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Strategies & Market Trends : Roger's 1998 Short Picks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alec Epting who wrote (1101)	1/21/1998 12:06:00 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18691

Alec, thanks for the link to your ADSL comments on AOL. Can you give a layman's terms explanation of the always connected and bundled with phone service angles of ADSL. If you mean what I think, it seems one might actually save money using ADSL (depending on how it's finally priced) vs the extra phone line plus ISP service now. BTW, two possible explanations for ELNK's run today (to as high as 36 3/4): 1) Apparently some analyst est reporting svc (don't know which; someone on the ELNK thread quoted) showed a date for earnings of 1/22, but Gary Betty said the qtr won't be reported until mid-Feb after the year end audit. 2) Unsubstantiated rumors of a telco buyout of ELNK (again from a post over there), which "tip", of course, is worth what you pay for it. >$1000/subscriber for a "non-facilities based" ISP? Hard to believe anyone would pay that. The bulls on the thread say they are buying for TA reasons, but who knows. How's this for a strategy? Buy MSPG and short ELNK. Valuations based on revenues and subscribers are similar as is growth, but MSPG has been EBITDA positive for a couple qtrs and is expected to make 79 cents in '98 (cash flow exceeds CAPEX last few qtrs too, BTW). ELNK, OTOH still burns cash just from operations, forget CAPEX. Bob

To: Alec Epting who wrote (1101)	1/21/1998 1:21:00 PM
From: space cadet	Respond to of 18691

I agree with you that adsl will be a very important development in '98, perhaps the single most important development. The internet is still tiresomely slow and useless for video, picturephones, etc. Till this problem is solved who needs the quicker intel chips? Therefore intel especially needs to get moving on adsl. I'm using 28.8 modem but ten times the speed is a minimum improvement realistically needed. This announcement looks like bad news to aol and to all the little other internet providers like elnk. Thanks for suggesting elnk. To me they look like a most tempting short. Not yet perhaps as the street still stupidly seems to love the internet but when that love grows old, elnk will fall before all the name brand companies like aol, amzn, yhoo, etc. I'm impressed with yhoo and think they too are definitely bad news for aol. In fact, I think they've replaced ancient nscp as the dominant internet company (they have the most popular site). It will be interesting to see what Mr. Bill does about yhoo. He may feel they are getting a little too successful these days. Looks like Mr. Bill isn't winning his fight with sunw these days also. Might be a tough half year for msft, which translates into a tough half year in general for hi-tech. The second half may be much better with adsl, win '98, new intel chips, etc. Incidentally I'm out of esmc for now. Will get back in if they can somehow manipulate it back over 5. Any other good shorts other than elnk? cfon may be a shitty little nothing company but they are already at the bottom of their charts. I prefer companies like esmc near their tops riding a wave of nonsensical hype. Let's keep looking for more convertible offerings.