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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: taxman who wrote (30997)	10/21/1999 8:47:00 AM
From: John F. Dowd	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

Taxman and All: If you don't consider +50 on the futures one day to -42 (now) on the following then you have established a new definition for non-volatility. In the conspiracy theory department I have this to propose. The big boys (mega-funds) who have been selling MSFT and INTC for the last 2 qrtrs. see a day like yesterday and cannot move fast enough to even begin to recapture their position in these bellweather stocks. Then some event like IBM comes to the rescue (pure dumb luck here) and they start hammering the futures which because of index funds brings the included stocks down with very little capital expended in terms of the damage done to the underlying stock values. They then go back in and buy the stocks that they were not nimble enough to get back into or smart enough to have stayed in and then buy back their positions in the shorted futures as they reestablish their positions. Sure they may lose a few bucks on the futures but given the leverage generated by these index futures it is a scheme that has merit if you are a giant fund. I cannot help but think that the IBM situation is akin to the CPQ situation in the past where the market was broadbrushed with the sins of IBM. Look at this company as far as hardware is concerned. Aptiva (PC's) in total disarray, mainframes have a limited growth future, enormous overhead compared to other high tech companies, etc. To throw babies like INTC, MSFT and quality internet stocks out with the bath water of IBM is CPQ redux. The wise investor if not already heavily invested in these cos. should take today's dip as an opportunity to add to their positions in these babies. On top of that the people who write the scripts for the vacuous talking heads understand only one thing and it isn't the stock market - it is hype! So the feed into the disaster du jour mode and the volatility that emerges from the futures indexes is amplified by the cable news channels. Although this does work both ways it tends to have its greatest effect to the down side. I sincerely believe therefore that the informed individual investor who has been at this some years will for all of the above reasons continue to out-perform the hysterical markets in general. I am therefore thankful for forums like these where micro opinions can be discussed in order for reason to prevail. JFD