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Strategies & Market Trends : Roger's 1998 Short Picks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hank who wrote (12407)	8/5/1998 9:21:00 AM
From: Graeme Smith	Respond to of 18691

Hank, I like Compaq and its was my largest long. Over the last few weeks I have been slowly selling my Compaq. I may even sell the remainder. They have held up reasonably well for the last few weeks, but I see them hitting 25 before they hit 35. At 25, 12 times next years earnings they would be ridiculously undervalued. However until the market turns they are going to drop with everyone else. Graeme

To: Hank who wrote (12407)	8/5/1998 9:30:00 AM
From: Graeme Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18691

To anyone, Does anyone here have experience in trading currencies. My next contract is going to be paid for in British pounds. This is not good as it is expected that the English pound will drop sometime later this year. As a hedge I am interested in the possibility of buying futures against the pound. Unfortunately I know absolutely nothing about currency trading. How do I trade currencies. Would I need a full service broker like Merril Lynch. Can I bet against ( ie go short) a single currency. Can I bet very small amounts. All I would like to do is hedge currency futures against at most 50,000 sterling. Graeme

To: Hank who wrote (12407)	8/5/1998 11:45:00 AM
From: Roger A. Babb	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18691

Hank, I think that cpq will do better (less bad) than dell. If you don't want to sell cpq, you might hedge with a dell short.

To: Hank who wrote (12407)	8/5/1998 2:27:00 PM
From: Bob Trocchi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18691

Hank... >>Any views on CPQ at this point? << I am long on CPQ so anything I say must be weighed against that. As you know I am NOT a hypester! My reasons for being long are: 1. I believe CPQ made a great acquisition with DEC. The best part of DEC was their System Consulting business bringing in about $6-7M/yr. While DEC id not break out their profits by sector, I believe the Consulting business was profitable. This business compliments CPQ which wants to get into major accounts and higher margin business and this is a quick way to do it. 2. AltaVista is an excellent search engine and can be build into a YAHOO type portal site. I say can. Question, can CPQ do it? 3. They (IMO) got a bargain in their acquisition in that they paid about $9B for a company that was doing $13B and had over $3B in cash. 4. While the Alpha chip is not any volume leader, it is an excellent 64 bit cpu chip and I feel with CPQ can be used to get a head start over INTL's 64 bit Merced chip. This give CPQ leverage in their dealings with INTC. Incidentally, I find it funny that INTC by their agreement with DEC that INTC must continue to produce ALPHA chips. It is a funny world! 5. CPQ will make some dramatic cost cuts ( they have said they will cut 15,000 out of DEC's 54,000 employees I suspect by the end of CY98. This will get rid of a lot of duplication in headquarters overhead, sales/marketing and finance. CPQ will also sell a few manufacturing plants that DEC has. Now the BIG question. Can CPQ execute all the above. CPQ culture and DEC culture are very different. (High volume, low margin, sell the hardware mentality compared to the DEC culture to sell service applications, build relationships with customers etc.) If they can, I feel it is a $60 stock in a couple of years at most. If they can't, look out below. I am betting they can. Bob T.