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To: Benkea who wrote (45160)	4/5/2000 6:22:00 PM
From: Les H	Respond to of 99985

U.S. nouveau-riche scoff at stock stumble By Genevieve Wilkinson NEW YORK, April 5 (Reuters) - Financial markets be damned. Hermes scarfs, Harry Winston gems and Manolo Blahnik sling-backs are still high on the shopping lists of the rich despite the dizzying twists of U.S. stock markets. Shoppers laden with Brooks Brothers and blue Tiffany bags packed New York's tony Fifth Avenue on Tuesday, one day after a nail-biting trading session that saw the tech-heavy Nasdaq tumble 13.6 percent before recovering to end 1.77 percent down for the day. ``I'm not bothered by yesterday's slam,' said lawyer Anne Brock as she caressed a $1,370 John Galliano black and white harlequin cashmere cardigan on display at Sak's Fifth Avenue. ``I've still got a good job.' Exactly the sentiment negating concerns that Wall Street gyrations will infect main street. Unemployment is at 30-year lows and economic growth in the last three months of 1999 was the strongest in 16 years. ``Our clients are accustomed to the volatility of the marketplace,' said James Haag Jr., the retail marketing director at rare jewel specialist Harry Winston. ``But if it were a sustained correction, more frivolous purchases might be affected.' Haag said Harry Winston, which has six stores worldwide, saw a slowdown in the flow of sales one month after the Asian currency crisis roiled markets in August 1998. ``But our total sales for that period were actually up,' he noted. Prada, Chanel, Gucci and Baccarat. Store managers at these and other high-end stores tossed aside the notion that stock market volatility might effect their business. ``Our customers are extremely loyal,' said the manager at French couture house Chanel. ``People always want Prada,' said Caroline Delran, the shoe manager at Italian fashion house Prada. Indeed they do. ``I didn't lose my shirt (yesterday) so why not buy a pair of shoes?' said Tara Dedescu as she slipped into a size 7 brown flats at Prada's 57th Street location. PSYCHOLOGY MAY TIGHTEN PURSE STRINGS Economists said that while the paper wealth of many stock players remains intact, consumers are likely to be tighter with their wallets as gut-wrenching volatility brings an end to the psychology that what goes up can only go higher. ``I don't think this is going to wipe people out because they were up so much already. But it makes people begin to say 'you can't really count this money',' said William Griggs, managing director of Griggs and Santow Inc. ``A lot of uncertainty has been created and that is the sort of thing that impacts spending more than it impacts income. It begins to change your perception of what the future is like,' Griggs said. Harry Winston's Haag agreed: ``It's a psychological phenomenon. It's not that people have less money but rather an erosion of their confidence.' The rich certainly aren't short of confidence these days. Last month, Mercedes Benz posted its second best month ever, selling 18,595 new vehicles. At lunch time, the glittering showroom on Park Avenue was dotted with prospective buyers. High-end retailers said a slowdown in demand would hit their mass market counterparts first. Not so at H&M, a three-story clothing retailer on Fifth Avenue that sells trendy T-shirts and crotched shawls for fistfuls of dollars. Queues wrapped around the block-length store on Tuesday, partly because the British chain opened the store days earlier. Still, Griggs predicted that economic data in coming months could spark a slowdown in consumer spending and retail sales. ``We are probably looking at a softer second quarter than the first,' Griggs said. According to a Reuters preliminary poll, economists are predicting that March retail sales, released on April 13, will be 0.3 percent higher than the same period last year.

To: Benkea who wrote (45160)	4/5/2000 8:30:00 PM
From: dclapp	Respond to of 99985

Benkea, thanks for the GREAT Yahoo "earnings" post! best, doug

To: Benkea who wrote (45160)	4/5/2000 9:26:00 PM
From: pater tenebrarum	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 99985

Benkea, as someone else has rather dryly remarked on another thread (i can't link the post, don't remember where it was): "if that's supposedly the cream of the crop, then there's lots of downside ahead". YHOO is a great FREE service, which i often use (there are far better search engines however, e.g. google.com), possibly out of habit. they have never made a dime off me. were they to begin to charge for their services, i would rather pay for better ones, or just use the next best free one. i continue to be highly critical of ad-based business models on the internet. of all those that exist, YHOO may be one of the few that will survive. let's see, a market cap of 90 billion dollars? give me 10, and i find someone who duplicates it. ever hear of ad-blockers? allow you to load your pages faster...:) regards, hb