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Strategies & Market Trends : Zeev's Turnips - No Politics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Softechie who wrote (85279)	6/25/2002 4:30:13 PM
From: backman	Respond to of 99280

Lucent, Nortel Can Still Wallop the Market By James J. Cramer 06/25/2002 03:14 PM EDT Read More Click here for the latest from James J. Cramer Looks like we are finally packing in the Lucent (LU:NYSE - news - commentary - research - analysis)/Nortel (NT:NYSE - news - commentary - research - analysis) contingent. And we are wrapping up the WorldCom (WCOM:Nasdaq - news - commentary - research - analysis) story, too. These three stocks have lost so much money for so many people that it is hard to imagine what could be worse. But believe me, if any one of these companies files bankruptcy, that will start a series of headlines that will still impact this market -- and impact it negatively. Related Stories Late Wireless Downgrades Won't Mollify Public Too Low to Sell Mounting Debt Fears Deck WorldCom Beware the 'Tech's Coming Back' Trap Wireless May Come Down With Sycamore Sickness Start-Ups May Get Shut Out of Equipment World Debt Downgrade Flogs WorldCom Qwest May Finally Have a Fighting Chance The Dollar Dream-Weavers Boom-Era Valuations Are Creating Fake Stock Bargains Investors Revolt Over Plain Talk From Tellabs Qwest's CEO Change Does Little for Its Stock Those who are in the market regularly recognize that all three of these stocks are on their last legs. However, there are plenty of people who work at these places, and plenty of business that will be lost when they finally hit the wall. That will cause another freeze in the market as competitors scramble. As someone who owns Cisco (CSCO:Nasdaq - news - commentary - research - analysis) and Verizon (VZ:NYSE - news - commentary - research - analysis), frankly, I can't wait, but I don't want to say that too loudly, because a lot of good people are going to lose their jobs if it happens. It seems as if all of this should have played out months ago. All of these companies, though, expected business to get better, not worse, and raised a lot of money saying so. Now that money will be lost, too. What's next? Consider this: AT&T (T:NYSE - news - commentary - research - analysis), Qwest (Q:NYSE - news - commentary - research - analysis), Sprint (FON:NYSE - news - commentary - research - analysis) and Nextel (NXTL:Nasdaq - news - commentary - research - analysis) are all relatively similar to WorldCom. In fact, I could argue that in some ways they are worse than WorldCom. But they are unlikely to pick up business lost by WorldCom, because people will worry about business risk. Lucent and Nortel don't really have true analogies. There are very few heavily indebted telecom equipment players out there. I know it seems like all of this stuff is discounted. That would be wrong; it is always wrong. There are always people who haven't heard and didn't know. They will be an important part of the bottom when we get there. Their selling, that is.