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Technology Stocks : 3Com Corporation (COMS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark who wrote (17794)	6/19/1998 9:59:00 AM
From: briank	Respond to of 45548

CC=Conf Call

To: Mark who wrote (17794)	6/19/1998 10:01:00 AM
From: joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 45548

cc = conference call TO ALL: from TSC on network mergers.... ===================================================================== By James J. Cramer 6/19/98 12:15 AM ET Nobody in his right mind would want to be a networking analyst right now. There is simply no way you can be right for more than five minutes. Not with the rumors that fly by my desk. Amazed by the wealth of conjectures, by midmorning Thursday I began to catalogue every one of the noisy roadsters. By the end of the day, I had 26 of them -- almost all prompted by the positive price action in the group. I will now share them with you, with the full disclosure that I believe the vast majority of these are car crashes waiting to happen. Nevertheless, I have to play this game of chicken because I am long all of these stocks, and, frankly, the fundamentals for just about everybody in tech have taken a downturn and I have no desire to be in for the accident itself. Take it from me, not one of these stocks is trading on fundamentals, with the possible exception of Cisco (CSCO:Nasdaq). I present them to you, not because I think they will happen, nor because I want to prompt you to take action. That would be a mistake. I present them to show you how absurd this group has become and how unhelpful security analysis is when the group is caught in a rumor traffic jam. Twenty-six reasons to be confused by the networkers: a. Ascend (ASND:Nasdaq) is going to get a bid from Ericsson (ERICY:Nasdaq ADR). b. Ascend's quarter is not as strong as first thought. c. Ascend's quarter is finishing well after a moment of weakness. d. Lucent (LU:NYSE) wants to buy Ascend, but has to wait because of the pooling-of-interest rules. e. Cisco is closing in on Ascend's high-end business. f. Tellabs (TLAB:Nasdaq) might want to buy Ascend even though it hasn't even closed on the Ciena (CIEN:Nasdaq) deal. g. Ascend is winning big orders right now from Cisco. h. Ericsson is interested in acquiring 3COM (COMS:Nasdaq). i. 3COM may be getting out of the remote business. j. 3COM's quarter may be ahead of expectations. k. 3COM might put itself up for sale. l. 3COM had been contacted by someone, but turned it down, but it may have been just for parts of the business. m. Northern Telecom (NT:NYSE) is going to walk away from the Bay Networks (BAY:NYSE) deal because of the pounding its stock has received since it announced the deal. n. Baynet is going to get a higher bid from Ericsson. o. Baynet's business is going better than we thought and might get a higher bid because of that. p. Cisco's East Asian business is now below plan. q. Cisco's domestic business is now above plan. r. Cisco's lead times have lengthened. s. Cisco's Chambers is more downbeat about Japan than usual. t. Cisco's Chambers was more tired than usual. u. Lucent's just-filed lawsuit against Cisco is actually important. v. Cisco has nothing to fear from the lawsuit. w. Cisco's statements were consistent/inconsistent with previous guidance. x. Ericsson wants to do only smaller acquisitions. y. Ericsson wants to do one giant acquisition. z. Ascend and 3COM might merge -- the last because of an incomplete headline on the Dow tape. Do you want to sit in your office and take these calls all day? Can you imagine trying to sort through all of this stuff to offer guidance on it? Which was why, midway through the day, when Jeff Berkowitz had ping-ponged this group around enough times to drive everyone crazy, I told him I was going to focus on search engine valuations. At least there is some sanity to that insanity. Random musings: Talk about crummy disclosure. This Texas Instruments (TXN:NYSE)-Micron (MU:NYSE) thing starts out as a simple Saturday story in The New York Times and mushrooms into this speculative boil courtesy of both companies' insistence that no announcement come out until Micron reported...I thought I had grown a bit tired of Herb's Iomega (IOM:NYSE) stuff until I saw the shocking release at the close. What the heck is going on there? Only Herb's been wise to this one from the start. Way to go...Hey, I thought Europe was strong. But here are Stratus (SRA:NYSE) and Sequent (SQNT:Nasdaq), both major European tech suppliers, blowing up on the same day. Sequent cites Boeing BA:NYSE) cancellations, but if European biz were so strong I don't think we would have noticed. Have Asian woes started to cool Europe's booming economy?...Squawk this morning -- a special Friday Triple-Witch Squawk, which is fine by me because I always sit these days out. Too much bizarre random price movement...That underwriting chute from the spring is showing some real holes. Two blowups of two recent entrants to the market in two consecutive days. Ouch...One more reason why Rubin is better than Hamilton: He brilliantly waited until the end of the quarter, so the speculators would join him and lock in their gains against the yen rather than turn gains into losses. Yes, he does think like this.