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

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (70178)	11/7/1999 5:15:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

To All, Barron's mini review. Poor issue this time: 1. Abelson quotes Barton Biggs who notes that today's IPO market is similar to that in 1982 when scores of PC cos. went public. I don't know what he's bitching about. One of them, Apple, survived. <g> 2. A way too short but otherwise excellent interview with Dr. Death, Henry Kaufman. He makes a great statement about the Fed: "we don't where there is a bubble, but once it deflates, we know what to do." <g> Basically, Kaufman is worried that the entire economic health of the US and the world is dependent upon an overpriced stock market. Not to worry. If we go into a Depression, the govt. will simply rig the figures again to prove we are growing. <g> 3. Rating hedge funds, one technology hedger, Park Place International, is up 521% year to date. Anyone willing to take my bet that, if it does not dissolve voluntarily while prices are still in a bubble, that it will be belly up in 3 years, wiping out current suck...er, investors? 4. A boring interview with a guy who thinks Asia's recovery is real. 5. The Market Watch section is again the most interesting part of the rag. Gillespie mentions that stock market investors are vulnerable to to bond market negative surprises and thinks we may get one at the November refunding. I agree 100% with the first half of that statement and wonder what he means about the refunding. I haven't heard the jungle drums beating out any rumors of larger than expected. Liquidity Trim Tabs makes a dumb comment about valuations not meaning anything as long as the economy kicks out liquidity. It ain't called liquidity. It's called debt. I don't know how he mistakes those two concepts. And debt is always risky. Jim Stack again has the best bit in Barron's. He talks about breadth and states that the times it has been as bad as it is now have triggered bear markets in only 95.93% of the cases. <g> Too bad that is TA and, thus, means nothing. 6. Plugged In spouts a lot of fluff about the MSFT case, trying to smokescreen the real risk to this overpriced monopoly monster. I must state again that they are missing the point: MSFT has never created anything other than money. So, a breakup and/or a fine are not the risk here. The risk is that they will no longer be able to rip off other co's innovations and then put them out of business. If that power hits the wall, MSFT is worth 20% of its current price. At best. 7. Smithers takes Uptight Epstein to task about the options scam and Epstein, good corporate lapdog he is, fires back. The point Uptight always misses is that they are arguing over how much eps are overstated, not whether or not they are overstated. Since Uptight gets the last word, he sounds like he wins the argument. But he is wrong. He is using mortgage-style assumed maturity arithmetic to rig the numbers, without realizing those numbers only come true if the market and economic environment remains exactly as it is today and has been for six years. I contend that violent change, one way or the other, is nearly certain, making the Smithers method much more accurate.