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

To: Cactus Jack who wrote (45839)	1/5/2002 12:55:07 AM
From: Dealer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

A F T E R H O U R S .. Q U O T E S Voltaire's Porch Basket of Stocks These Stock Have Not Been Picked By Any One Individual GORILLA--A company that controls it market because it has a discontinuous innovation ,one that is not compatible with existing systems. The market is in a hyper growth stage, and they control the architecture. There is a high switching cost to using some other company's product. KING--The Market leader, properly with a two-times lead or better over its closest competitor. If the lead shrinks too far, the king becomes a prince, and we have a kingless market. Because they lack architectural control, and because switching costs are low, they cannot force competitors onto the defensive the way Microsoft, Intel, or Cisco can. Compaq is a king. Seagate is a king of hard drives. A lot of study has been done on these stocks by the Gorilla and Kings thread. There are the stocks that are discussed most often on the porch........and 1 or more are in most porcher's portfolio. The following Stocks are on the Gorilla and King Index ()or the Gorilla and King Watchlist SYMBOL---EARNINGS DATE BRCM CLOSE 48.80 AFTERHOURS 48.79 CREE CLOSE 32.45 AFTERHOURS 33.57 CSCO CLOSE 20.83 AFTERHOURS 20.90 ELON CLOSE 15.39 AFTERHOURS 15.39 EMC CLOSE 16.85 AFTERHOURS 16.87 GMST CLOSE 24.30 AFTERHOURS 24.35 INTC CLOSE 35.79 AFTERHOURS 35.70 ITWO CLOSE 8.80 AFTERHOURS 8.85 JDSU CLOSE 10.02 AFTERHOURS 10.08 NTAP CLOSE 26.73 AFTERHOURS 26.74 ORCL CLOSE 15.45 AFTERHOURS 15.40 PMCS CLOSE 25.98 AFTERHOURS 25.80 QCOM CLOSE 50.41 AFTERHOURS 50.45 RMBS CLOSE 9.05 AFTERHOURS 8.89 RNWK CLOSE 6.06 AFTERHOUR 6.05 SEBL CLOSE 32.70 AFTERHOURS 32.60 SNDK CLOSE 16.19 AFTERHOURS 16.31 SSTI CLOSE 11.09 AFTERHOURS 11.20 SUNW CLOSE 13.93 AFTERHOURS 13.98 WIND CLOSE 18.89 AFTERHOURS 18.89 The Watch & Wait Index consists of stocks that have some desirable characteristics but are not necessarily Gorillas or Kings - at least not yet. Most of them will not be, but they bear watching for that possibility.

To: Cactus Jack who wrote (45839)	1/5/2002 8:20:39 PM
From: Jim Willie CB	Respond to of 65232

glad somebody noticed my Commodus reference on Dashboard today he said Bush's tax cuts exacerbated the recession and his idea was to offer tax credits to employers when they create new jobs now that is consistent argumentation? he is gonna get slaughtered / jim

To: Cactus Jack who wrote (45839)	1/8/2002 4:28:47 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 65232

Ralph Nader wants Microsoft to pay By Reuters January 7, 2002, 4:35 p.m. PT SEATTLE--Consumer advocate Ralph Nader has called for Microsoft to start paying dividends to investors, saying the software giant's $36 billion cash pile amounts to an illegal tax shelter for wealthy shareholders such as Chairman Bill Gates. Nader, through his Consumer Project on Technology (CPT) office, wrote Gates a letter last Friday saying Microsoft should change its practice of not giving dividends--cash payments usually paid each quarter to shareholders. "The quantitative failure to pay dividends year after year is an inappropriate and, we believe, unlawful device to shelter Microsoft earnings from federal income taxes," read the letter, which was first carried by The Wall Street Journal. Microsoft has never paid a dividend in its 15 years as a public company and instead has amassed the largest cash hoard in corporate history. By not receiving a dividend, wealthy Microsoft shareholders avoid paying the top marginal income tax rate of more than 39 percent levied on such income, Nader said. Instead, wealthy shareholders take advantage of the cash pile by selling company stock, which is subject only to a capital gains tax of 20 percent, Nader said. In the letter, Nader and CPT director James Love said U.S. tax laws contain a provision called the "accumulated earnings tax," which says companies that allow earnings to accumulate beyond "reasonable needs" of the business may be required to pay a tax of 39.6 percent on those earnings. "The fact that a corporation has an unreasonable accumulation of earnings is sufficient to establish liability for the accumulated earnings tax unless the corporation can show the earnings were not accumulated to allow its individual shareholders to avoid income tax," states a page on the Web site of the Internal Revenue Service. The letter noted that top executives and directors own more than 17 percent of Microsoft, which has a market capitalization of about $360 billion. Gates alone owns about 12 percent of the company. He sold about $2.6 billion in stock last year. "It is significant that a small number of persons who run the company hold a substantial share of the stock in the company, a fact that is very unusual for such a large publicly traded corporation," the letter said. "This also raises questions about whether or not these persons, including yourself, are accumulating these staggering sums of cash to advance other agendas, rather than to advance the interest of shareholders," it said. A Microsoft representative said Monday that the company occasionally reviews whether to pay a dividend but that it has no plans to start doing so. The representative also said the cash stash was for legitimate business purposes like product development, stock repurchases, and investments and acquisitions. "Microsoft works hard to comply with U.S. federal income tax rules and, as the letter notes, the tax rules recognize the need for companies to retain cash to fund their businesses, and high-technology companies commonly maintain significant cash balances to support their business objectives," the representative said. Story Copyright © 2002 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

