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To: Crystal ball who wrote (21860)	6/14/1999 6:31:00 AM
From: Vendit™	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 41369

The futures index seems to be shaping up nicely. mrci.com And this from a news letter: The CPI, while highly anticipated, will probably be benign. At least to some extent, most economists feel that last month's surprising strength, while it got the direction right, was an anomaly. "I expect we'll see a much softer number," said Suzanne Rizzo, U.S. economist at MFR. "If we don't, it's going to be very alarming." The market, however, is not as sanguine about Greenspan's oration, which many think will signal what the Federal Open Market Committee will do. The news that Fed Chairman Greenspan would speak Thursday morning before Congress' Joint Economic Committee broke on the day the Purchasing Managers Index sent the bond market into paroxysms. Said JEC vice-chairman Representative Jim Saxton when he announced the hearing, "The current stance of monetary policy, and the scheduled release of new producer and consumer price data in the days leading up to this testimony of Chairman Greenspan, make this hearing especially timely." No kidding. Ever since the meeting was announced, investors have been looking to it for the definitive word on what the FOMC is going to do June 29 and 30. A string of strong economic reports and a parade of Fed types making hawkish comments have pretty much convinced the market that the FOMC is going to hike rates, but what everyone wants to know now is what the character of that hike will be. A quarter point and a bias to tighten? A half point? A quarter now and a quarter later? When the Fed hikes, is it fighting inflation? Or is it just taking back this fall's emergency cuts? Because people don't know the answer to these questions, there's been a terrible lack of conviction in the market. "Who's willing to step up to the plate and sustain their buy?" asked Dick Dickson, technical analyst at Scott & Stringfellow. "That's one of the reasons you see all these shifts around with the rapid rotation from sector to sector, but you don't get enough follow-through to take the market up substantially higher. You get a really nice rally for a couple of days and then they take it all away." That lack of conviction has kept people out of the market, a development that has cropped up in turnover statistics. On an average day in early May, more than 900 million shares would change hands on the New York Stock Exchange. In the week just finished, there was only one day where volume topped 700 million shares on the NYSE. The way stocks trade from here to the Fed meeting will have a lot to do with how far Greenspan goes to clear the air. If he sufficiently maps out the Fed's current views on monetary policy, giving markets some sense of what (and how much) the FOMC may move rates, it could set the stage for the next leg up in the stock market -- either because the market perceives its fears are overblown or because Greenspan speaks to those fears. That could lead to the kind of capitulative selling needed to shake out weak holders and bring in real buyers. It may well be the former. There is a sense that the selling in the bond market, which has already priced in the Fed hiking half a point, is way overdone. Said Howard Simons, quantitative strategist at Fimat Futures: "The bond market has traded terribly for the last month, but where have we gone in stocks? Sideways. One market is wrong and the bond market is usually the wrong one." There have been a couple things going on in the bond market that support that view. One is a tremendous raft of corporate supply. Corporations are trying to tap the debt market before rates go up and that's been pressuring the market.

To: Crystal ball who wrote (21860)	6/14/1999 7:47:00 AM
From: Orlando Stevenson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 41369

CB- are you suggesting selling exhaustion ocured on Friday? From my perspective, it seems more likely will get a bounce up (~105?_ and then slip back down under $100 as we continue the current downtrend and recent dead cat bounce behavior. Last time I made it big with this stock was after some extended basing.. just don't see that here yet. Regards, Orlando

To: Crystal ball who wrote (21860)	6/14/1999 5:01:00 PM
From: Frank Ellis Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 41369

Crystal Ball YOUR PREDICTION IS CLOUDED >>AOL is here to stay, and will move up. It has too much support not to, oh, and might I add, the institutional investors (Banks/Brokerage Houses/Corp Pension Funds etc) They have been staying out of the market. Just my two cents worth, make that 4 cents, wait, take the whole dollar while the stock is this cheap!!! I am, Truly yours, -Crystal ball P.S. Yes, you can count this as a PREDICTION.<< Yea!! it looked like it had anything today but support and it did move quite a bit and not in the direction your crystal ball predicted. I am not going to hold my breath while waiting for your prediction to come true. Frank