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To: Starlight who wrote (9115)2/7/2000 8:04:00 PM
From: Craig Freeman  Respond to of 60323
 
Elizabeth, re: "What will cause it to stop?"

1) Alan Greenspan
2) A small pin accidentally pricks the stock market bubble
3) Alan Greenspan
3) A new President (considering that some of the candidates are ...)
4) Alan Greenspan
5) Election year political spending of the surplus on diddley squat
6) Alan Greenspan
7) A major OPEC crisis
8) A major bank failure
9) Alan Greenspan

One nice thing about owing SNDK is that it seems to be oblivious of the market. We've had several down-market days when SNDK performed very nicely. I like that in a stock :-)

Craig




To: Starlight who wrote (9115)2/8/2000 12:32:00 AM
From: Don Hess  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 60323
 
Betty (OT)-

Your question reminds me of one of my own: how long has the term "fully invested" been in our lexicon?

Anyone who reads anything regarding the market quickly comes across the concept of being "fully invested", usually in the context that if you're young enough and can tolerate risk, you really ought to remain FI no matter what.

As we all know, the stock market is not a zero-sum game. Monies pouring in combined with corporate profits inflate the pie, as has been the case for the past ten years, Alan Greenspan be damned. So this brings us to your comment that the 15-bagger winners who have cashed out of this stock or that will want to again be "fully invested" and will have to find some spot to chuck the dough. It seems unlikely that many of them would choose T-bills or bonds --their recent, highly-rewarding experiences in equities would prompt them to try another swing of the bat.

So, they wait for SNDK to split, and buy 10,000 shares.

I don't think that their doing so is at all stupid. While all of the money geniuses of the past said, correctly, that no one can time the market, they also all tried, to a person, to do just that. They told us to diversify so we could lessen the blows of a downswing, they told us about muni bonds and value investing, and they pretty much invented the mutual fund market, later to become the index fund market when their diversity turned out to be a really dumb bet.

So now we have money working hard, returning something in excess of 50% per annum, all of it earmarked to be re-invested, its owners wanting to be fully invested so as not to miss the party.

So what happens?

Alan sweats big glass bullets, market "corrections" come, but are un-corrected within a week, and all that money keeps getting dumped into sweet equities and we dance with the one that brung us.

It would take an enormous, world-wide psychological change of heart to kill the FI fever. No such change seems likely. Of all of the money pipelines -- online investing, retirement portfolios, funds, venture capital -- none seem poised to flatten, indeed all are on the rise.

There is still room for appreciation in equities that show signs of dynamic growth (and maybe even in those that don't). Even if the mania of the time were not present, SNDK would be in a great spot. With the FI syndrome at hand, its position is even better.

At least that's my opinion.

- Don



To: Starlight who wrote (9115)2/8/2000 8:58:00 AM
From: Art Bechhoefer  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 60323
 
Elizabeth and all - Technical analysis is a form of trend analysis, which in the case of stocks is subject to a high degree of error when predictions are made for more than a few days into the future. While I have little faith in TA, I do see the possibility of a major correction, and not because of Greenspan or politicians, which everyone apparently delights in blaming for any catastrophe.

The continuing high price of crude oil coupled with rapidly increasing salaries for skilled personnel, and an actual shortage of needed skills can do the job. The price of oil is embedded in almost everything that is manufactured, but it is a smaller component of manufacturing costs than it was during the OPEC inspired crisis of the 1970's. It draws away from consumer spending, however, because consumers now have to spend more on gasoline and heating costs. Labor costs do not yet look inflationary, but that's because a very high percentage of labor costs are for unskilled, service type jobs. When you get to the thousands of engineering and other skills, many of which require several years training or an advanced college degree, that's where the inflation is now, and it will start to show up in higher prices perhaps in the next two or three months.

The Federal Reserve doesn't like to make big decisions that could be controversial. Their gradual raising of interest rates, however, could be at least part of the medicine needed to prevent an all out cost push inflation. One thing they haven't done is adjust margin rates, which in my view would be a far better way to reduce downside risk on stocks and prevent catastrophic corrections. Instead, they're letting individual brokers determine marginability on a stock by stock basis. So you get the unusual situation where QUALCOMM, whose earnings are increasing at better than 100%, is considered by one investment firm as not worthy of margins, whereas the firm still allows its customers to margin their Amazon.com shares, even though AMZN has never made money and has just issued a second round of convertible debt, further diluting the existing shares.

When a really risky stock with little or no intrinsic value collapses, it can bring down even quality high growth stocks WITH EARNINGS, such as QCOM and SNDK. If you ask me, the kinds of decisions we're seeing both in government and in the upper strata of the investment world are just nuts.