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

To: taxikid who wrote (3747)	2/27/1998 7:58:00 PM
From: Bill Wexler	Respond to of 18691

You'll like this one... Message 3556059 I'm still firmly convinced that most of these internet plays are huge speculative bubbles which will collapse much faster than their rises. When you have Yahoo adding $300 million in market cap in a few hours based on a tax proposal by Bill Clinton, then you know that not only is it a tulip festival but everybody is now trading tulip futures. The problem with speculative manias is that it's impossible to predict a top. Oh well... you take your chances.

To: taxikid who wrote (3747)	2/27/1998 8:43:00 PM
From: Lazlo Pierce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18691

Taxi and all, this news just out. And my initial take on it Message 3556392 ******************************** The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- February 27, 1998 Dell Says PC Building Was Halted Due to Video-Component Problem By EVAN RAMSTAD Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL DALLAS -- Dell Computer Corp. halted production in its consumer desktop personal computer line for three days this week because engineers found a problem in a video component. Production has resumed and Dell will run the Austin, Texas, factory over the weekend to catch up with demand, a spokesman said Friday. The company's factories are usually closed on weekends. The spokesman said the delay isn't expected to have a financial effect on Dell, which is based in Round Rock, Texas. Consumer PCs account for about 10% of Dell's revenue. The company wouldn't disclose production, although analysts estimate it builds about 1,500 consumer PCs a day. Company Profile: Dell Computer Dell is the largest PC maker that deals directly with customers and builds systems only after they've been ordered. Its business model allows it to keep component inventories low, which reduces its expense if bad components are found but also exposes it to production delays. The trouble arose when engineers discovered video memory working improperly in about 1% of systems being produced with a video component card by STB Systems Inc. Dell and STB engineers resolved the problem, the Dell spokesman said. A spokesman for STB, based in Richardson, Texas, said he hadn't heard of the difficulty and couldn't immediately get details. A spokesman for Gateway 2000 Inc., a North Sioux City, S.D., PC maker that also uses STB video cards, said it had experienced no difficulties with STB components recently. An operator at Dell's phone order center said the company was delivering consumer desktop PCs in 10 days. In advertising, the company says deliveries typically take seven to 10 days, although it cautions that component shortages can sometimes slow production and delivery. A list on Dell's Web site of products experiencing significant delivery delays shows only advanced servers, at four weeks. In trading Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Market, Dell shares rose $6.625 to $139.875 after Lehman Brothers boosted its price target on the stock

To: taxikid who wrote (3747)	2/27/1998 8:55:00 PM
From: Bill Wexler	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 18691

Here's another interesting one... Someone pointed out on one of the threads that Bill Gates added $4.5 Billion to his wealth in about a week. I calculated that Gates needed a little over 15 years (since Microsoft's founding) to amass his first $5 Billion. Microsoft's market cap now compares to GE's - long considered to be a yardstick for the U.S. economy. GE employs about 250,000 people...Microsoft 10% of that number. I'm starting to see more news stories about Microsoft and Dell employee/millionaires followed by an interview with a smug 25 year old discussing how he is going to help humanity when he cashes in those options. Nearly every analyst and pundit agrees that the market is screaming to 9000, Barron's puts Abby Joseph Cohen on the cover with the caption, "Abby says relax", and Jim Cramer's commentary is beginning to sound a touch overconfident (if such a thing is possible for Jim Cramer). There has been an explosion of new "deep discount" brokerages and margin debt is at an all-time high. The entire financial community agrees that "you can't rely on social security" and the only path to financial security is through consistent investment in 401Ks. The country has also experienced a long period of spectacular growth in all forms of legalized gambling. Finally, (IMO) judging from the general chat on the internet and listening to the talking heads on CNBC, I've come to the conclusion that the perception of risk in buying stocks is at an all-time low, and the disdain for contrarian opinion is at an all-time high. Like I said, it's impossible to predict a top...but if these aren't some good clues that the market is about to get its butt royally kicked, then I'm going to sell everything I own and put every last cent into Yahoo! stock.