To: Cactus Jack who wrote (45839)	1/8/2002 11:58:41 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Ozzie Smith had it all the way... sports.yahoo.com

To: Cactus Jack who wrote (45839)	1/11/2002 2:33:03 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 65232

Success Strategies Beyond the Stock Market biz.yahoo.com

To: Cactus Jack who wrote (45839)	1/13/2002 3:06:15 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 65232

"several top Enron financial executives, including Richard A. Causey, the chief accounting officer, worked for Andersen before they joined Enron, raising the question of whether Enron and Andersen were improperly close" January 13, 2002 A Tattered Andersen Fights for Its Future By ALEX BERENSON with JONATHAN D. GLATER nytimes.com

To: Cactus Jack who wrote (45839)	1/13/2002 5:04:22 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 65232

Officials: No Need to Alert Bush on Enron Sunday January 13, 4:49 pm Eastern Time By Niala Boodhoo WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. administration officials said on Sunday they felt they were not obligated to inform President Bush or Enron employees and shareholders of the energy firm's requests for help because the information discussed was already known to the public. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said that while he was contacted both at home and in the office by Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay, the conversations revealed nothing unusual or new and he felt there was no reason to alert President Bush. ``I didn't think this was worthy of me running across the street and telling the president,'' O'Neill said on the ``Fox News Sunday'' program. ``... I frankly think what Ken told me over the phone was not new news. You all had been reporting for weeks that Enron had problems, that they were in trouble.'' O'Neill said he had read reports that Enron President Lawrence Whalley had asked for help from Treasury's undersecretary, Peter Fisher, but told ABC's ``This Week'' program ``nothing was done.'' Thousands of employees lost their pensions and life savings in the former Wall Street darling's downfall, which began last autumn when the company acknowledged several hundred million dollars of previously undisclosed liabilities. Several congressional committees and the Justice Department are investigating Enron's demise, including the company's bankruptcy filing on Dec. 2, the largest in U.S. history. O'Neill said on Sunday as a result of those investigations he was not discussing the Enron case with his deputies ``to make sure we do this correctly.'' TOO LATE FOR EMPLOYEES Commerce Secretary Donald Evans told NBC's ``Meet the Press'' that Lay's Oct. 29 call to him was about reviews of Enron's business by credit agencies. ``When I was talking to Ken I wasn't thinking about bankruptcy,'' Evans said. ``I was thinking maybe their credit rating would be dropped some.'' The information discussed was publicly known, he added, and ''at that point in time, tens of thousands of employees had already lost their life savings because the stock value had already collapsed.'' Evans said he later informed White House chief of staff Andrew Card about the call but Card did not tell Bush. Evans, who served as Bush's presidential campaign manager, said he had several discussions with the president about the impact of Enron's downfall but never mentioned Lay's calls. Sen. Joseph Biden told NBC Enron's failure could be ``of gigantic consequence'' politically if it were found the Bush administration tried to help the troubled firm as a favor for the large financial contributions the company made to the Bush campaign. ``If there was any, any involvement because of the incredible help the Bush campaign got from Enron ... it will be devastating,'' said Biden, a Delaware Democrat. Enron and its employees made $623,000 in contributions to Bush's campaigns since 1993, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a public watchdog group. Before its collapse Enron contributed to nearly half of the current U.S. House of Representatives and almost three-quarters of the Senate, the group has said. CRIMINAL INDICTMENT FOR ANDERSEN? Enron's auditor Arthur Andersen also came under fire on Sunday, with Sen. Joseph Lieberman saying the No. 5 accounting firm could face criminal indictment for the destruction of documents related to its audit of Enron's books. The chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Lieberman said his panel had also begun an investigation. The Connecticut Democrat referred to a report by Time magazine that Andersen ordered employees in an Oct. 12 memo to destroy all Enron audit material except the most basic ``work papers.'' The magazine reported on Sunday that the workers who audited the company's books were also reminded of the memo in the weeks before the first Security and Exchange Commission subpoenas were issued on Nov. 8. An Andersen spokesman told Time it would be inappropriate to discuss the situation until the company completes its own review. Andersen officials on Sunday did not return calls for comment. Last week Andersen made the stunning admission its employees had destroyed a significant but unknown number of documents related to Enron in recent months. Former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, speaking on ABC's ``This Week,'' said he believed it was illegal for Arthur Anderson to shred Enron documents. ``I think it is a violation of our securities laws, and it's highly unusual at best,'' he said.