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To: spal who wrote (80331)	10/12/1999 4:19:00 PM
From: KeepItSimple	Respond to of 164684

>Many of the points you raise are thought provoking If you did any thinking beyond "joining the mania" in the last year, you lost money.

To: spal who wrote (80331)	10/13/1999 11:14:00 AM
From: Eric Wells	Respond to of 164684

Sanjay - thanks for your post - and apologies for the delay in replying (I've been extremely busy this week). The following is a list of sources of information that I access for making investment decisions: 1. finance.yahoo.com Provides real time market index quotes as well as current business and economic news; also provides links to currency exchange rates and international market index quotes. Be aware that over the past two months some of the index quotes posted by Yahoo have been delayed or incorrect (I've emailed the Yahoo finance page administrator about this several times but have received no reply). 2. biz.yahoo.com Yahoo Profile page (this particular link is for YHOO) - provides great summary of current financials and other data. Note that links to financial statements are not always up to date. 3. freeedgar.com Great link to information from the SEC Edgar database. I periodically read 10k, 10Q and S-3 filings for companies I am researching. 4. moneycentral.msn.com Link to MSN Insider Planned Sales summary (this particular link is for YHOO) - the data is gathered from SEC 144 filings and represents planned sales. Note that you can view a summary of planned insider sales at major internet companies as of Sept. 6, 1999 on my web site at: softagon.com 5. thestreet.com Subscription is $9.95 a month. And while I feel that James Cramer (star commentator) occasionally uses his column to promote stocks in which his hedge fund has a position (whether it is intentional or not), I do read news and commentary pieces on the site every day. I actually read most of Cramer's columns as I believe he is a good gauge of a bullish outlook on the market. Other commentators that I read regularly include Helen Meisler, Herb Greenberg, Adam Lashinsky, Gary Smith and James Padhina. 6. drudgereport.com While the Drudge Report has been referred to as the "Enquirer of the Web", I find it is a great summary of links to online news sources. I frequently visit drudgereport.com to link to Reuters (on Yahoo), the New York Times, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, etc. 7. cbs.marketwatch.com I only occasionaly read marketwatch - I don't really like the news reporting, and the site is rather cluttered. 8. After hours S&P futures quotes I obtain either from CNN at cnnfn.com or from cme.com. 9. If you need free real time quotes, you can get them at E-trade (limit 100 a day) - the site is often slow and occasionally down - but the real time quotes or free. 10. In addition to the above, I read many hardcopy sources of news - many of these are available online: Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Red Herring, Wired, Forbes, Fortune, The Atlantic Monthly, Scientific American. 11. One book that I would recommend that I have recently read: Devil Take the Hindmost by Edward Chancellor - available on Barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com at ($17.50 on each site): shop.barnesandnoble.com amazon.com The book provides a very good summary of stock market manias and subsequent crashes. 12. Another book I am currently reading: Financial Shenanigans (How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks & Fraud in Financial Reports), by Howard M. Schilit ($16.06): shop.barnesandnoble.com amazon.com 13. If you do not have an accounting of finance background, you may wish to read a few accounting of finance textbooks (if you live near a major university, you may wish to visit the university bookstore and pick up books on MBA or business class course lists). 14. Silicon Investor - I read and participate in the AMZN thread nearly every day (much to the discouragement of some participants). I also regularly read and occasionally post to the EBAY, YHOO, AOL, INTC and MDA threads. I hope this information is helpful. Note that I will be the first to admit that internet stocks do not trade on fundamentals - well, in reality, it appears that not many popular stocks don't trade on fundamentals these days. So even if with all the above, it is still difficult to predict price movements of internet stocks. I do not do any technical analysis, although many swear by it - however, I do read columnists and communicate with others that do do technical analysis, and I try to glean from such analysis whatever I can. I do believe that all of the above provide good guidance on general market direction - and from there, assumptions can be made on the movement of internet stocks. Let me know if you have any questions regarding the information above. Thanks, -Eric Wells