A few words to our momentum players, daytraders,scalpers, etc. etc.: exit this stock tomorrow and don't get in anymore!! If you are looking to make a few bucks in a couple of days by trading a stock 18 times in two days, DELL is not for you anymore. Same goes to the shorters that crawl from under their rocks, every once in a while, after they have shorted the stock to scare unsophisticated investors out of their shares.The majority of DELL shares are held by institutions and sophisticated investors who laugh at your posts. You need to look for victims elsewhere!
And, a few words to INVESTORS : DELL's quarterly results(although short of my expectations) were actually quite an improvement over last quarter. The concern ,last quarter was slowing top-line growth. That concern has now been rectified during the slowest quarter of the year. It was actually rectified by a brilliant strategy of dropping ASP's only to a point that consensus estimate will be met while showing improvement in the rate of top-line growth. If you take a careful look, you will see that the margins will be the focus next quarter as the fastest growing segments in the quarter were high margin servers and enterprise products( %97 growth). DELL, in the past few months, has been a victim of its own success but as the fears of Y2K slow-downs subside towards fourth quarter,the superiority of DELL's model will , once again , be proven. Keep in mind that Corporations are historically on a three year cycle of updating their computer systems and this is the last year of the cycle. I expect all these points to be discussed by more than a few of the respected hardware analysts(I know that is an oxymoron!!) tomorrow.
With respect to the stock performance, you can not lose sight of reality. Reality is that, even with the lackluster performance the last 3 months, DELL is still up a respectable %20. Personally, when investing in a company, I ask myself the following questions:
1) is the company in a viable, growing industry?
2) Is it gaining or losing market share in the industry?
3) Has the management of company proven that it can execute within that industry??
4) Does the management have credibility ,and if they do, what is their outlook for the future??
5) Does the management have vision on the future direction of the industry .
I do not sell a stock until some of the answers to these questions are negative. I suggest that everyone read the quarterly report carefully and listen to the CC and ask the above questions. Make your decisions based on facts and meanwhile ignore the childish posts of some morons who are trying to make a few bucks in a few days just to be able to pay the quote service bill at the end of the month. Frankly ,I will be quite happy if DELL returns, on an annual basis, what it has already returned for me this year !! (not to mention what it has returned in the two and half years I have owned it) .IMHO, except for AOL, there is no other company that is this far ahead of the peers in its industry.
Good luck to all
Fred B. |
