Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JC Jaros who wrote (50166)	9/27/2000 9:38:35 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

JCJ, a more important question is what all this does for shareholders, and whether a single company is in the Microsoft shareholders best interest. An expedited appeal is permitted when a particular case, such as this one, has important economic consequences. Why the Supreme Court favored the normal appeal process, by an appellate court that already has overturned earlier decisions against Microsoft by the lower court, is anybody's guess. The Court of Appeals is thought to be more favorable toward not breaking up Microsoft, as the trial court ruled. Microsoft argued against an expedited appeal, perhaps because it thought the longer appeals process under a Republican administration less concerned about anticompetitive behavior might leave the company in one piece. The argument for this scenario, of course, hinges on whether the fast changing technology and the shift from PC to hand held, cell phone, set top and other devices for accessing data formerly available mainly through a PC has already made Judge Jackson's ruling unnecessary. Maybe so, but the facts that led to Jackson's ruling that Microsft violated the antitrust laws are not likely to be overturned by an appellate court. Microsoft, having opted to remain a monolith, has already turned down other markets, such as application software that runs on the competing Linux system. Its attempts to fashion a smaller scale version of Windows software that would work on hand held computers, set top TV boxes, and other appliances, so far have been unable to compete successfully with products such as the Palm operating system and embedded software sold by OPENTV, LIBERATE, and WIND RIVER SYSTEMS. There's ample evidence that two separate companies would be more profitable than one giant Microsoft. The Supreme Court, nevertheless, may have thought it more prudent not to cut the baby in two. But the Supreme Court is no Solomon, and Microsoft is no baby. Art Bechhoefer

To: JC Jaros who wrote (50166)	9/27/2000 9:54:53 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

It's decision-time, for MSFT: We are right at the May lows. Either we bounce here, forming a solid double bottom, or.........we don't. It seems to me that the Court decision to continue the process at a crawl, ought to have made a bigger bounce in the stock. After all, this essentially makes the legal proceedings irrelevant. By the time a decision is taken, the world will look so much different, it won't matter. And there are no interim restrictions on Microsoft, which is what I worried about most. So, the skies are clearing..........but the stock doesn't go up. MSFT is not joined at the hip any longer to INTC (the Wintel Siamese Twins) so......what gives? I am trying to decide whether Microsoft is going to successfully make the transition from a PC-driven to a bandwidth-driven world. So far, the answer is a tentative.....yes. Still holding the 2003 LEAPs I bought last May. I may add more if we successfully retest that bottom (unless some even better deals present themselves). I was mostly cash from early January, into June of this year. As it turns out, I would have done better by still being mostly cash. I keep on thinking, "The Fed is done, we are going to have a soft landing, valuations are getting less absurd, it's gotta be safe to get back into stocks now........right?"