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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (36298)	4/26/2001 10:54:16 AM
From: edamo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

jimmy....glutes and all, i'm sure the womens will love you....could be old age???? cien and jnpr looked very bullish on the run up last weak, but reversed and re-reversed yesterday, but the first reverse looks stronger then the bull reverse yesterday...cien trying to hold 57..but weakening

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (36298)	4/26/2001 11:27:15 AM
From: Dealer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 65232

Thanks Jim! Here is a tidbit I found. CIEN Lockup release May 7th of 13 million shares...may be another reason for the downward trend. Site ciena.com

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (36298)	4/26/2001 12:26:20 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Fed's Parry Says Economy Not in Recession Thursday April 26, 12:05 pm Eastern Time By Marjorie Olster <<SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Robert Parry said on Thursday the U.S. economy was not in a recession but may be headed down a rocky road in the immediate future. Using language that Fed watchers usually interpret as a signal that further interest rate cuts in the near term are likely, Parry said the Fed would continue to be ``especially alert'' in monitoring the U.S. economy. ``No doubt, the road now and immediately ahead may be rocky, given the fact that there are some downside risks,'' Parry said in a speech prepared for delivery to a group from the University of California at Santa Barbara. A text of the speech was made available to reporters in advance. Until recently, Fed officials had almost unanimously been predicting an economic recovery in the second half of the year. But Parry sounded a little less upbeat on those prospects. ``By the latter half of this year, it seems likely that we'll see somewhat faster growth -- not up to our full potential perhaps -- but at a more respectable rate,'' he said. Parry estimated the growth rate of the economy at this point to be a ``small positive,'' adding the Fed would get important information on Friday when the government releases its gross domestic product report for the first quarter. U.S. growth slowed dramatically in the fourth quarter of last year and stayed very weak in the first months of 2001 after years of booming consumer spending and business investment and huge gains in stock markets. The Fed has already lowered the short-term interest rates it controls aggressively this year, with four half-percentage point cuts in the overnight bank lending rate in four months. Wall Street is widely anticipating another reduction on May 15 when the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) next meets. Parry is not a voting FOMC member this year. SPENDING STALLS Parry said consumer and business spending may be ``taking a breather'' now after years of booming growth that left both groups saturated with new goods. A sharp drop in the stock market is also squeezing consumer and business spending. Consumers loaded up on big-ticket items like cars in the past few years, Parry said. ``This may spell a slowdown in spending for a while.'' Likewise, businesses have large stocks of capital equipment already, suggesting there may be an ``overhang'' of equipment and software that could ``spell weakness in business spending for a time,'' he added. On one bright note, Parry said technological advances that have helped businesses better manage their inventory levels may mitigate the extent of the slowdown. Also, productivity growth has held up ``remarkably well'' in the slowdown, meaning the economy's potential for growth remains a good deal higher than previously thought. ``I'd say the underlying situation for the U.S. economy still has a lot going for it. For one thing, the Fed's easing will help,'' Parry said. With layoffs mounting, Parry said he would expect the unemployment rate to rise about as much as it had in prior times of modest economic contraction. As for the stock market, the steep declines seen over the past year were partly a result of Fed interest rate hikes from mid-1999 to mid-2000. ``But part of it also may be related to a reevaluation of the long-run profitability of many high-tech firms,'' Parry said. He said he was confident the surge in technological innovation that propelled the economy since the middle of the last decade was not nearing an end. ``It's just that -- even with this boom -- markets may have gotten carried away.'' CALIFORNIA ECONOMY HOLDING UP Parry said the California economy was slowing but appeared to be weathering the double blows of an energy crisis and a slump in the technology sector pretty well. ``Given the prominence of technology firms in California, we can expect to be hit harder than the rest of the U.S. as businesses work through these adjustments,'' he said. If California has to resort to widespread blackouts in the summer due to an electricity crisis, it would have a ''measurable impact'' on the state's economy, he said.>>

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (36298)	4/26/2001 3:06:43 PM
From: Dealer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Good call Jim! Both JNPR and CIEN......picked up some CIEN puts earlier. CIEN PE is a little higher than JNPR. Read on Yahoo that CIEN might warn (Yahoo? Take that with a grain of salt.)??????????? But! That woooooooooould be nice. dealie

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (36298)	4/26/2001 3:10:58 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 65232

