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Strategies & Market Trends : Market Gems:Stocks w/Strong Earnings and High Tech. Rank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jenna who wrote (112032)	8/17/2000 8:45:03 PM
From: SMALL FRY	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 120523

Options opening later than general market... Options for earnings plays is not that easy. First you can't be getting options in slowing moving stocks with low option volume. You should look for at least 130 contracts that have already traded. Buying is easy, but selling options in a stock that is moving lower after a morning gap up or worse still is selling off at the open is a sobering experience. I've often found that when a stock opens at 9:30 at a high and begins to sell off, the options aren't even beginning to trade. Those precious 10 or 15 minutes can make a great difference in the trade. That's something that new options trader really need to know and understand... a major early morning gap of the underlying may not mean anything if the option MM is "waiting" for price stability before opening his quotations. Forcing the issue at that time by selling w/o a quote and selling at market is very painful... the MM will take you to the cleaners. I have won and lost many arguments and complaints with SEC interference on some, but that's the nature of the beast. The MM's contend they aren't liable for late fills on market orders since they "have" to wait for buyers of those options... which is of course BS for the most part. If they can make the spread and profit from it instantaneously, they don't seem to have that problem. I have always tried to trade more "liquid" options (AMAT's options trade better than some smaller net stocks). However, high flying stock's options are really tempting at times despite their steep prices. Very seldom do I get over 10 contracts; mostly I stay between 3 to 5... and I stay with ones that have large OI(open interests). Leaps and options had been the downfall of many successful stock traders... I almost lost my shirt two years ago on them. SF

To: Jenna who wrote (112032)	8/17/2000 9:06:47 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 120523

MCDT......."THE POSSIBLE FAVORITE The company that many analysts point to is Brocade Communications (Nasdaq: BRCD), which offers smaller and more affordable solutions, as compared to McData's more mainframe-type systems for the larger, global data users. Brocade went public in May 1999 and, like McData had a strong showing, with a 138 percent opening-day gain. Investors have continued to embrace the company. Brocade now is trading at $202.50, nearly 1700 percent above its first day close. While the fantastic growth of Brocade should not be seen as the definite pattern that lies ahead for McData, it does offer some insight into the demand for these types of storage products -- especially as the Internet continues to take the place of the more traditional paper-based or early data-storage systems. According to Bill Lewis, an analyst for Chase H & Q in San Francisco, Brocade and McData are two of the leading players in their respective switching solutions. He views McData's break with EMC as an opportunity for the company to fully realize its potential to capture original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) outside the umbrella of EMC's customer base, which accounted for nearly 70 percent of McData's revenue in 1999. But investors will need to keep an eye on EMC's relationship to McData in the coming months both to learn when the share distribution might occur and to see how much revenue still is coming from EMC. Though McData is by no means a tech upstart -- the company has been around for 20 years and is actually profitable -- the stock appears to be already approaching what some would say fully valued. Shelby Seyrafi, a hardware analyst with A.G. Edwards in St. Louis, feels that a fair valuation for McData is one that values the company at about half the size of Brocade, which has a market cap of $22 billion...."