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Strategies & Market Trends : Rande Is . . . HOME -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rande Is who wrote (20395)	2/12/2000 9:27:00 PM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 57584

Rande, I agree. Except how can the same tech high-fliers keep going up? I see CIEN at 105, AFCI at 70 or something, ORCL at 110 etc. Now they are great companies and I once owned them last year at about 1/10 the price on CIEN and AFCI. Internet security stocks, fine on the hacking news, but that's very short-term. I used to own CHKP at $25. QCOM, CSCO, SUNW we all know about. Anyway, when stocks like these are up 500% for the year and every more traditional stock seems to be at a 52-weel or 156-week bottom what does it tell you? Until April Fool's day? Hard to imagine there won't be a tech correction before then. On profit-taking alone. If I still owned COMS I'd sell it fast at $65 and laugh my way to the bank. On TOM I agree earnings will be poor but isn't that already priced into the steep drop? Look at the chart it's like a waterfall. I noticed this week more of these companies are announcing buy-backs. They have plenty of cash many of them and no debt. Still I agree, so far almost no one is buying any of the beaten down stocks, great earnings or disappointments. When was it last fall that cyclicals suddenly started rallying? What caused that? Now they're all back down to October prices or lower. But isn't it time for that rotation again? If the big institutions (who can really influence the direction of the market) represent clients with hundreds of billions in beaten down sector stocks, why wouldn't they orchestrate another cyclical rally? It's possible to do and easy to rationalize. They ARE bargains, interest rate uptick or not. We know what's really driving up the favorite techs. It's not earnings or even future potential so much as traders, a lemming approach, pick the favorite and hop on the bandwagon. But take QCOM for example. Huge valuation now and their earnings disappointed. CDMA patents are the reason but there are already other companies working on the next generation of cellular technology. Five years from now CDMA might be history. yes QCOM is a great company with tremendous value but there will be competition. And again I keep hearing about handset delivery systems for the internet. Again, does anyone really want to surf the net on a three inch monitor? When I travel I can find a cyber cafe anywhere in the world now. For two bucks I'm on AOL and SI on a big screen. I just see a possible Emperor's New Clothes scenario developing here. COMS just hit 65 which means it's doubled in a month since I sold it at 35 (dammit). But its earnings weren't that great either and Palm represents only 10% of the company. Great and formerly undervalued company sure but now it looks fully or even over-valued to me. CPQ I like. IBM I like. Both seem under valued. But some of these tech winners I just don't understand. Maybe I've been left behind here. Except for my ESHR which has been doing well I'm not in the winners and I just don't get it anymore. Maybe my bargain-hunting is the wrong way and momentum is the best way. Has me doubting my methods even though I was up 110% a month ago. Now have given back 40%. I'm pretty high tech and I spend my money on auto and gas, real estate, stock trades, clothing, travel, computers, phones and phone service, food, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs (the legal ones), books, movies, cable TV and health. If I were a family man you could add insurance, schooling, more medical and dental, more clothing, food and gas. I know B2B is becoming big, but if this is where the average guy's money is going why are so many of these sectors in the toilet? The only sector from all the above I see doing well is cellular phones. And their prices are coming down. Just food for thought I guess. Can't really argue with the market you just have to make your fearless picks and take your risks, win, lose or draw. But let me ask you this. If you're right, then what do you suggest I do having already invested in retail, drugs and other values, now holding a $40,000 loss? Sell? Expect even worse losses? Or hold for a bounce, rebound, sector rotation? In the past I've always held through the dips and ended up okay. Though sometimes it's been a good idea to sell what appears to be a real loser. But today's losers can be tomorrow's big winners. Look at super dog CPU which I held for many months. It got taken out. Up 80%, half of which I got. I know they can't all be rescued buy-outs but if a company's earning great money or is clearly undervalued then eventually shouldn't it rise? The managements themselves usually try to do soemthing to make it rise. So why sell at a 52 week low when the company's got a bright future just temporarily out of favor? In fact every loser I now hold could conceivably double or more this year. And "should" if properly valued. But I know that doesn't mean they will. I know you can't give me a precise answer. If you could you'd be clairvoyant. Who could have predicted where we'd be today in the market? Or what will happen next? In fact nobody can predict anything with certainty. Ask yourself this though. What might happen next at the government level? We've had a market correction following a rate hike. Will the Fed retain its upward bias now? Oil prices have been going up for months. Experts are expecting the prices to drop. The governments are pissed the prices are so high and can do something about it. What will happen next, especially if the Dow drops another 500 points? I just can't see those in power letting this two-tiered market continue. It's not healthy for the economy. It's too imbalanced. I'm sure the big Wall Street types don't like it. neither do the captains of industry. It's a free market but it can be influenced as Greenspan has shown. Influenced up and down. I guess I'm making an argument to keep holding so I guess I will. I hate taking losses. Especially really big ones. Except maybe at the end of the year. Thanks for letting me vent and ruminate. I feel better now. gg

To: Rande Is who wrote (20395)	4/17/2001 11:56:31 AM
From: Rande Is	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 57584

Kodak beat estimates, but is having to continue reducing their capacity and downsize their company, due to "lower film sales" brought on by the boom in digital cameras which need no processing whatsover. Kodak should have bought Iomega 3 years ago when it was $3/share and they had just released the "clic" disk. . . .and rushed to make it an industry standard. What were they thinking? They did it with the Brownie, then with 126 film and the Instamatic. . . they repeated that feat with the smaller 110 film and smaller Instamatics. Why would they not jump on a tiny disk or a flash RAM and flood the market with inexpensive digital "Digimatic" cameras? . . . so that they could sell the little RAMs or disks. . .and establish a new standard before the Japanese companies do? DUHHhh!! Did they really think that digital cameras would go the way of the 3D Steroscopic camera? Now instead. . Kodak is the one going the way of so many other near-sighted old tech companies before them. And it was completely avoidable. And I said all that to say this. . . . never underestimate the power of the NEW ECONOMY to change things forever! Rande Is