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Technology Stocks : IFMX - Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SCOOBEY-DO who wrote (9582)	2/19/1998 8:05:00 PM
From: Lou	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 14631

Investing techniques, opinion on IFMX, kudos, etc Hi, Lou, how you doing? Keep up the good work. [That "Jewel" Melissa McAuliffe could comment here./lou] For reposting to IFMX thread: XXXX writes: >>March 5 call volume at 12,500 contracts...interesting >>to note(eom) My guess is: 1) This is one way to buy Informix without having to put as much money up -- it is fairly certain Informix will not drop below 5 before March Options day and this approach requires approximately 1/2 the money. Especially useful if you are in a Fidelity account, which still requires 70% margin rate for Informix or if you are adverse to using margin. 2) Maybe part of this volume is by a major holder of Informix -- someone sees Informix going up (was either afraid to sell his/her Informix shares in December for a tax write-off or didn't need to) and wants to still get a good tax write-off. Let say this person bought Informix at 25 a year and a half ago. This person now sells all his shares (lets say 1,000,000) and buys (10,000) Informix 5 calls) the small premium is more than set off by the huge tax write-off -- thirty days later the person can execute the March calls and get back his original number of shares -- all perfectly legal. Let's say this person is an institution --- probably is, so this really is a smart move. If someone is bullish on Informix, has a lot of shares bought at a higher price, needs a tax write-off to offset anticipated gains for 1998 (maybe just sold a lot of Yahoo -- person doesn't want too hold on to it at current price) then this is a good strategy. Every one posting (except three g, who I think is young and well do better as he matures) is doing a great job -- keep it up -- examining all the facets of this jewel is the only way to price it properly. It is analyst's earning estimates that primarily drive the price -- some of them are still behind the curve -- and the analysts are driven by the SEC filings mostly, particularly quarterly results -- most of them seem a very lazy lot -- or realize they have a good job and don't want to stick their neck out. Bob F still has to improve upon marketing -- Informix is just now making it clear that the Universal Data option is good for more than just storing pictures and sounds -- it is ultimately the means of doing away with more than 70% of application development and 90% of maintenance within a Fortune 500 company. They need to educate the market -- the sooner the better -- take advantage of their significant but not overwhelming technological lead over Oracle. They need to also push the fact of its potential to increase OLTP performance (really -- it can) as well as DSS/data mining performance. If you're in this stock for the next five years, IMO, you will see better than average returns and I think that is what most sober investors strive for. There may be a lot of volatility within those next five years -- but volatility is not always an indication of risk, but often an indication of short term factors (like analysts upgrades/downgrades) that should best be ignored. Best wishes -- this is one of the best threads on SI, IMO -- please continue keeping the quality high.