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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Ames Department Stores (AMES) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Arthur Tang who wrote (1066)	3/24/1998 4:28:00 PM
From: WinnerSBW	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1911

Hello Arthur, I wanted to mention to you that I have been doing some trading on the internet via E*TRADE during the past year. I was having some fun buying and selling Dell, CPQ and GTW with limit orders last June. Trying to make $500 to $1,000 per trade in less than 1 week holding periods on each position. I did pretty well for a while but was caught " out" of Dell and CPQ when they both decided to make a run for it. When I reviewed my short term profits and compared them to what I would have made had I bought them once and held on to them until that time I would have made more $ buying and holding. That was a good lesson. I bought a good sized position of each during the next dip and held on from there. I have continued to buy more on the dips with Dell and sell some of my CPQ along the way. The bottom line is that I like the freedom of being able to execute my own trades online and to be able to save money on the commissions. But I still maintain the bulk of my portfolio with my full service Smith Barney broker. Sometimes saving a few dollars is not all that it might seem to be. When you buy and hold.. who cares about the transaction costs? Regards, Barry

To: Arthur Tang who wrote (1066)	3/24/1998 6:14:00 PM
From: Arthur Tang	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1911

Since Zack has their new estimate, which is not exciting for us stockholders who are looking for more interesting projections. I am going to count our blessings. AMES was asked to use the tried and true model of Safeway, only two years ago. Safeway uses clean and bright stores and helpful employees as a basis of refocusing their downtown stores. AMES adopted those principles and added limited upscale. AMES went from a loss to $0.87/share earnings; then $1.46 just finished last year end. This year, AMES will add 4 stores up to September in OHIO. That will put them back to 302 stores. This year the revenue will increase beyond just the number of stores by astutely improving price points with more vendors and higher quality merchandises. While they lost money two years earlier due to lack of inventory and middle class customers; they are now moving into the upper middle income customer base. Estimated revenue this year will be $2.38 billion while the cost and overhead will be held down at $2.25 billion. This leaves about $130 million net profit before taxes, about $65 million after taxes. No new plans are necessary, except paying more attention to Web based E-commerce beach head on music expanding into special products " bargains by the bagful"; and do web site call center, digital certificates for vendors' coordination to get just in time purchases and deliveries. Modelled after Chrysler but AMES can wait for next fiscal year.