Ron nicely in the money on the short side.
Call me crazy but the Lizard big balls call of the week is,
.......Consider at some point taking trading short position on AMZN
its now getting absurd.
17-Dec-98
Wheat First Union
Downgrade
Outperform
Hold
1-Dec-98
EVEREN Sec.
Downgrade
Outperform
NT Mkt Perform
11-Nov-98
Needham & Co
Downgrade
Buy
Hold
insider filings-registering big time from oct to present date.
Read this
biz.yahoo.com
another tidbit
Meet the Mover, Mary Meeker
by Craig Bicknell
2:05 p.m. 21.Dec.98.PST
When Mary Meeker speaks, markets move.
Monday morning, the Morgan Stanley Dean
Witter Internet analyst -- widely regarded as the
most influential in her field -- was quoted in a
Barron's article waxing bullish about the future of
Net stocks, specifically naming eBay (EBAY),
Amazon.com (AMZN), Yahoo (YHOO), America
Online (AOL), and Broadcast.com (BCST).
Forget about traditional stock valuations based
on earnings, she said. These Net stocks have to
be valued based on their first-mover advantage in
an explosive new medium. Now is the time to
seize market share; earnings will come later.
"Nothing like this has happened before," she
told Barron's. "TV and radio took years to
develop. This has taken virtually months."
Shares of each anointed firm immediately
jumped 10 percent or more, pulling the whole
tech-heavy Nasdaq into record territory.
"When she says these stocks are not
overvalued, dismissing all the skeptics, it really
makes the market move," said Ben Marsh, head
of equities trading at Adams Harkness & Hill. "If
you owned a restaurant with a .com attached to
it, you'd be up two bucks."
The stocks also were boosted by a "short
squeeze" -- a phenomenon that forces a type of
investor, known as short sellers, to buy stocks.
Short sellers bet that individual stocks will fall.
They borrow shares at the high price,
immediately sell them, then buy them back after
the stock drops, keeping the difference. But if
the stock starts shooting up, the shorts try to
buy back as soon as possible to stem their
losses. Their purchases fuel big run-ups.
"The shorts are running for cover," said Marsh,
"They're responsible for a lot of [today's move]."
That's a problem, said Marsh. Normally, short
sellers act as a corrective influence on stocks
that are overvalued. But when an analyst's
musings can send stocks soaring, the corrective
influence is not only lost, but reversed.
"These stocks are overvalued," said Marsh. "But
you can't short them on the valuation, because
people are buying on speculation. I've been in
the business 15 years, and I've never seen
anything like this."
Gary Kaltbaum, chief technical analyst at J. W.
Genesis Securities, said, "It's getting a little out
of hand. You have a lot of money chasing a few
stocks and a ton of short sellers." |
