You will find the following piece from Barron's interesting:
interactive.wsj.com
(just a taste, about 25% of the whole thing. You must read it 100%. It you have not subscribed to the WSJ/Barron's/Smart Money for about $50 a year this is a good time!)
Now they've gone too far!
"They," of course, are the anti-Clinton conspirators, maniacally set on nullifying the solemn preference of the people, as expressed in two elections, and turning the President out of office.
Bad enough they smuggle nubile maidens into the White House to act as undercover temptresses in a smarmy attempt to besmirch his spotless reputation.
....
This time, however, as we said, the cruel conspirators have gone too far. For, as the Justice Department will red-facedly realize when it finally sits down to review the facts, the charges against the specialists are preposterous. How can those worthy professionals, the linchpin of the auction system so vital to capitalism, be criminally liable for something they are legally empowered to do?
Pure and simple, one of the few firsts a novice learns on Wall Street is that specialists have a license to steal. That license was duly conferred on them by the New York Stock Exchange, they paid for it fair and square, and none has ever failed to live up to the terms of the job description. This entirely felicitous arrangement, moreover, has enjoyed the implicit blessing of the SEC since that agency first saw the light of day some three-odd score years ago.
....
We were enormously heartened to see Wall Street rise to the challenge and foil the dastardly plotters' last gasping effort by sending the Dow surging to still another all-time high. We can only trust that the schemers will fold their tents, gather up Torquemada and their bevy of wannabe vamps, and go quietly into the night. And leave Americans to get on with the important things of life-accumulating stocks, bonds and the occasional derivative.
The simple but striking chart depicting the explosion of residential mortgage refinancing in the "Nineties comes to you courtesy of the Steve Puetz Letter. Some of the proceeds from these refinancings, hard as it is to believe, go into fixing up the old homestead. But a hefty chunk, Steve notes, ends up in such dandy items as laptops, Lincoln Navigators -- and stocks. The typical refinancing, worthy of note, involves a larger loan because the borrower has more equity in his home than he did when he got the initial mortgage.
...
Internutty.
News that Mr. Clinton opposes any new taxes on goods sold over the Internet -- which the nation's governors had been lusting to impose -- triggered a virtual buying stampede in shares of Web merchants, prominent among them Amazon.com, the on-line bookseller. By week's end, the stock stood nearly 25% higher than at the start of the week, enriching its total market value by something over $300 million.
Indeed, at Friday's closing price, investors were cheerfully valuing the company only a couple of hundred million shy of $2 billion.
Amazing, in a word. There's no question that Amazon has grown quite rapidly. Sales rose from less than $16 million in 1996 to close to $150 million last year. And they're expected to more than double this year. That's the good news.
On the other hand, Amazon has minuscule book value -- the stock is now selling at well over 60 times book. And it is completely unburdened by earnings and in no immediate danger (for the rest of this decade, anyway) of showing a profit. The absence of earnings obviously has certain disadvantages for any enterprise; however, it appears rather a blessing for the stocks of Internet companies, since it keeps an investor from dwelling on such unsettling things as P/E multiples, which are always astronomic for those rare on-line outfits that actually earn money.
....
Homer Nods. Why not Mike?
In a Q&A that was the cover feature of the February 16 issue, Mike Price, the savvy Barron's Roundtable member and chief muckety-muck at Mutual Shares (now part of Franklin Resources), was asked by Kate Welling about Chase.
As might be expected of a fellow who owns six million shares, Mike was more than a little enthusiastic about the bank, its progress and its prospects. It was, as he took pains to point out, one of his fund's biggest positions. And, to demonstrate the high regard he continued to have for the stock, he told Kate that he hadn't sold any Chase for over a year.
In fact, it emerges, Mutual Shares had sold some Chase more recently than that: 182,500 shares in the third quarter of last year and 764,412 shares in the fourth quarter.
Kate queried Mike on Friday and he sheepishly confessed he just plain forgot the sales. The fund, he notes, still owns over six million shares, and his affection for the bank hasn't diminished one whit.
Pancho
Pancho |
