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Strategies & Market Trends : Market Gems:Stocks w/Strong Earnings and High Tech. Rank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tradelite who wrote (54868)	8/6/1999 12:30:00 PM
From: JD Writer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 120523

BKE: wants to reverse here

To: Tradelite who wrote (54868)	8/6/1999 2:03:00 PM
From: Tradelite	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 120523

Just found this story posted on another thread. Contains a few facts about inter-company relationships that I didn't know before. Maybe some of you will be interested. ______________________________ NEW YORK (AP) -- The light breeze that's blowing after-hours stock trading into the mainstream may reach gale force with a gust from America Online. Starting in November, a new electronic trading system will enable AOL's 17 million members to participate in the volatile dealings that take place when traditional markets like the New York Stock Exchange are closed. AOL's decision to link with Wit Capital's trading network, announced Thursday, comes just days after the broker Datek launched a short after-hours session. Wit, a pioneering online investment firm that's part-owned by Goldman Sachs, will also provide stock quotes and other information for the new AOL service under an exclusive six-month deal. Until recently, the after-hours market had been an exclusive affair, off-limits to anyone but major institutional players managing huge sums of money. Most of the trading is conducted on the Instinet electronic market, which is owned by Reuters. But now, several rival systems have sprouted up with the intention of providing off-hours access for the common investor. Datek's after-hours session runs only for about an hour after the regular close of trading, but most of the new systems plan to offer an evening session lasting two or three hours. The privilege of joining the after-hours club may come with pitfalls, however, since most of these new markets will be thinly traded at first. Without sufficient demand from buyers and sellers, only the most popular stocks will usually be available for trading, and even then, share prices may swing wildly. As protection, most of the new after-hours systems require people to name a specific price they're willing to pay or receive for a given stock. AOL's announcement on Thursday could serve as a big first step toward helping resolve the problem of thin trading. Drawing nearly 10 million visitors per month, AOL's ''Personal Finance Channel'' is not only one of the most popular destinations within the AOL network, but possibly the most popular financial site on the entire Internet. ''AOL has this significant pool of people who are involved in personal finance and investing online,'' said Frank Lallos, an industry analyst at Gomez Advisors in Concord, Mass., adding that ''AOL consumers spend a lot of time transacting business,'' including online shopping and online trading. But, he cautioned, ''it's not clear that after hours trading is the panacea that everyone expects it to be. There are a lot of issues. ''There's a limited number of stocks that we're really talking about. And even companies like Intel, Microsoft and Dell that trade tens of millions of shares a day aren't likely to have same liquidity after hours. As a result, you're likely to see large price swings. Investors also may not get the best prices quoted on bigger markets like Instinet. Like Wit Capital, several of the new after-hours systems boast major partners, all of them trying to get in on the ground floor of a new market they hope will be as explosive as online trading. Goldman also owns a stake in a trading network named Archipelago, along with J.P. Morgan and ETrade. Last month, brokerages Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab, and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette formed a joint venture with Spear, Leeds & Kellogg to create a new electronic market. Datek's after-hours trading is conducted by its Island ECN subsidiary, which is partly owned by Waterhouse Investor Services. All the impending competition has prompted the NYSE and the Nasdaq Stock Market to announce that they'll introduce their after-hours trading sessions sometime next year.>>

To: Tradelite who wrote (54868)	8/7/1999 11:47:00 PM
From: Tradelite	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 120523

FORTUNE magazine re: falling internet stocks. There've been so many stories like this published in the past two days--wonder if Internet stocks will get hammered again on Monday? ______________________ August 6, 1999 Internet Bubble Is Over The Internet stock bubble is over. It didn't go out with a bang, as some had expected. Instead it's been a prolonged hisssssssss. We've had small punctures in the past, when Internet stocks went down 20% or more. But there were always investors eager to jump in and rocket the stocks up again within days or weeks of the downturn. But this time is different. The current decline has been going on since May. It's been steady, and it's been deep. Take the 10 Internet companies that had the largest market capitalization at the end of May: AOL; Yahoo; eBay; Amazon; Priceline; @Home; ETrade; CMGI; DoubleClick; and Excite, which was acquired by @Home. Every one of the nine companies is off nearly 50% from its 52-week high. And two, eBay and ETrade, were this week trading at only one-third the price of their high for the year. Don't expect a big bounce back soon. We are not likely to see those 52-week highs again for a couple of years. Internet companies are going to have to grow into those valuations. They won't be handed them again. Why? Until a year ago the supply of Internet stock was limited, and there were lots of investors eager to buy. So naturally the price rose. Today there is plenty of Internet stock available for investors to buy, and more is becoming available all the time. In 1997 there were 14 Internet IPOs. In 1998 there were 26. So far in 1999 there have been 114 Internet IPOs, and there are more in the pipeline. In addition, there are large blocks of never-before-traded stock in established Internet companies that are coming on to the market from employees that have vested their options, and investors in venture funds that have received distributions of the stock. Add in stock and convertible debt that companies like Priceline are now selling. In other words, there's a glut of Internet stock. And it's only going to get worse. That wouldn't be all bad if the supply of investors continued to grow at the same pace. But it hasn't. A couple of things have happened to dampen the wild enthusiasm for anything.com. Investors are now taking a little harder look at the business models of Internet companies, and they don't always like what they see. While the market is often forgiving of Internet companies that put revenue growth ahead of profitability, investors do want to know that profits can be made some day. And that's becoming less clear, not more. If the economy slows down, as it appears to be doing, investors are also concerned that Internet companies that spend aggressively in anticipation of fast growth could be in for a rude shock. Take Amazon. The company is spending aggressively, adding new product categories like toys, increasing its advertising and marketing, and building more bricks-and-mortar distribution centers. Revenues nearly tripled in the last quarter, but losses grew even faster, up six times over last year. That gets investors nervous. Investors are also beginning to think that bricks-and-mortar companies are finally getting their Internet act together. E*Trade is more worried about Merrill Lynch getting on the Internet than it is about any of the online trading firms. Internet startups used to have the dot com story all to themselves. That's no longer true. If the last few years were all about Internet startups besting bricks-and-mortar companies. The next few years could be about clicks-and-mortar, how companies that intelligently combine the best of both worlds are winning on the Internet. And for many pure Internet companies that could be a challenge. They may wish they had used their inflated stock to purchase some bricks-and-mortar assets when they had the chance to do so.