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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC)
INTC 41.72+3.0%9:31 AM EST

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To: Amy J who wrote (166789)6/22/2002 11:02:12 AM
From: Jacques Newey  Read Replies (2) of 186894
 
Amy J, Re: "I've read a lot on his position going back to the early 90's too (and am not going to waste the time to dig it up) but his dislike for options expands way beyond what you mentioned."

Buffett's dislike for options is, believe or not, in your best interest as a shareholder of INTC. It's a shame you can't see that. If you had understood what he was saying in the early 90's, you might not have maxed out your 401 (k)'s with INTC when it was it was selling at levels north of where it is now.

Buffett saw this whole tech crash coming Amy. He understood what the ultimate consequence of high tech's accounting of options would be. He predicted the current crash like the plot of a 10 cent novel.

Unfortunately, the story isn't over yet. The options accounting tragedy still has a few chapters left, and they won't make for happy reading.

Here's a hint on how the rest of the story will unfold. Standard and Poor's has announced they will begin to calculate and report what they call the "core earnings" of companies in their indices. The new "core earnings" will reflect the true cost of options on earnings (i.e. options will be expensed). S&P agrees with Buffett on the accounting of options. They are apparently as clueless as Buffett is.

Guess what. Core earnings (a more representative indicator of a company's true profits) will be significantly less than reported earnings for many companies that issue options. Cisco being a prime example.

When the Mr.Market figures out that the E's in the already high P/E's are much smaller than he previously thought, then the P's will fall even further than they already have.

The tragedy is that Amy J's of the world will have personally suffered from a set of circumstances that they thought they fully understood.

"It ain't what we don't know that harms us. It's what we do know that ain't so."
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