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Non-Tech : Any info about Iomega (IOM)? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zebedee Wright, Jr. who wrote (37714)	11/28/1997 8:56:00 PM
From: KM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 58324

For Rocky and all Syquest lovers - Merry early Xmas from a Syquest short: Here you go . . . top turkey trades of the year (from Street.com) Enjoy! Easy Money: Turkey Trades of 1997 By Cory Johnson Staff Reporter 11/28/97 6:01 PM ET It seems that someone forgot to turn on the ovens at some of corporate America's publicly traded corporations, as many in 1997 were half-baked or not cooked at all. In honor of our puritanical forefathers and the day of the turkey, we've taken the liberty (and justice for all) to pick 10 notable laggards of the year. Trade ratings are on a scale of 1 to 5 turkeys, with a 5-gobbler trade a real doozy. Shiva: When the going gets tough . . . sell! Leading the top of the turkey list is Shiva (SHVA:Nasdaq). Like so many of the networkers, Shiva shares were hemorrhaging throughout most of the year. After topping out at 43 7/8 in December, the stock closed Friday at 8 7/8 -- an 80% drop. While shareholders were tearing out their stuffing, Shiva's chairman Frank Ingari was spared much of the pain, as he showed exquisite timing by exercising his options that gave him a better than $8.1 million windfall. He sold the stock at 33 3/8 and 62.25. As the bottom started to fall out, he sold at 48.25, and most recently he sold $534,500 worth at 10 11/16. Certainly his family has something to be thankful for. Bre-X: There's gold in them thaar hills . . . uh, well, actually... "One of the world's greatest gold finds," in the Busang area of Indonesia, "in excess of 70 million ounces," was the promise Bre-X's chief geologist Mike de Guzman made to the Canadian gold miner's shareholders, before he disembarked from a helicopter that just happened to be 800 feet above ground. After that long walk off a short gangplank, Bre-X's partner Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold (FCX:NYSE) released a report that the field actually had, at best, "insignificant amounts of gold." The resulting fiasco trashed the entire Toronto Stock Exchange. Oh, and Bre-X's stock had a small drop from 18 7/8 nearly a year ago to $0.03 two days ago. A mild drop of 99.9%. Gold? Maybe he meant to say: "It's cold in them thaar... No? You sure?" Syquest: Its discs can't drive straight. We logged on to The Motley Fool to see what the Fools thought of Syquest (SYQT:Nasdaq), and our always dependable friend TokyoMex responded: "SYQT, a cheap whore off dock 13 in Marseilles." The stock traded for 5 9/16 a year ago, only to close at 3 1/4 the day after Thanksgiving -- a drop of roughly 40%. 'Nuff said. Oxford Health: You sure that was a 20 pound bird? Oxford Health (OXHP:Nasdaq) was a high-flyer for most of this year, the love of every mo-mo manager in the land. Unencumbered by reality, upper management spent the year telling a cheery tale of doctors flocking to its service, controlled expenses and the sick being healed in record numbers. Problem was, there was no record of those numbers or those patients. When the company announced earnings problems on the morning of Oct. 27, Oxford Health actually spun out faster than Danny Sullivan. On that day the shares of OXHP dropped from their previous close on Oct. 24 of 68 3/4 to 25 1/4, a drop of 63%. Oh, and a mere 49 million shares were traded that day as well, compared with the 6.8 million daily average. The stock had reached as high as 89 on July 25, but that was before the bottom dropped out. The stock closed Friday at 23 7/8, a difference of almost 75% from its 52-week high. You know, on second thought, you don't want to put this in your stuffing, because there might not be enough left to fill your bird. Bethlehem Steel: Dropped from the DJIA and still meandering. Bethlehem Steel (BS:NYSE) is such a turkey that the wise men of Dow Jones (DJ:NYSE) took it out of its popular 30-stock Industrial Average. Since then, the stock has not so much fallen as rusted its way into oblivion, proving that Bethlehem Steel has about as much place in a moving average as pizza on the Thanksgiving day table. It's 52-week high was 12 7/8. It closed Friday at 10 1/4, a drop of 20%. Hey Mr. Standish, pass the pepperoni! Woolworth: Bargain Shopping. When people say they're bargain shopping at Woolworth (Z:NYSE), they ain't kidding. The famed discount retailer -- once known as the five-and-dime retailer -- has been closing its namesake stores left and right because of increased competition from the Wal-Marts (WMT:NYSE) and Kmarts (KM:NYSE) of the world. As a result, the company has been dishing out the bargain basement prices to its shareholders for most of the year, as the troubled company saw its shares drop from 24 a year ago (they briefly picked up in July to 27 15/16) to its Friday close of 21 5/8, a drop of about 25%. Oh, and lest we forget, the Big Z was also tossed from the Dow 30 this year. We've deemed the final four, "the Huizenga touch," as they have all been touched at some point by Blockbuster Entertainment founder and former CEO Wayne Huizenga. Maybe it's just all of that Florida sun . . . Viacom: making even Time Warner stock look good. Viacom (VIA.A:AMEX) continued to stink up the joint this year, thanks in large part to its busted Blockbuster unit. Lousy results beget lousier results. Analysts threw up their hands. Accountants looked at the books cross-eyed. Funky bookkeeping -- which hid expenses long enough for Viacom to clear a $680 million hurdle in 1994 -- came back to clobber the company. The stock dipped from its high of 37 5/16 a year ago to a low of 25 1/4 in April. It picked up some steam, closing at 35 3/4 on Friday. Waste Management: Did someone say garbage? Huizeng's former first biggie, Waste Management (WMX:NYSE), is starting to smell like the trash it recycles. After a long history of making money out of garbage, it now seems to take money and turn it into garbage (even more than the rest of us). When Huizenga bolted, the company muddled around in its considerable muck. Upper management was universally condemned as inept. Gazillionaire investor George Soros got in ankle deep, forced out CEO Phillip Rooney in February and finally found a replacement in Ronald Lemay in July. Lemay was greeted with such a warm welcome by Waste Management's mired management that he bolted after 15 weeks. On his departure, the stock belched, dropping more than 20%. A year ago, the stock was trading at a healthy 36 5/8, and even moved up to 37 1/2 in January. But Friday it was stinking bad, closing at 24 5/8, a year-long drop of more than 30%. And you thought you had leftovers you'd never get rid of. Driving to the ballpark. The Huizenga touch is also being felt in the final two on our list, The Florida Panthers Holdings (PAW:NYSE), and Republic Industries (RII:NYSE). After coming public at 10 on December 20, PAW doubled a week later to 20, and climbed to 32 1/2 in February. But the hockey team has been losing quite a bit of money, and the stock closed Friday at 18 13/16, a downward move of more than 40%. Republic, which finds itself being sued on a regular basis by some car dealership or auto manufacturer, has moved from 44 3/8 a year ago to 26 1/16 now, a drop of 40%. And, to top it all off, Huizenga has become the off-season fool of baseball, dismantling the world champion Florida Marlins at fire-sale prices. What a turkey.

To: Zebedee Wright, Jr. who wrote (37714)	11/28/1997 10:28:00 PM
From: jwk	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 58324

>> I bought 2 Zip PP's last week at Staples (Orlando) for $139 with a $50 rebate. Net cost was $89 << UFF DA! IOM or store promotion...... or perhaps a bit of both? People--- I know option prices are the thing <g> around here. BUT pay attention please to this pricing. IF margins are being maintained, past analysis has shown that a sub-$100 retail price will blow the doors off the bottom line. Hey, who knows, might even affect option pricing!!