To All:
As an investment advisor (who uses the sale of covered call options to lock in profits), there are many reasons why the underlying stock price might fluctuate in an unexplained manner on expiration day. If there are many calls outstanding at a strike price of 35, the call writer may choose to sell short large quantities of stock in order to make sure the call options expire worthless. Then the short seller will immediately cover his short position the next day (i.e., Monday).
I prefer to look at SanDisk only as a long term investment. I do not see much to worry about from IBM Microdrive, Sony's stick, or the SmartMedia. The bottom line is price and performance. The IBM device, while an engineering marvel, uses more power and can't possibly be more reliable than a device without moving parts. The SmartMedia card may not be as cheap to produce as the CF coming from SanDisk's partly owned new plant in Taiwan. Even if two or three different standards prevail, there are enough manufacturers using the SanDisk formats to ensure some long term viability. The only thing that seems unfortunate, as I have noted earlier, is the indifference of Kodak's mossback executives toward the next film. Their heads are still into traditional film, and the need to maintain profit margins in the face of strong competition from Fuji. What Kodak doesn't realize is that digital photography will eventually replace traditional film for perhaps 60 or 70 percent of serious amateur photographers, most of whom take enough photos to make reusable "film" economical, and most of whom don't like the rather poor quality of commercial photofinishing that is available in most places.
As long as SNDK keeps churning out reliable, high capacity, low cost products, its long term success is assured. But it would be a lot faster if Kodak had its head in the right place. Art Bechhoefer |
