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Technology Stocks : PSFT - 1997 Outlook [closed thread] -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raptor who wrote (607)	12/9/1997 11:21:00 PM
From: Raptor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 940

Wow .. almost as much action on the thread today as with ORCL stock! Can you believe it - losing near 1/3 value in one day and 172 million shares??? Don't even want to think about that happening to PSFT. I hope I would see the writing on the wall well ahead of time. Actually, I had a bad feeling about ORCL recently (I have no shares in that puppy). But you know, as someone alluded to today herein, this company has a leading RDBMS (which BTW most of PSFT's clients run on). One of the earlier posts of today (Paul I believe) mentioned about older RDBMS platform and delays with release 12 - my most recent understanding is that next generation is Oracle 8. I may be wrong, but to me that is their core product. The fact that their business app's are slipping is no surprise. It seems they have not been forthcoming with the numbers on that, but PSFT has passed them by, like it or not. It seems the analyst gallery is ready to knock Ellison over the Net PC's. It might be interesting to see if there is more focus on core RDBMS in future. If Oracle is solid re: RDBMS, then their stock has to rebound, no? Is a 1/3 drop really justified??? I do not have the answer, but often these hasty downturns are followed by rebounds (and, no, I do not have a buy order in for the morning). BTW, speaking of analysts, you wonder what most of them are worth. Look at them all with 20-20 hindsight downgrading today. Some even had strong buy's on ORCL (see Blue's link). If they were worth anything at all for what they get paid, they'd have seen this and downgraded last week. But I guess all professions have their good, bad and ugly. It's just that sub-par performance in certain jobs could get you killed - even literally. Anyway, this is a PSFT thread isn't it - but the competition is an important factor. Tom Huang has posted a note and reference to some article (I do not know the authority of it, however), in which the writer discusses a downturn for new software package sales due to a saturation of Y2K-driven sales and pending deadlines for companies (i.e. if you ain't started by now - 'fuhget aboudit'). I hope I do not have rose-colored glasses on when I think PSFT is not going to suffer the same fate as Oracle is suffering and BAAN apparently the same (no news here as we have heard this earlier this year). SAP - I dunno if they're in any trouble, other than PSFT is gaining some ground in growth. It's no surprise to me that PeopleSoft is going to slow in growth, but let's not kid anyone that PSFT has had a 'boom in past several quarters' simply because of Y2K as article suggests. PSFT has been booming almost since they hit the market and ought to continue to do well despite Y2K. A lot of these purchases are made because organizations are moving away from legacy systems and mainframes, they want to exploit the desktop and bring information closer to the business, they want to streamline processes and free up people to do more value added things, etc, etc, all of which will continue to be business drivers long after Y2K ceases to be a COBOL programmer's nirvana. But, of course the market moves in sympathy and when a big 'household' name hits the skids, everyone suffers. I don't think a serious drop in PSFT would impact IBM, MSFT, ORCL etc. the way tech's were hit today by ORCL's demise. So, here we are with PSFT knocked down 4 5/8 today (sorry, I another one still thinking that way) and we sit below 70. Where's she gonna go? North again as soon as everyone settles back and realizes PSFT isn't suffering along with ORCL. Hope you all didn't mind my lengthy post. ---------------------------------------------- One last aside - I tend to think Hank McNabb was saying 'hello' to Paul with his "Hi, Paul Levy", rather than an in-your-face "Hi, Paul Levy. It seems to me they are all from the Seattle area and know one another. Perhaps it's a bit tedious to see it on every message, but relax a little out there, OK? At least we aren't reading Jalali's diatribes lately, and a few others who used to post here many months ago. ------------------------------------------- And, last but not least ... I do support sticking with the single thread and was really thinking the title could be generalized somewhat - and maybe they could dump the older threads even. Then, I just had to stop because I wouldn't want to think I might jinx things for Melissa since she seems like a very nice person. I don't want that responsibility - no sirree! At this point, may as well wait until year-end results later next month. (I'm just having some fun with this, Melissa, and please don't be insulted, because I do not make fun of you). PS - I hope two !'s in one message of this length is an acceptable number - but then I do not have a recent copy of the SI rule book. On the other hand, maybe I'm not allowed 3 '?'s in a row.