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Technology Stocks : Micron Only Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DavidG who wrote (33313)	5/13/1998 5:30:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 53903

David, first of all, part of my posting was a typo and should have read 60, not 69. Still, I can't be specific on the puts at this late date as they were legion and spread over a long period of time. And not all turned out to be winners. For example, when the stock was $63, I was buying $50 strike price puts. When the collapse from $95 took place, I made a lot of money on $50 strike price puts that were in place, but some from earlier months had expired worthless. Anyway, I was generally buying 5 to 10 points or more out of the money, 4-6 months out, during the first crash in this crash supercycle meltdown. During the second crash, I had lowered my strikes to 5 points or so out of the money and lowered my holding period to 2-4 months. The second time, I was making a concerted effort to take advantage of smaller moves in the stock price. Before the first move down, MU was, in theory at least, making money and the bad news about to hit it was unknown to the public at large. Before the second crash, the news in the stock was bad and getting worse, and the stock was still going up. I have a history of doing much better when the market is rational and reacting as it should to news, as in the first case, than in the second, where total fantasies ruled the day. Right now, the news is uniformly horrible and the stock is flopping around. It acts like it wants to grind its way slowly toward single digits, but I still expect some major slippage within short time periods. There are some fantasies and bald-faced lies still being told by analysts, but, for the most part, the arrival of new suckers with more money than brains to push the stock higher this time seems to be the missing ingredient. So, I have recently switched put strategy again. I have bought Leap Puts for Jan 1999 with a strike of $20. I already own May 30s and June 25s and 30s, purchased when this dog was up a bit. My next purchase will be on the order of Sept or Oct. 25s, assuming we ever get another up day on this stock. <G> I think we are nearing the end game here, and the eps reports over the next several quarters will kill any bullish sentiment. The co. will run huge losses, and, more importantly, it will become obvious that they have eaten up the cash they need to keep moving forward. Like a shark, if they aren't moving forward, they are dying. And rust never sleeps. That makes me willing to sit back and not worry as much about the day to day stuff or the Whittington/Kurlak style misdirection plays. Yes, if Wall Street thinks they can locate a lot of fish to nibble at converts again, they may start another tout-a-thon, but this time it doesn't matter. As opposed to the Whittington $17 eps scam, which was foisted on a gullible public when the stock was showing nominal earnings growth, or the Kurlak scam, which was done when the co. had a couple of slightly better, though awful, quarters coming up, any current tout would have to explain why things are going from loss to deep loss to "will we be in business next year?" I think that is a tougher environment for a DRAM scam or a tout-a-thon to work. I still plan to roll down and probably out when I get a quadruple on a put. MB