Here's another interesting story about why good internet stocks, which do the "right things" (e.g., TURF) are stuck in place; and why the "media-types" get away with personal agendas:
Wrong!
Jun 03, 1999
The State of the Net
By James J. Cramer
Where are we in the Net? The Net is so charged with emotion that I would prefer to use an analogy from another industry to show you where we are.
During the roaring '80s, when Ronald Reagan was pumping up the defense budget, I tried to game every big contract. If I knew that Lockheed was going up against Martin Marietta, I would try to gauge which one would win. If the tape was really red hot, I would buy calls on both. If the tape was just okay, I would buy calls on the one I thought would win and buy puts on the one that I thought would lose. But when the tape was really terrible, I would just buy puts on everybody. The contractor that would win wouldn't go up, and the one that would lose would just get poleaxed.
The latter is where we seem to be in the Net today. The tape for these stocks is so negative that, except for periodic short squeezes as we had in the latter part of last week when things got too negative, it is better to just have puts on a bunch of stocks. Right now, when somebody does something right, someone else is perceived as a loser. The loser will go down, and the winner won't do anything.
Nasty.
Random musings: We are not alone. Adam Lashinsky risks it today by detailing Alan Abelson's terrible track record on Amazon.com (Nasdaq:AMZN - news) . When I say risk it, what I mean is that, like the blue wall of silence, journalists never attack each other. Ever. They are club members. That's how Abelson got away with being wrong for 18 years. No journalist ever criticizes another journalist. They are entitled to be wrong. Especially if they are bearish. Bearishness equals rigor. If Amazon doesn't fall apart at 5, it will at 10. And if not 10 then 15, if not 15 then 25, if not 25 then 50, and on and on. I wonder if, like a cop who goes to internal affairs and rats out a bad cop, Lashinsky will now be Serpico'd, exiled to some sort of journalistic backwater, no! longer allowed to buy drinks at the press bar. Or is the wall crumbling?
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