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To: Toby Zidle who wrote (8642)	9/19/2001 7:20:11 AM
From: sandintoes	Respond to of 17683

How could we ever go after the people who did this and get the money back? We can't, and the American people suffer at their hands one more time! INTERNET STOCK NEWS [tm] 1. General Sentiment Last Tuesday's newsletter was prepared and e-mailed to the e-mail service in the morning prior to the terrorist attacks in lower Manhattan and the Pentagon. I wish I had the opportunity to provide regular e-mails to readers in order to share my thoughts as the week's events unfolded. I have no doubt that many readers either had loved ones working in or near the World Trade Center or the Pentagon at the time of the attacks. My thoughts and prayers are with you. A week has passed since the attacks occurred. I find it difficult to offer stock recommendations in these uncertain times or to comment on the general direction of the market. The best I can offer at this time is some observations from notes I've taken throughout the week. 2. Observations In the past few months, Ron Insana, the CNBC network anchor reporter, commented to several Wall Street heavy-hitters he regularly interviews that the market has been reacting to some unknown quantity that he and others close to the market couldn't fully explain. Insana has written a book, "The Message of the Market." Insana's premise is that the "market" actually represents the collective decisions of many persons who act in concert so that they arrive at one basic decision. That basic decision determines the trend of the price of a particular equity, be it a stock, a bond, or a lumber futures contract. Insana's thoughts aren't particularly original, for Richard Wyckoff, who lived during the first quarter of the 20th century, made the same observations in his books and newsletters about market behavior. It was Wyckoff who said, "Listen to what the market is saying about others, not what others are saying about the market." Still, I thought it was worth mentioning, considering the fact that the Federal Reserve's aggressive rate-cutting policy intended to stimulate the U.S. economy hasn't produced any significant change in the market's general direction this year. The lack of change has indeed puzzled many high-level market strategists who have expressed surprise that the market should have already reacted positively to the Fed's monetary and fiscal stimuli. Still, while the popular averages continued to head south, several industry sectors have done quite well in 2001. Trouble is, these sectors are usually considered "defensive" in nature. They are the slow, but steady growers like construction, homebuilding, mortgage lenders, foods, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, restaurants, insurance, defense contractors, energy-related, consumer goods, savings & loans, asset managers. The sexy, high-growth portions of the U.S. economy - telecommunications, semiconductors, Internet, biotechnology, computers, software, hardware, data-storage - are in such a bearish hole there's no telling when they will dig themselves out and resume historical growth rates of 20% to 50% a year. Despite the optimistic predictions of analysts that cover these sectors, in addition to the forecasts of some of its leading executives, there's a growing doubt that these businesses will ever see the kind of growth that they and their shareholders once enjoyed and believed was practically guaranteed. Given what has happened in world stock markets since last Tuesday's attacks, I find Insana's remarks worth mentioning. The newswires report that U.S., European and SE Asian investigators have launched probes to determine the cause of the unusually high amount of put option trading in airline, bank and insurance stocks prior to the terrorist attacks. Investigators will also attempt to track down how these terrorist networks finance their operations and whether they have been significant short-sellers intent upon destroying shareholder value.