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Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tonyt who wrote (10011)	7/11/1998 9:17:00 AM
From: llamaphlegm	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 164684

interactive.wsj.com There's more to the article (than the excerpts below) and it's worth the read (including a reference to everyone searching for "the next amzn' -- presumably he means the price, not stock) Best line: Merrill Lynch's Internet analyst Jonathan saying it's like "trying to value tulip bulbs." Go amzn!!!! TO $150. Barron's Are the Internet issues finally starting to crack? After an astounding rally Monday, the stocks have subsequently fallen in four straight sessions. And that's despite some astoundingly good news from Yahoo. The company late Wednesday declared a 2-for-1 stock split, reported far-better-than-expected June quarter earnings and announced a $250 million vote of confidence from Softbank Holdings, which bought more than 1.4 million Yahoo shares in a private placement for just north of $183 a share. Though the news sparked some buying Thursday morning, sending the stock as high as 204, it closed the day at 184, lower on the day. Even some of the stocks' chief cheerleaders have begun edging away from the sector. NationsBanc Montgomery Securities last week pulled its buy rating on Amazon.com; Hambrecht & Quist did the same on Yahoo. Both firms cited the same reasoning: The stocks simply have moved beyond a reasonable valuation. "I'm torn between enthusiasm for the sector and a nagging feeling that we're trying to evaluate the price of tulip bulbs," confides Jonathan Cohen, Internet analyst at Merrill Lynch. "The advice we've been giving people is twofold. The first is, this is probably the single most compelling investment opportunity we've seen in information technology in a generation. The second point is, there are at times only the most ephemeral connections between the operating fundamentals of some of these companies and their share prices." Cohen suggests taking a position in America Online; he also thinks Lycos and music-retailer N2K look cheap compared to their rivals. But he has a warning for people piling into stocks that have already doubled and tripled this year: "If momentum shifts, its going to be the names that have risen the highest that come down the hardest."..... The list of insider sales at Amazon.com continues to grow. In the last Plugged In (June 29) we noted that Michael Dell had sold some shares, following in the footsteps of a long line of Silicon Valley luminaries who got shares via a Kleiner Perkins venture-capital fund. Since then, some new notables have filed to sell, including Mark Breier, CEO of Software.Net, and Netscape Chairman James Barksdale. More interestingly, Baker & Taylor, a book, music and video wholesaler that actually ships many of the titles sold to Amazon customers, filed to sell 100,000 Amazon shares. Jim Ulsamer, president of Baker & Taylor Books, says the privately held Charlotte, North Carolina, company received the stock as part of an arrangement in which they supply Amazon with bibiliographic data -- author, title, publisher, list price, etc. Ulsamer stressed that Baker & Taylor remains "extremely bullish" on Internet bookselling. So why sell now? Stock price too high? And how many Amazon shares do they have left? To those questions, Ulsamer declined comment.