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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TRINDY who wrote (69364)	10/21/1999 2:39:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 132070

Trindy, There is one point in your note with which I am in total disagreement: this is not a once in a lifetime opportunity. It is a superb opportunity, but, guaranteed, the bus comes along this route nearly every week like clockwork. You just have to know how to recognize it and not step in front of it. <g> If you are flexible and willing to work, there are always great investments to be made. Long calls, long puts, foreign markets, commodities, etc. So, I highly recommend you never lay too many chips on the table in the hopes that this is the BK or any other one off deal. O.K., that being said, if you want to participate in nuclear winter and the real story, the secular commoditization of the entire tech industry (with lower profit margins and much lower pe ratios), here are some ideas: One index I have played successfully many times is the XCI, the Amex computer index. This one doesn't have the sexy internet fluff, but it has reasonably priced options, as compared to the Sox or the QQQ, which I also play now and then. If you can diversify among individual names, IBM, Intel, Dell, Gateway, Micron, and Hewlett are doomed as high flying stocks. Amat looks to be a near term loser with the double ordering clouding the demand picture for chips. Novellus is a worse co, but not as expensive as Amat. You also need some telecom stocks, as the less bright folks are running into them for cover against computers. They will also die. Qualcomm is already down too much, but Cisco and especially, Lucent, are disasters waiting to happen. Junk stocks like Global Crossing and Level 3 look vulnerable, but all these garage co. telecom tech co options are too pricey. I think Oracle is terminal on the software side. I have played Adobe long calls and long puts very successfully about 7 times in a row, so I could be pushing my luck, here, but it looks like a good put stock to me again at these levels. One thing about Adobe: folks bid it too high when they have good news and kill it too dead when they have bad news. And you are talking to a guy who was buying calls on Adobe when it was $25, so I think I really have a handle on it. I hope the gods don't think I have too much hubris on this Spanish brick co. and start greasing up a lightning bolt. <g> Other than that, you should know that US GDP and productivity have been very reliant on ever higher sales of computers. If that trend slows, the dollar is in deep kimshee. Though the yen is the obvious choice, I have already made my money there and am concentrating on the Swiss and Euro currencies against the buck.