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Strategies & Market Trends : Roger's 1997 Short Picks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Timoteo who wrote (6322)	10/30/1997 4:24:00 PM
From: Franco Battista	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9285

One product companies in the drug sector are not unusual if they have the right product (one example Bayer with Aspirin). Also note that Vivus PR is very low key which does not help the stock price. Their competitors are raising quite a stink even though they have no proven product on the market. Pfizer has gone so far as saying that Viagra is their growth drug. Zonagen stock actually outperforms Vivus just on the hype. Both have yet to be approved by the FDA. This Pfizer hype is what is presently hurting the Vivus stock. Don't forget, Vivus made $100 miliion this year and production is quintupling next spring with foreign markets opening up at the same time. Hope this helps.

To: Timoteo who wrote (6322)	10/30/1997 9:09:00 PM
From: Stephen D. French	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9285

Timoteo - Here's an article from business week. AFTER THE SHOCK What the markets are telling us-and what we need to do Does it make any sense? First, Asian markets tumbled, culminating in a huge sell-off in Hong Kong. Then, the U.S. stock market, already skittish, plunged, taking the Dow Jones industrial average down 554 points. Next day, Hong Kong falls further, and markets around the world panic. Then, presto! New York opens, and the Dow bounces back. Relieved, Hong Kong recovers some the next day. The wild ride may be over--but then again, it may not. You could chalk it up to panicky investors. You could fault the circuit-breakers for making things worse. You could blame it on the Thai baht. But with hindsight, you can see a certain logic to this wild ride. Professional market-watchers in the U.S. had been almost aching for a correction for months. Valuations were staggeringly high, and the 1998 profit outlook wasn't quite as rosy as it had been. The Federal Reserve was still considering a rate hike. Asian currencies had fallen like dominoes as investors fled overheated economies. And when the wave reached Hong Kong, investors around the globe read the sell signal. In short, the shock had to happen. In its aftermath, however, the danger is that it will be shrugged off too lightly. ''If the outcome is that people now feel vaccinated, then it won't be constructive,'' says Albert M. Wojnilower, senior adviser to the Clipper Group, a New York investment-management firm. So what is the lesson? The fundamentals of investing haven't changed: Investors everywhere look at a few key variables--interest rates, currencies, earnings, what policymakers are doing, and what other investors are up to. What's new are technology and global links that shorten response times and exaggerate price movements. That's how fortunes could be lost and regained in a day--and how a record 1.2 billion shares could be traded on Oct. 28 on the New York Stock Exchange (page 40). As investors lick their wounds or marvel at their good fortune, these are some of the things they should consider. U.S. rates aren't likely to rise now. On Oct. 29, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan all but blessed the shock for banging some of the exuberance out of the market. Also, Asia's woes could slow U.S. growth to a more manageable rate by cutting Asian demand for U.S. exports and boosting U.S. imports (page 35). At the same time, it's important to keep those global links in mind. Fully one-third of U.S. trade involves Asia, and there's still no clear resolution in sight to the financial fragility, overinvestment, and overbuilding there. Asian leaders continue to resist tough economic medicine (page 48), as Japanese officials have done for years (page 52). Most ominously, the economic and financial problems of Asia raise warning flags about a potentially dangerous shift in global fundamentals: the spread of deflation. Right now, overcapacity is pushing down prices on cars, pharmaceuticals, and memory chips--providing a handy counterweight to inflationary pressures. But a full-blown deflationary spiral could have damaging consequences for the global economy (page 54). Today, that dire prospect may seem overblown. After all, the U.S. economy remains in fine shape. And after their brief bout with despair, investors are gobbling up those high-flying high-tech issues again (page 44). But this return to normalcy may be deceptive. As we learned on Oct. 27, in a global economy, nobody is immune from shocks heard round the world. By Karen Pennar in New York