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Technology Stocks : America On-Line: will it survive ...? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: limtex who wrote (10902)	8/3/1998 8:23:00 PM
From: Keith A Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

Wow, limtex, you have forcast a rather dismal picture. For the last several months I have been trying to find stocks either already hammered or "under the radar" of Wall Street's pros. They are plenty to be found. Actrade (ACRT) and Ashton Technologies (ASTN) among the latter. I picked up some COMS today on the basis that there may be an unexpected upside to their earnings this quarter. Palm Pilots are going like hotcakes and the 56K modem confusion is behind the market. The stock (and the company) deserve a break. I agree to a large extent on Asia, but, the Fed/Treasury and IMF won't let things get too out-of-control. Now if Rubin resigns and Greenspan takes early retirement then I will worry to no end. I just don't see Alice Rivlin as commanding a persona as Al. If you are that worried on the near term outlook, buy puts on the indexes and be done with it. Otherwise, this period (maybe next 6 months) will be remembered as one of the best buying opportunities in the last couple of years. Play it safe and buy Aug 115 AOL puts and forget about it. Otherwise, go short.

To: limtex who wrote (10902)	8/4/1998 2:23:00 AM
From: Mick Mørmøny	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13594

Why are Net stocks deflating? By Corey Grice Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM August 3, 1998, 5:45 p.m. PT news analysis The stock market has been busy shedding points in recent weeks, dragging down Internet stocks along the way. Usually an unflappable group, Net stocks have slumped since the broader market took a turn for the worse last month on increased concerns about Asian economies and cautionary tones from Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the tech-heavy Nasdaq are trading at about six-week lows. (See related story) "During the April and May decline, a lot of Internet stocks would run counter to the market, and it was hard to dampen speculation at all," said David Simons, managing director at Digital Video Investments, an institutional investing firm. "Now the character has changed, and you're not seeing stocks bounce up on good news." Case in point: America Online today announced a deal with Netscape to collaborate on several online city guides. (See related story) "Normally, something like that would be good for a 2 percent or 3 percent bump, but today it didn't happen," Simons said. Instead, AOL finished today down about 1 percent at 116, and Netscape closed down more than 5 percent at 27.0625. Net directory Yahoo closed at 86.4375 today, down nearly 5 percent, and Internet service provider MindSpring shaved more than 4 percent to close at 39. They were among the luckier of the Net issues. DoubleClick, for example, was off nearly 15 percent today, while music retailer CDnow closed down 13 percent. Search engines Excite and Infoseek were down more than 7 percent and more than 6 percent, respectively. Only weeks ago, many of these Internet bellwethers, including Yahoo and AOL, were trading at or near their 52-week highs. So what happened? "It took a good week before the Internet stocks really started to react to the down market," Simons said. "At first these types of speculative stocks are slow to react, but with protracted declines they tend more and more to react far worse than the general market." Simons said there hasn't been any bad news in the Internet arena to spark a decline. Instead, he said, retail investors and day traders begin to start thinking about preserving profits. Indeed, some say that the Internet sector is as strong now as ever and that the recent decline is to be expected. Keith Benjamin, an Internet analyst for BancAmerica Robertson Stephens, said he is not concerned about the recent downturn in Internet stocks and maintains a "buy" rating on many of them. "This is an almost identical pattern to what we've seen before. Last year, these stocks were down about 20 percent after earnings season," he said, noting that the Internet segment generally has been down about 15 percent during the last week. Benjamin attributes some of the recent losses to "rational profit taking," adding: "I think the market needed a break. This is August. You and I should be out working on our tans, not working in front of a computer." news.com