To: zurdo who wrote (4924 ) 8/13/1998 8:41:00 PM From: Anthony Wong Read Replies (2) | Respond to
zurdo, this message from the Yahoo Merck board provides a short term and long term perspective (including price movement) of Merck and Pfizer. The poster is VikingRapier, subject MRK/PFE (message # is 5757 but it may change). It is well-written and unbiased. Have a look:-messages.yahoo.com @m2.yahoo.com All these pale in comparison to the really large effect: general market conditions. PFE has a high p/e. This makes people more likely to sell in a down moving market. More importantly, people are simply selling because of reasons unrelated to the company as such: they want to take the profits for other opportunities, or they need to cover margin, or have other bills and they take the profits - and PFE made them a lot of money. We see this in the equal movements of WLA and PFE (both high p/e). MRK on the other hand has a relatively lower p/e, good institutional investment inertia, and so is not as likely to be sold off for the reasons outlined for PFE or WLA.
