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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Shane M who wrote (64780)	7/18/1999 10:47:00 AM
From: S. maltophilia	Respond to of 132070

Is Wal-Mart trading at these high prices because of the demand from all those employee-owners?-g- I think the working poor will be screwed as usual if this bubble collapses, regardless of their potential to become "owners". At $7-10/hr, using 10% of their earnings to buy into the ESOP (yes, that is an absurdly high percentage given the cost of groceries, etc.), that works out to ~30-50 shares a year. And next year buys less stock, since the stock price will go up more than the inflation rate (and wages), since we are in a rampant bull market-ggggg-. After 30 years, few WMT employees will have much ownership to show for their time, even if they do stay at WMT long enough to vest any employer match.

To: Shane M who wrote (64780)	7/18/1999 11:19:00 AM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Shane, I've owned puts on Walmart in the past year or two and have had mixed results. The problem is, nobody cares about valuation any more. Beating the # is the entire name of the game among the ignorati, except for a few favorites like Intel and MU that can miss the number by a mile and still go up for no reason. And WMT is expert at guiding the sheep, er, analysts, to an estimate they can beat. So what if earnings yield is a little over 2% and growth is at 20% and likely to decline in the future? It's not like anyone is paying real business prices for Walmart. That off my chest, WMT will die in a general market decline, which I think is imminent. So out of the money 4-6 month puts look solid here.