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Technology Stocks : 3Com Corporation (COMS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KevRupert who wrote (45163)	2/7/2001 1:24:18 PM
From: David E. Taylor	Respond to of 45548

Ad: IMO 3Com is presently dead in the water, awaiting some motive force from somewhere. It got hit, like the entire tech sector, by declining consumer and business IT spending. I sold all my long positions (that I bought around $14 back in November) before year end (tax loss selling), thereby wiping out a chunk of the gains I made from $12 to $18 then from $16 to $20 last July - October. The only position I've had since then has been a relatively small options position (Feb $10 calls) that I unloaded this morning for zero gain after the CSCO news killed any chance (IMO) of COMS breaking above $11 by next Friday's expiration. I thought COMS was going to do that a couple of times since January, but the market kept whacking it back. There's a heck of an overhang of COMS Feb $10 calls (26,000+ contracts), and with "Max-Pain" at $10, it's going to be relatively easy for the options MM's/traders to make them all expire worthless: iqauto.com So IMO, COMS doesn't move until after next Friday, so no short term gains there. Longer term, with cash of around $8/share, book value of $10/share, and around $3 billion/year in revenues, you're getting the business for free, and there appears to be little downside. There do not appear to be any major new product announcements coming, so they have to show some improvement in the Q3 report (Q ends 2/28 or so, earnings report probably third week in March) for the stock to begin to move back to around $20, where it will probably wind up 3-6 months from here. I honestly don't think 3Com is going to wither and die. They have a good product mix, the spin-off (or maybe IPO/then spin-off) of the carrier business (which I think will be profitable shortly) in the works, and it's just unfortunate that their re-structuring efforts (which seemed to be on the right track) got de-railed by the general economic climate. So....I'll probably wait until after the March earnings report (every time I've bet on COMS earnings being just OK, I've gotten burned), and then if things are pointing in the right direction for 3Com business wise and the market is beginning to get over its "end of the world for tech stocks" mindset, I'll take a substantial stock position. No options until the stock picks up some momentum. JMO, and it's colored by a substantial reduction in my total net worth over the last 5 months. David T.