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

To: Kip518 who wrote (5318)	3/21/1998 11:11:00 AM
From: tom pope	Respond to of 18691

But will we have time to trade it before the buy-on-every-dip crowd comes rushing in?

To: Kip518 who wrote (5318)	3/21/1998 11:17:00 AM
From: Russ 5150	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18691

Kip, What did you think of the action on CUNO yesterday? Huge block trades going on. Somebody is unloading, but who is buying it and why? I guess that is the $100,000 question. I can't tell if she is fixing to break down, or if I should just cover and move on. This one is difficult to find info on. Do you know anything about this: Message 3692846 Russ

To: Kip518 who wrote (5318)	3/21/1998 2:45:00 PM
From: Market Tracker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18691

Kip518, - Also this little ditty excerpted from "Barron's" - ---- Brokerage stocks have been on a roll this year, but none have been stronger than relatively obscure Siebert Financial, mentioned earlier, whose shares have soared to 45 3/4 from 9, including a 19 1/2 point rise last week. The company, headed by Muriel "Mickey" Siebert, who was the first female member of the New York Stock Exchange when she joined in 1967, is involved in discount brokerage, municipal-bond underwriting and other capital-markets activities. In a phone interview Friday, Siebert said that "no corporate development" can account for the rise in her company's stock. It's unclear what's driving up the shares, but one contributing factor is a very small float. Of Siebert Financial's 5.25 million shares outstanding, Siebert herself owns over five million, leaving a public float of around 200,000 shares. Volume, light until two months ago, hit 155,000 shares Friday. Siebert has a wild valuation at current prices. It trades at over 90 times the company's earnings of 50 cents per share in 1997, and at 23 times book value of $2. Its market value is $240 million, or almost nine times revenues. Siebert appears to be discouraging people from purchasing the stock. "When people tell me our stock is selling at the highest price/earnings ratio of any brokerage firm, I tell them they're absolutely correct," Siebert says. She also discourages investors from predicting huge growth in profits to support the current stock price. "The stock price is just crazy," says one investor familiar with the company. This investor believes Siebert is probably fully valued at 10. Siebert's shares will soon be split 4-for-1 in order for the company to remain in compliance with new Nasdaq rules that require companies in its small-cap listings to have a public float of at least 500,000 shares. The key to the company's stock price may be Muriel Siebert. If she decides to sell some of her stock, Siebert could drop sharply.