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To: Robert Rose who wrote (85480)	11/28/1999 12:45:00 PM
From: H James Morris	Respond to of 164684

Robert, out of todays LA Times. <<For starters, households with $1 million to $5 million in net worth are growing faster than all others in percentage terms. >> Also out of the same paper. This might be a good for some around here to order Tom Taulli's book. Then perhaps they wouldn't insult someone who put a lot of time, and effort into learning the IPO game. << Sunday, November 28, 1999 \| Print this story How Come the Little Guy Can't Get In on Those Hot Initial Public Offerings? By LIZ PULLMAN Q. I tried to get in on a recent hot initial public offering of a new company, but my broker told me all the shares had already been taken by mutual funds and large institutional investors. Is this true? Isn't that a monopoly? * * * A. There are no stupid questions in personal finance. But there are questions that mark the questioner as a newbie. One is: How can I make a safe 10% return? The other is the one you just asked. The short answer is yes, it's true. As to whether the situation constitutes a monopoly--well, no, not in the classic sense, because there is plenty of competition involved. It's just that not much of the competition includes the little guy. Individual investors can and do get ahold of IPO shares, typically in one of three ways. 1) Brokers usually reserve hot shares for their biggest individual clients. If you have more than $100,000 or so in your account, and you trade a lot, you might qualify. 2) A few online brokerages, notably Wit Capital and E-Trade, sometimes have shares of certain IPOs available to smaller fry on a first-come, first-served basis. 3) Many people get shares either by working for the company that's going public or by cozying up to someone who does. Companies going public often have "friends and family" allocations to sprinkle around. You shouldn't assume that an IPO is a ticket to riches. IPOs can and do flop; it's just that the big winners grab the headlines. Many studies have shown that IPOs tend to trade below their offering price within a few months. If you really like the company and think it has long-term potential, you might wait until the furor has died down. If you're really interested in trying to break into this tricky market, however, track down Tom Taulli's book "Investing in IPOs" ($24.95, Bloomberg Press).

To: Robert Rose who wrote (85480)	11/28/1999 1:18:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Someone on the AOL thread posted that he felt AOL and yhoo just made double tops. For a non-TA person, how does that work, since the last time they hit these levels were (in yhoos case) about a year ago? Is it still a double top if there is a year in-between? I'm unconcerned because the only options I have are healtheon and orcl right now, all else stock, but just curious. BTW Netscape has a shopping icon up at the top bar (to the left of "stop") in the newer versions (mine is 4.7). This takes you to the AOL shopping channel and its pretty convenient. I like it because I can see what all the fuss is about re:shopping on AOL. I found a bunch of new drugstores. We're getting to the point where there are so many retailers online, word of mouth doesn't cut it anymore, and these AOL and yhoo shopping portals are really going to be worth something, imo.