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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chic_hearne who wrote (20147)	9/20/2000 6:47:40 PM
From: patron_anejo_por_favor	Respond to of 436258

LOL! 1st the INTC and DELL downgrades, and now this! Kumar's allright by me. He's probably tired of being associated with pimps like Whittington and Niles....

To: chic_hearne who wrote (20147)	9/20/2000 6:49:31 PM
From: Mama Bear	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 436258

"The one from last week, it was like a high school kid was putting out a note." SEC BRINGS FRAUD CHARGES IN INTERNET MANIPULATION SCHEME Settlement Calls for Return of $285,000 in Illegal Gains The Commission today brought and settled civil fraud charges against Jonathan G. Lebed, age 15, for using the Internet to conduct a stock manipulation scheme that made total profits of $272,826. Without admitting or denying the findings, Mr. Lebed settled with the Commission, agreeing to an administrative cease and desist order and to disgorge his illegal profits of $272,826, together with prejudgment interest of $12,174, for a total of $285,000. This is the first time the Commission has brought charges against a minor. Ronald C. Long, Administrator of the Philadelphia District Office said, "I implore investors to be highly skeptical of any advice they receive from the Internet. People should do thorough research before making investment decisions and verify all information before acting on it." The Commission's Order finds that, on eleven separate occasions between August 23, 1999 (when Lebed was 14 years old) and February 4, 2000, Lebed, of Cedar Grove, New Jersey, engaged in a scheme on the Internet in which he purchased, through brokerage accounts, a large block of a thinly-traded microcap stock. Within hours of making the purchase, Lebed sent numerous false and/or misleading unsolicited e-mail messages, or "spam," primarily to various Yahoo! Finance message boards, touting the stock he had just purchased. Lebed then sold all of these shares, usually within 24 hours, profiting from the increase in price his messages had caused. In some instances, Lebed placed a sell limit order before the market closed on the day he purchased the stock to ensure that he would not miss the price increase of the stock while he was in school the next day. Lebed's profits on each trade ranged from more than $11,000 to nearly $74,000. The Order finds that Lebed used multiple fictitious author names for the hundreds of identical messages he posted during each manipulation. The postings Lebed made to Internet website message boards included baseless price predictions and other false and/or misleading statements. For example, he claimed in one of his messages that a company trading at $2 per share would be trading at more than $20 per share "very soon." Other postings claimed that a stock would be the "next stock to gain 1,000%," and was "the most undervalued stock ever." The posted messages always caused the price and volume of the touted stocks to increase dramatically. On the day that Lebed sold his shares, and realized his profit, the trading volume in the stock reached either record or near- record highs, in some cases reaching a 52-week high for both volume and price. (Press Rel. 2000-135; Rel. 33-7891; 34-43307; File No. 3-10291) sec.gov Regards, Barb

To: chic_hearne who wrote (20147)	9/20/2000 6:50:15 PM
From: pater tenebrarum	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

ROFLMAO!!! this is absolutely hilarious! what's even more funny is that people actually buy and sell on the pronouncements of this twit! 'Friendly Neutral': B of A Analyst Breaking New Ground on Intel By Thomas Lepri Staff Reporter 9/20/00 5:50 PM ET Say what you will about securities analysts. But the best of them do their clients a valuable service, cutting through the cacaphony of voices on Wall Street with their incisive commentary and purposive recommendations. Recent evidence does much to strengthen the thesis that Banc of America Securities semiconductor analyst Richard Whittington may not be one of those analysts, however. Lately, Whittington has been peppering clients with research on Intel (INTC:Nasdaq - news) and AMD (AMD:NYSE - news) like he's Paul Prudhomme with a mess of etouffe. He started spicing the pot last Wednesday after contract manufacturer SCI Systems (SCI:NYSE - news) warned that weak demand from PC makers would hurt its bottom line. PC makers buy the vast majority of Intel and AMD's products. So, thinking that Intel and AMD were exposed to the same problem experienced by SCI Systems, Whittington promptly cut each to market perform from strong buy. Importantly, the ratings change wasn't based on mere valuation. Whittington slashed his earnings estimates on both companies for the remainder of 2000 and for fiscal 2001. (B of A hasn't underwritten for either chip outfit.) So many in the market were more than a little confused on Tuesday, when Whittington issued two more notes that seemed to directly contradict his new stance on the chip firms. In one piece -- an industry update mysteriously titled "Smooth Air?" -- he wrote that "microprocessor producers indicate solid and 'as expected' business conditions in late September with a 'strong' fourth quarter on the immediate horizon. Whether the third quarter got off slow or not, it appears to be closing well and year-end is approached on a firm note. Our investment thesis remains that of friendly neutrality." Circular Reasoning A friendly neutral seems to be another term for "buy," to which Whittington raised both Intel and AMD in the day's second note. There, Whittington wrote that "AMD and Intel continue to register strong demand from PC OEMs thought to remain in an undersupply condition for microprocessors. Since declining over the past week, it is our opinion that the shares of each microprocessor supplier sufficiently discounts potentially slower PC sell-through as well as the potential for aggressive pricing this winter." So PC demand is strong, not weak. And the chip stocks have been beaten down enough by wrong-headed fears of weak demand (sound familiar?) to justify an upgrade. In addition, Whittington also decided to goose his 12-month price targets on both stocks, despite the fact that he hadn't lowered them the prior week. He upped Intel's target to 70 from 55, and raised AMD's to 40 from 30. The end result of the week's work: Whittington raised Intel and AMD's price targets while cutting their earnings estimates through 2001 and downgrading them both (from strong buy to friendly neutral). The Yield Curve Some of Whittington's colleagues weren't hiding their amusement. "There's absolutely no substance there," says U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst Ashok Kumar. "The one from last week, it was like a high school kid was putting out a note. It just discredits the entire industry." Whittington, busy all day with the Banc of America Securities Investment Conference taking place this week in San Francisco, didn't return calls seeking comment. But he did manage to put out another note before he left the office. The note was dominated by a string of negative factors looming over Intel's third quarter: fears of weaker-than-expected overall unit shipment growth; fears that the company is shipping "fewer Celerons than desired"; and Intel's problems in producing high enough yields of its Pentium III gigahertz processors. "These remarks are neither too negative nor positive, but are meant to reflect an ongoing stickiness in [Intel's] ability to rapidly gin up their production mill to the fastest speed distributions," Whittington wrote in the spirit of neutrality. It must have been the spirit of friendliness that led him to raise Intel's price target another $5, to $75.