I'm not responding to anyone in particular...just keeping the string moving. I'm a retired Western Electric, AT&T Microelectronics, now Lucent Technology person. 35 years with the mother. Over the years I didn't see the BOARD having too much say about anything.
It's the STREET that doesn't like AT&T. I think the STREET is now controlled by much younger people who look askance at "old" companies like AT&T. They love the "techie" stuff. Just look how they invest in Internet stocks which haven't earned anything substantial yet.
I'd like to hear your opinions on investing in Yahoo, Excite, @Home, AOL, etc. These companies for the most part are nothing more than old highway billboards...the only thing they have to offer is advertising space.
If you really are a market gambler and out to make money then you should be pouring money into momentum stocks like LUCENT and others that are being pushed up in spite of P/E's etc.
If you are the old tried and true AT&T stockholder then you'll just have to sit on your shares and watch what happens. That's what I did for a long time. Now I only have about 400 shares left. I just don't have the time (at age 63) to sit around waiting to see what the old girl will do as we move into the next century.
It seems that everyone that comes in here is waiting for a ride up on the shoulders of the old girl. I don't believe it is that kind of stock, however, just to prove me wrong, just look what it did since April of 1997 after it bottomed out at around 32.
When it got down there it turned around and as the DOW did very little during the same period, up went MA BELL (I shouldn't call T that anymore should I?). What was the reason for her rise. And what was the reason for her previous drop down from way back when she first announced the spin-off of what is now LUCENT (which I didn't think would be such a gem) and NCR which I knew was a dude and immediately exchanged my shares of for LUCENT.
I think T rose during that period because most of all the other DOW components were so far overpriced that T became a good "bet" on where to put "new" money coming in from investors all over the world. Those 401K monthly deductions got to go somewhere. If a person is investing in funds that are large caps, sooner or later some of it had to start going to T. The money managers couldn't keep shoveling it at IBM and GE all the time.
I find that I can't judge a company's stock value by the old so called tried and true methods of sound management, good market, etc., etc., etc. Those rules are now out the window as far as I'm concerned.
This market is much more manipulated than it was in the past. After the big money people got themselves acquainted with trading curbs, they've been using them to their advantage every since. They make the real money and on occasion loose some real money in their attempts to control the sectors.
If all those wave charts really work, then why aren't you moving in and out of T whenever you see things swinging one way or the other. One reason is because you don't want to pay capital gains. If that's the case then you should never want a stock to rise until you are ready to sell and take profits - - then up, up, up and away is the battle cry.
I used to be very loyal to AT&T. After all, I was working there for one heck of a long time. But I've changed and the change didn't happen over night. It took those years of the late 70's, the decade of the 80's, and then what was happening inside the company during the start of the 90's that made me realize that I was a fool to sit on my stock. I only hung on until my goals to sell were met and I got out of most of it. Of course for me, most of it was in my 401K and moving it to some other investment didn't cost me the price of capital gains.
Hold on...maybe the old lady will reach 80 by the end of the year...and then again, if she keeps getting the bad press like she usually does, she may go down to around 40 before turning around sometime late next year or the year 2000. |
