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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dwight vickers who wrote (19335)	1/2/1998 4:19:00 PM
From: Don Earl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Hi Dwight, (off topic) The most amazing thing I see these days when I talk to nontraders about the stock market is the "I don't know anything about stocks, but I have mutual funds." type comments. These people really don't see any difference between mutual funds and FDIC insured CDs. I don't know what kind of effect that has on holding the market up but I don't think there was anything that has come close to that sort of investing prior to 5-10 years ago. I was 17-18 in 1973 and the only person I knew who had a computer back then was Captain Kirk. The growth in technology over the past 25 years is just plain awesome. I may be way off base but I have a hard time imagining a set of circumstances that would stop that kind of growth to the point that it would no longer be profitable. Another thing that crosses my mind is the number of traders and short players in the market these days. I don't have anything to compare it to, but I'm guessing that it hasn't always been this way. Watching the play day in and day out, you can almost pin point within a few cents the place where the shorts start to cover, the long traders move in, and then the momentum players start to climb aboard. The slow shorts keep covering and the late longs keep moving in. The economy seems strong to me right now. People have jobs. They're buying lots of computers and other technological wonders. Everything they have left over they put in their 401K mutual funds. I'm not disagreeing with you, but if I understand you correctly, you expect this to change. Something along the lines of lower profits, layoffs, uncollectable consumer credit debts and a sort of self feeding downward spiral from there? I can see your reasoning although I also suspect there is a bear trap that is going to slam shut and take a lot of short players out of the market first. It's certainly going to be interesting to see how it all plays out. Regards, Don