EMC seems to be breaking down as well...It used to be a darling of the big Growth Funds in the last few years...IMO, its a cocky storage giant that's starting to face some serious competition...It's growth is clearly slowing and customers continue to examine alternatives (or put off purchases)...The P/E's near 50 too...Here's an interesting article on EMC's situation... __________________________________________________ RIVALS hounding EMC's market share By Tim Mclaughlin <<BOSTON, April 26 (Reuters) - EMC Corp., the data storage firm that only a few months ago seemed magic to investors who thought it was immune to a tech downturn, does not seem so invincible after the first quarter. Not only was Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC (NYSE:EMC - news) forced to slash its revenue forecast for the year, the company also lost some of its dominant market share to rivals IBM and Hitachi Data Systems, some Wall Street analysts said. EMC claims it has gained ground and that failure is not an option in its take-no-prisoners sales culture. Besides elevating a tough new chief executive, EMC recently replaced its head of global sales, services and marketing with a company veteran known for heading off problems. Meanwhile, EMC rivals have lined up comparable products at competitive prices in a bid to spoil EMC's decade-long romp in what has become a $50 billion-a-year industry. ``You don't have to buy just one company's story anymore,'' Forrester Research Inc. analyst Joe Butt said. ``You can look at a bunch of options. These storage firms are out there trading body blows, trying to cancel each other out.'' Companies under pressure in the current economic slowdown are having a tougher time justifying EMC's premium prices without first evaluating the alternatives. ``There are clearly transactions and situations where we are forcing the EMC offer to come down in price to be more competitive,'' said Linda Sanford, head of International Business Machines Corp.'s (NYSE:IBM - news) storage business. FIGHTING FOR THE STORAGE SPACE Claims of EMC vulnerability by executives at rivals IBM, Hitachi Ltd. and Network Appliance Inc. (NasdaqNM:NTAP - news) used to go unheeded, but investor confidence in EMC clearly has been shaken. EMC's stock, which outperformed the S&P 500 for most of 2000 -- at times by as much as 80 percent -- has now dipped down to underperform that index by 20 percent. Last week, EMC said first-quarter earnings rose 20 percent compared with net income growth of 51 percent last year. EMC sees only modest growth for the rest of 2001. In addition, its gross profit margins -- the envy of the industry -- are expected to remain under pressure, Wit SoundView analyst Gary Helmig said. First quarter gross margins were 55.1 percent, compared with 56.6 percent in the same period a year ago. Those could drop as low as 53 percent for the full year, EMC said. That decline comes as competition is heating up. IBM actually tracks the number of EMC customers that buy IBM storage. Sanford said at the end of last year, IBM sold to 52 percent of EMC's accounts, and now they sell some storage systems to 58 percent of EMC's customers. ``We had a nice growth spurt there,'' Sanford said. Goldman, Sachs & Co. analyst Laura Conigliaro said in a research note she saw Hitachi growing faster than EMC off a smaller revenue base and waging an aggressive price campaign. Hitachi Data, a unit of the Japanese electronics giant, now generates quarterly revenue slightly less than $500 million, enough to effect EMC's sales opportunities, too, Helmig said. ``Hitachi has gained significant traction during the March quarter,'' Helmig wrote in a note to investors. Hitachi executive vice president Ron Gervenack said storage revenue surged by $300 million in the March quarter. ``It was a tremendous quarter,'' he said. ``...We owe a debt of gratitude to EMC for developing the idea that storage could be bought separate from servers.'' KING OF THE HILL Joe Tucci, who assumed EMC's CEO post in January from Michael Ruettgers, dismissed claims by rivals that EMC is losing market share. He called their evidence ``onesie, twosie anecdotes.'' ``Talk is cheap,'' Tucci said. ``... We're the king of the hill.'' EMC Executive Chairman Ruettgers remains an active force in the firm's operations, but Tucci has become its ``get-it-done'' leader. Inside and outside EMC, Tucci carries a reputation for being blunt and hard-nosed. In the field, Tucci said he meets with as many as eight customers a day in one-on-one meetings, swings by local EMC operations for ``fireside chats'' and ends the day with a group dinner. ``From everything I've been told, Ruettgers is a softie compared to Tucci,'' said Rod Mathews, an executive at Network Appliance who gathers intelligence on competitors. Mathews, who interviews EMC sales people defecting to his firm, said EMC's hard-driving sales culture may work against the company in tough economic times, as sales reps bail out rather than get fired. ``People aren't waiting to get axed after they miss their sales quota,'' Mathews said. ``They're leaving under their own terms.'' EMC confirmed last week it replaced Michael Ruffolo, executive vice president of global sales, services and marketing, with EMC veteran Frank Hauck, who will be the third person to hold that position in less than two years. ``The combination of the slowing economy and the transfer of power ... will present some significant challenges to EMC. It's definitely something to watch,'' said John Clavin, EMC's 30th employee and now executive vice president of marketing at StorageNetworks Inc. (NYSE:STOR - news), a small rival backed by an EMC co-founder. Even Tucci said the power transfer between him and Ruettgers was like exchanging a bottle of nitroglycerin. ``A company is a volatile and precious item,'' Tucci said. Goldman's Conigliaro, however, said the real problem for EMC was the economic slowdown, rather than IBM or Hitachi. ``EMC is still the company to beat in terms of size, sales staff, breadth of systems, software and service,'' she said.>>