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Technology Stocks : Alphabet Inc. (Google) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BoRare who wrote (764)	2/5/2005 8:02:14 PM
From: olivier asser	Respond to of 15857

Hey Bo :-). I got my puts on Monday with a small hedge of 220 calls so I was early. And so it goes. Hindsight of course I should have waited. The reason I didn't: EBAY, which I was watching for a short position all fall. EBAY tanked right away. I missed it. I think some things are very strange: 1. The technicals are far from what they were when we had the first earnings surprise, can't even hold above the pre-earnings highs; 2. Then we see that major GOOG affiliates issued disappointing earnings, companies like ASKJ and DCLK; 3. TWX announces an 8% stake - AOL a major partner - and says we sellin 4. The lock-up expiration is played down by investment banks; 5. CNBC pumping GOOG all week; 6. Merrill breaks with the Street and basically warns GOOG isn't worth an LT here; and 7. There is a built-in excuse for the Street if GOOG crashes: "We never knew those greedy GOOG employees would sell en masse as they have, all their fault!" I saw the put/call ratios, especially for OTM options within 15 of the strike, and there's a third more calls. You asked so I'll answer. There's this risk: GOOG does not tank on 2/14 or soon after and we get a short squeeze, though the short ratio is pretty low and will go even lower when the float expands. 2/14 removes a major uncertainty if no tank and maybe GOOG will then reverse and rocket. My advice would be to take March options and sit on them for a while, if GOOG doesn't do as expected then roll them into June, which will take into account a possible May miss. I'm holding March options and am planning to roll them into June if we don't get a swift slide in the next few weeks. BTW, I wouldn't be a GOOG investor until a full year of earnings have come through, some stability, because these wild misses by Wall Street leave a lot of uncertainty. Also see what the attrition rate is re employees leaving. Cheers, Ollie