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

To: JOHN CHEN who wrote (14192)	9/29/1998 8:14:00 PM
From: Roger A. Babb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18691

John, it is currently looking very bad for my picks and looking increasingly unlikely that the market will crash before yearend. But let's wait until December 31 before we throw in the towel.

To: JOHN CHEN who wrote (14192)	9/29/1998 8:41:00 PM
From: Roger A. Babb	Respond to of 18691

John, while we are on the subject, we should ask: "what makes companies like YHOO, ATHM, AMZN, and CTXS plus a few others worth two or three times as much now as at the beginning of the year when they were already highly valued?" What is known now that was not known then? Have their earnings, or earnings prospects, really improved by a factor of 3 in 9 months? The answer is that we are in a speculative bubble and big money has flowed to these "liquid" stocks. They are up big and will eventually fall big. But as with most bubbles, it will grow larger and last longer than most people predict. The bust will come when almost every investor is "in" and there are no more "greater fools" to continue buying. This has happened many times before in history: South Seas, Tulips, 1929, Tokyo real estate, etc. This bubble too will burst, killing many shorts before the burst and many more longs afterwards. As for BROC, aka FSTW, I still hold a substantial long position and still have great hopes for their new NetGain product. But I must confess that I expected earnings and revenues to be substantially up by the end of third quarter and it appears that I will be disappointed this quarter and fourth quarter is questionable. The product is great, but they have been slow getting it to market and it remains to be seen if they can market in the face of larger competitors. Just having a better mousetrap is not always enough. Maybe a good surprise is just around the corner for FSTW.........