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

To: Jan Crawley who wrote (12548)	8/4/1998 2:48:00 PM
From: umbro	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Jan says, We know that Amzn does not* have many retail investors ... Does Yhoo attract more mom-and-pop investors?* I don't know, Jan. Maybe AMZN and Yahoo! attact more mom-and-pop mutual fund managers <g>, who have also visited Disneyland recently. Seriously, it seems so easy these days for analysts (futurists, whatever) to pick up on some theme, completely without factual basis and then run with it. As we know, institutions control about 11M shares, or probably close to 75% of AMZN's float. And there were only 300 total stockholders of record in March of 1998. Probably one third of them were either institutions, or insiders and employees. With those stats., it is very difficult making the case that AMZN is held mainly by "mom and pop" investors. To determine those numbers for Yahoo! would take a little bit more leg work. Out-of-pocket? We'll miss you. Rest up. I'm sure AMZN will continue to be exciting to follow for the year to come.

To: Jan Crawley who wrote (12548)	8/4/1998 2:52:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Respond to of 164684

Thanks Gary and Jan for your comments. The volume in Amazon.com is rising but the stock is meeting a lot of resistance. I suspect that it will rally a bit if the market turns up. If it moves up again to where the charts scream sell, I will short more. On the flip side of the coin, I am looking at selling puts on some distressed stocks (ones that actually have earnings and are now trading near historical lows in terms of price/sales, price/book, and P/E and that have a good chance of growing earnings toward the end of this year and into next. Unfortunately, finding the high betas of an Amazon.com or Yahoo! isn't likely. This strategy worked incredibly well for one of my associates a couple of years ago when the market was in a similar condition and the tech stocks were battered and bleeding.