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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (101113)	4/16/2000 2:14:00 AM
From: Bill Harmond	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 164684

>>You posted on Friday your buy oif ARBA but not your sell of SCON or PHCM. Did you sell all of each? No, I didn't. I sold a small fraction of each. Phone.com is still my favorite, and my largest position. I just took the opportunity to offset some taxes by switching positions. I didn't post the sales because they were not material decisions about the issues. When I trade around a position I often don't mention it. My margin account is about 1/10 of my overall portfolio. Most is in IRA's. I think I've posted that relationship here before. Today I heard from my CPA the best explanation/theory behind this rout. She contends the following: In 1999 the daytrading and short-term trading community made great profits in the market, most of which, because it was short term, was realized in 1999. They entered 2000 with considerable income-tax liability. After the initial post-holiday sell-off in 2000, the biotech and B2B issues continued their upward momentum and sucked this group (and me, BTW) back in. However, since it is natural to delay tax payments until the last moment, this group reinvested their tax liability (probably on margin) playing these stocks to their top in March. When the Abby Joseph Cohen tech/Clinton-Blair biotech spills started this group found themselves margined not only with the 50% broker debt but also doubly margined with debt already owed Uncle Sam by mid-April which exasperated the correction. To me this is a very interesting take.