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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam Scrutchins who wrote (14117)	5/28/1998 9:32:00 PM
From: HerbVic	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213177

About the stock action - I witnessed a similar phenomena today with another issue that I was watching closely. Mind you, I don't have level II, nor do I have realtime FastQuote. But even with frequent instant quotes through Datek it was clear that the MM's were letting the trades through on a sink or swim basis. This could be interpreted that they were not taking a position. I don't know. But as you stated, the bid/ask spread went to 1/4 or more and held for long periods without change on the bid or the ask, even though a few small trades went through at the ask. I understand that can easily happen since if the ask stays firm, anyone can jump in and buy a block at the ask. The MM does not have to change the bid. What impressed me by my observations and reading about your observations is that the MMs may be getting frustrated. There is a noise level interference with their reading the market this year. It's coming from the plethora of small investor trading online. Before online trading, there were traders and there were investors. And the traders made huge sums of money off of their guile ability over investors. I saw a piece on CNBC Tuesday. It was one of those video journalism pieces, but the subject was not easily defined. They seemed to be trying to warn investors that it would be better if they didn't trade in and out of stocks, but adopted a buy and hold strategy. Survey says! Buy and hold makes more profits. Blah, blah, blah. Etc. etc... ad infinitum. It struck me after the piece had aired; Who are these guys trying to help? My own experience has taught me to stick on the way up then try to lock in profits. Buy and hold sounds great in a predictable and non volatile world! When are we going to get that as a background to trade in? I think the little guys are getting into these guy's pockets too much and giving them a dose of their own medicine. Well, enough about the video journalism piece, and back to trying to read the market. There are many reasons to take the market down. When Wall Street tried to take it down this week, many people were already backed out of their positions holding cash. As prices suffered in the rotation game, they found themselves playing round robin toss with the bomb. Each toss resulted in further losses because the suckers were not lining up like they used to. People today are very informed! When there was enough head room for some significant gains, when the 'favorite' stocks started to look cheap, the in/out players quit sitting on their cash and started buying. The out of favor stocks were left untouched. AAPL surged back up to the high 27's from the high 25's indicating that it is not out of favor. It still has some upside, but you're right! If the broader market tanks, so goes AAPL. If one is in from the high 29's and above, it's a Mexican sweat till MacWorld. It's a typical BULL MARKET that will not quit voluntarily. It will continue in this pattern of speculative lift and correct until the economy heats up to the point of causing the Fed to force a recession. I can't comment on Apple's ability to execute on all the plans that are in the pipeline. I can say what my concerns are. I am MOST CONCERNED about the sector inventory FIASCO. Some BIG manufacturers are going to get clobbered. I think that Apple is somewhat isolated due to the fact that Apple has always attracted a DIFFERENT sort of buyer by its product differentiation. But it WILL delay and hamper any incursion into market share. Secondarily, I'm concerned about the delivery date of the iMac. Will it be on time? In sufficient quantities? Without significant defects? Thirdly, I'm concerned that Steve may have over promised the capabilities of his genius OS developer staff. The job before them is HUGE! The delivery date is over a year out. I worry that a year may not be enough time to build the Promised Land OS. HerbVic