and out of volatile stocks such as Check Point Software (CHKP), Juniper Networks (JNPR) and Ciena Corp. (CIEN).
No more crazy swings
"We shorted Brocade from $98; we shorted Juniper at $78," he says about his short-sales, or trades that anticipate a fall in a stock's price. Those shares, in Internet networking companies, now sell for far lower prices.
Park, who speaks at a rapid-fire pace, says the plunging Nasdaq market has forced him to rethink the way he buys and sells shares. "I don't go for the crazy swings anymore," he says. "I used to buy 10,000 shares of Juniper in the morning, sell on the 10 a.m. slide, ride the 2 p.m. pop. In those days you picked the chart, bought it and you were up 40 percent."
Park, who insists he called the Nikkei 225's decline below the 12,000 level when the benchmark Japanese index was 16,000 in October, has some predictions he's willing to share. He starts by saying his record has not been perfect of late.
"I thought Intel was bottoming at 42 and Cisco at 36," he says about two of the leading shares in the Nasdaq 100 Index. "Your instinct and your chart tells you it's the bottom, and then they keep falling."
Park sees a real estate slump ahead. Indeed, demand for homes in California's Silicon Valley is sliding quickly ahead of the spring buying season. Manhattan apartments are seen at risk because of job layoffs at the Wall Street banks and brokerages.
"I know a diamond merchant on 47th Street (in New York) who lost $187 million in stocks," he says.
The motto on Park's tokyojoe.com Web site reads, "Throw out 10 lines, catch one whale." On the site, Joe displays images of his villa in southern France and a Lamborghini Diablo Roadster.
Park sees a support level for the Dow Jones Industrials, a 30-stock Index that represents the largest American companies, at 9,600. Its last close was at 9,823. "If it breaks that, it's 9,200. Look at 3M (MMM). It's too high. It looks like a great short." Shares of 3M, a diversified manufacturing company that is in the Dow index, sell for $106, or just 13 percent below their December high.
Park says he doesn't like anything in the "old economy." Asked about gold stocks, a onetime shelter for investors in times of trouble, he only says, "Pffft, who would touch it? It goes nowhere." Gold prices, now below $260 an ounce, have declined along with share prices this month.
Would Tokyo Joe, who once operated New York City restaurants, like to return to the good times of the late 1990s?
"In 1999 I paid $6 million in taxes. One of my members started with $120,000 and made $8 million. We bought GLM (Global Marine) at $6 and sold it at $18," he says wistfully. "Sure I'd like to see that again, but I just don't think it's going to happen."
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