Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : MDA - Market Direction Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: marcher who wrote (29524)	10/14/1999 1:00:00 AM
From: Don Green	Respond to of 99985

Taking stock of how October puts a scare in the market BY MIKE CASSIDY Posted at 8:05 p.m. PDT Wednesday, October 13, 1999 Mercury News Staff Writer EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is not investment advice. The writer knows nothing about the inner workings of Wall Street. He regularly loses money at poker, in vending machines and between the seats of his car. His major investments are in food and clothing, and the clothing has nothing to recommend it. His palms sweat when he writes checks with more than two zeros and they sweat even more when such checks are returned by the bank. IT'S October, which means the end is near. Not the end of the World Series or daylight-saving time. The end of the market boom. This is serious news for Silicon Valley, a place that runs on the stock market the way a new BMW runs on premium gas. All the money that's been piling up on paper like snow in a Minnesota winter? Forget about it. It's dust. It's October. Home to eight of the 20 worst Dow slides. Think Crash of '29. Crash of '87. (No, not computer. Stock market.) It's Maalox month. The month we find out we were right when we said it was too good to last. ''I always feel a sense of relief when I hit the first of November,'' says Roger McNamee, a partner with Integral Capital Partners of Menlo Park, and a man who knows about this stuff. No, he's not suggesting panic or predicting doom. That would be me. How do I know disaster is coming? I don't. But isn't that what calling the market is all about? Who cares what will happen? Watching the market is all about what could happen. That's why when the market drops a few hundred points, half the analysts say it's the end of the world and the other half say it's time to buy because what goes down must come up. This is why Alan Greenspan can't walk into a restaurant and order dressing on the side without the market going nuts one way or another. You say the October bugaboo is silly? You say 1929 (20 percent drop, Great Depression) was a long time ago? What about 1987 (23 percent drop)? Why, some of today's dot.com millionaires were born in time to see it. And you remember last October -- tech investors looked up and noticed the Nasdaq had lost a quarter of its value in three months. But, you argue, no way serious people investing serious money pay any attention to this. ''I noted it came up half a dozen times just in casual conversations,'' McNamee says of the chatter at last month's Banc of America Securities conference. Why do sophisticated financiers worry about such seeming voodoo? Because they're human. ''Why,'' asks McNamee, ''do baseball players always go to great pains not to step on the baselines?'' Everybody knows why: because it's bad luck. And so, it seems, is October.