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

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (121469)	3/23/2001 10:39:54 PM
From: Mark Fowler	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

bought some calls on the QQQ Jan 2002 expiry yesterday. I bought back 25% of my position in BRCM today. << Glenn i think that's good move on the Q's, And Brcm down into some descent support in the lows 30's. I know we're going into earnings season; i just hope most of the bad news is out in the open. I noticed lately it seems to be priced into most of the leading techs. Over 60% decline on the NAz i think has been over done. Iets hope the Fed pumping liquidity into the capital markets will get this economy back on track... We need the techs to lead out of this mess which is the main productive arm of our economy, imo.

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (121469)	3/24/2001 12:00:55 PM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

>Online retail giant Amazon.com paid two top executives $1.5 million in bonuses last year and, in one instance, paid one of them $400,000 to sign an agreement not to compete or disclose information if he left the company, according to the company's annual proxy statement. In a Jan. 17, 2000, letter, the company offered Diego Piacentini a position as senior vice president of Amazon International, which encompasses the company operations in Germany, France, Japan and England.. As a condition of his employment, he was required to sign a confidentiality, noncompetition and "Invention Assignment Agreement." "You should know that the agreement will significantly restrict your future flexibility in many ways," wrote Joe Galli, then-president and chief operating officer of Amazon. "For example, you will be unable to seek or accept certain employment opportunities for a period of 18 months after you leave the company." The letter, included in yesterday's Securities and Exchange Commission filing, was one of several glimpses into the hiring and compensation practices of the highly guarded bellwether of Internet commerce. Piacentini, the former general manager of Apple Computer Europe, received a $1 million bonus last May. Mark Britto, senior vice president of marketing and cross-site merchandising, was awarded $500,000 in January, although he was notified of the pending bonus a year earlier. Britto, who was promoted to the position in July, received a $150,000 salary and $2.5 million in bonuses, to be paid in equal installments over a 30-month period. In a letter dated Jan. 17, 2000, Galli laid out the terms of Piacentini's hiring, which included a $175,000 salary, a $1.9 million signing bonus paid in two installments, and a 10-year option to purchase 300,000 shares, vesting at the rate of 60,000 shares per year. Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith said the company makes compensation decisions based on what's best for shareholders. "We take everything on a case-by-case basis," she said. "Obviously the shareholders benefit in the long-term by having a strong contingent of talented executives and employees." Amazon's shares closed yesterday at $10.19.

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (121469)	3/24/2001 12:22:23 PM
From: Robert Rose	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Friday, March 23, 2001, 02:31 p.m. Pacific Timely study for analysts: being bearer of bad news by Monique Wise Bloomberg News NEW YORK - About 100 Merrill Lynch stock analysts went to class yesterday for a lesson on how to lower ratings on the companies they cover without alienating corporate clients. In the first bear market in almost two decades, they may be doing a lot more of it. "Downgrading stocks is among the toughest challenges facing analysts," says a March 15 e-mail from Eric Hemel, deputy head of U.S. equity research, to the rest of his department at the biggest U.S. brokerage. The e-mail invited employees to a session called "Managing Investment Downgrades." The topics covered, according to Hemel's e-mail were: "Working through the psychological barriers" to downgrading a stock, such as having "persuaded investors previously to buy the stock at a higher price" and handling "the diplomatic aspects of downgrading so as to preserve as much as possible one's access to company management." Research analysts at Wall Street firms typically try to avoid publicly lowering their view on the companies they cover. Their investment banking units earn fees offering merger advice to and selling securities for those clients. When a chief executive is unhappy with a recommendation, he may take his business elsewhere. Analyst recommendations have barely budged as stocks plummeted from their peaks in early 2000. In March 2000, about 72 percent of the recommendations on 6,000 stocks tracked by First Call/Thomson Financial advised buying. Almost 27 percent of recommendations counseled holding and less than 1 percent suggested selling a given stock. The Nasdaq composite index has since plunged 64 percent from its record on March 10, 2000, and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index has fallen 27 percent and the Dow Jones industrial average 15 percent. About 69 percent of recommendations still suggest buying, 30 percent suggest holding, and 1 percent advise selling, according to First Call/Thomson Financial. Merrill Lynch spokeswoman Susan McCabe said the firm has cut ratings on 176 stocks this year and upgraded 41. "It's a problem with the Street. Clearly, we all know it is," said Geoffrey Hance, an analyst at Northern Trust. "There are so many young people they haven't been through a lot of bear markets, or even one bear-market environment." Suggesting that more cuts may be on the way, Hemel and the panelists at the seminar covered how to "position downgrades, especially on previously favored stocks, vis-a-vis" Merrill's salespeople and pension-, mutual- and hedge-fund clients. "The series was prompted by our perception that internal training was a good thing, and we should do more of it," said Hemel. "Had this been two years ago, we would have had the same topic. It's a fundamental issue in being an analyst - in good times and in bad." Hance said the lessons on downgrading are "a little late. From the timing standpoint, it's a little embarrassing. But I think it's important that they impress upon their analysts that one of the value-added services they're supposed to be providing is a little more objective guidance, including making negative calls." The seminar panelists include several who made Institutional Investor magazine's list of top stock-research analysts at least since 1998. Lauren Fine, who covers publishing, lowered her recommendations on Gannett and True North Communications in the last six months. Jerry Labowitz follows electronics and component-makers and cut his "near-term" recommendations on CommScope, Belden and SCI Systems to "hold" from "buy" early in March. John Casesa, who covers automakers, last month cut his "near-term" rating on Magna International to "hold." Copyright © 2001 The Seattle Times Company