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Pastimes : Ask Steve -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Clarkster who wrote (4715)	3/11/1998 9:46:00 PM
From: Clarkster	Respond to of 4749

Steve: By the way, you can privately e-mail me at CH427@aol.com if you would like with your response. Thanks. clark

To: Clarkster who wrote (4715)	3/16/1998 11:15:00 AM
From: Greg Jung	Respond to of 4749

Clarkster I can't speak about where cpq stock will be but I will extend my sympathies and encourage you to use this time to scale down your leverage. It is too late to say, "don't invest on borrowed money" so I'll just say, pay it back asap. Think of your stock debt as a new car debt, pay it off in 2 years instead of 5 years and the interest will not bite so hard. If you don't have income to do this then you are definitely over-invested. Whether or not 25 is CPQ bottom I can't say nor can you, or Steve. 100% margin wasn't actually my limit at Schwab, the account went as far as 35% owned I believe, without a margin rmaintenance. Of course the margin would get called right at the very worst part of the stock-price cycle. Some people say stock margin is the individual's sucker trap, I believe it. Writing calls may take some sting out but then again, it reduces the upside so why are you in the position, in the first place? Anyway, just calm down and think about things. I think cpq will be ok but you shouldn't depend on it. There is still a lot of potential for down as there is for up, and you don't want a mechanism to trap you in the down side. Greg

To: Clarkster who wrote (4715)	3/17/1998 8:26:00 PM
From: space cadet	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4749

Clarkster, I just tuned into this thread. It's been a while. I guess that steve is sort of on a sabbatical these days. Anyway, I wanted to give you another opinion, since it sounds like you need it. I just posted my long term opinion on cpq on the cpq thread so I won't repeat that. However, I just wanted to say two things. One, you are most definitely doing exactly the right thing by selling covered calls on your position. Do this every month, trying to lower your cost by 2 points or so each month, if possible. Right now cpq options are extremely overvalued so selling calls is a great strategy with virtually no downside. So right on there. But you bought cpq on margin at 37????? (In chess those question marks denote a very bad move). Have you ever heard of a chart? If you had bothered to look at a chart you would have seen that 37 is very close to cpq's all time highest price ever. Are you crazy? Probably not, but I assume you have never invested on your own before. In general it is a very bad move (doubly stupid in hi-tech) to buy stocks (or anything else for that matter) just when they are at all-time high prices. What possibly could you of been thinking? I think it will take a long time, at least a year and possibly 3 years, for cpq to get back to where you bought it. However, if you rigorously sell calls every month, in just a few months your average cost should have fallen under 30 and the wait will not be nearly as long. Good luck.