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Non-Tech : Auric Goldfinger's Short List -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rogermci® who wrote (3643)	10/20/1999 10:52:00 AM
From: Ocean_Joe	Respond to of 19428

RFMD Collapsed right on schedule. Nice 7+ point gain for 3 days (post 3621). Is 40 the low. Hmmm. Ocean Joe

To: rogermci® who wrote (3643)	10/21/1999 11:09:00 AM
From: Sir Auric Goldfinger	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 19428

CMTN was silently granted an early lockup release yesterday by MSDW, should have been 11/8/99.

To: rogermci® who wrote (3643)	10/21/1999 8:10:00 PM
From: Sir Auric Goldfinger	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 19428

So true: "The Bears Planned a Party, and If You RSVP'd, You Might Be Feeling Down By James J. Cramer What was that tech bear case again? One of the most difficult issues facing hedge fund managers is what to do when the worst comes true, and there is not much money to be made. Let's say I knew that IBM (IBM:NYSE), Dell (DELL:Nasdaq), and Lexmark (LXK:NYSE) were all going to be bearers of bad news. Had I known that going into this week I think I would have presumed, safely, that all of tech will get whacked. I would bet that Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq) would get killed. And Sun Microsystems (SUNW:Nasdaq). And AOL (AOL:NYSE). And Intel (INTC:Nasdaq). And pretty much everybody in the Nasdaq or Morgan Stanley High Tech Index. I would think that this great run the NDX has had will have to end. I would probably make a giant anti-tech bet because the kingpins of tech are about to roll over. I would buy a massive number of NDX or MSH puts and sell calls and, maybe, even go to a trading desk and say, "You know what? Craft me a derivative bag of tricks made up of the ten most important tech names and I want a put on that basket." Then a day like today happens. IBM blows up. You figure the spillover will be tremendous. You are going to break the market's bank, you probably say to yourself. It gets better. You go home and IBM is at 100. But by the time everybody knows the story it can't even hold 90. You have counted the money you are going to make and you are feeling flush. And then the nightmare scenario occurs. The bears gave a party and nobody attended. Nobody panicked. The stocks in those indices or in your proprietary basket don't go down. You are in disbelief, but as the morning drags on, the day where you thought you would be sipping 18-year-old Macallan all by yourself while everyone else flirts with jumping out the window, you come to realize that the nuclear winter's not dawning. By noon you get the sense that not only is nuclear winter not dawning, but conventional winter's not even starting. You think that AOL and Yahoo! (YHOO:Nasdaq) are just arrogant $&%^#^ for refusing to go down, but you are scared to put out more stock or buy more puts because something doesn't feel right. Intel's rallying. Microsoft has some traction. And those darn four-letter tech jobbies are exploding. By 3 p.m. you give up. You know that there will be no big victory. You are happy that you got IBM right but your losses away from I-BEAM on the rest of the shorts are cutting into your profits big time. So you throw in the towel. But you know you can't just call up your broker and say, hey, I want out of those baskets or puts. You are in one of those situations where everybody knows you are short and they begin to take the Soft and the 'Tel ahead of you. You have ignited your own personal squeeze. Nevertheless, you have no choice but to take The Big Short off. What's the bear case now? Is there another IBM going to blow up tomorrow? Nah, everybody important has reported. Is someone who has reported going to 'fess up tomorrow about something they wouldn't own up to last week? No way. Next thing you know the NDX, on a day when IBM is down billions and billions of dollars worth of points, is up for the day, and your fund is the reason for it. Frightening. I bet that's what happened today. Just felt like it. Because it has happened to me. It feels awful.