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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Rat dog micro-cap picks... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KevinThompson who wrote (9982)	12/21/2002 8:10:29 PM
From: Bucky Katt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 48461

Hi KT, I think you will appreciate the following> From Alan Abelson in Barron's UP AND DOWN WALL STREET This is a postscript to Rhonda Brammer's neat piece in this space last week ("Down But Dangerous") providing ample chapter and verse as to why high-tech stocks are still overpriced. Apparently, that's also the consensus among the folks who know the high-techs best -- the corporate insiders. We're indebted for this insight to Alan Newman, who puts out the erudite and lively market commentary CrossCurrents. Alan tallied up the buys and sells of insiders in 10 leading high-tech and growth companies, including the likes of Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Qualcomm, Dell, Oracle, Intuit and Maxim. In all, they make up the top 10 of Nasdaq's top 100 and a collective market capitalization of a mere $828 billion (give or take a few billion for the week or so since he did the calculation). What Alan found is kind of astonishing. In the past six months, in those top 10, there were 137 sellers, against three -- that's right, three -- buyers. All told, the buyers purchased 92,000 shares, while the sellers unloaded 47.6 million shares. At the very least, one would have to say that the balance was tipped rather sharply to the sell side among those high-tech insiders. Moreover, Alan did the same exercise from October through the start of December, a stretch, as you're doubtless aware, that encompassed a very big bear-market rally. You might think, as we did, that insiders would have snapped up their own stock hand over fist when prices were so severely depressed. As it turns out, however, those two months of big markets yielded only a single buyer -- 50,000 shares worth -- and no fewer than 81 sellers, who took advantage of the spike in equity prices to dump an awesome 19.4 million shares. As Alan figures (and we certainly trust his abacus more than our own), ----->>>that's a ratio of 388 sellers to one buyer.<<<----- Notable big insider sales included Microsoft, Qualcomm and Dell. Now, there are lots of good and sufficient reasons for insiders, whether of high-tech companies or run-of-the-mill outfits, to sell. Exercise of options, a long-term program of periodic sales, a divorce. And we're not of the school that thinks when an insider liquidates some shares it automatically signals that he's bearish on his company's prospects. On the other hand, as we've said before, nobody ever sells a stock because they think it's going up. _________________________________________________ So, what does the thread think about all this?