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To: Vijay Sonty who wrote (14197)	10/2/1998 5:12:00 PM
From: Mikhail Rasolis	Respond to of 27307

Can you please explain why you picked October 13th.

To: Vijay Sonty who wrote (14197)	10/2/1998 5:19:00 PM
From: Dell-icious	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27307

YHOO may well touch 100 during a low in October, due to its volatility, and if you are short now that might be a good time to cover. But long term there is only one direction YHOO is headed, and that is up. Dell-icious

To: Vijay Sonty who wrote (14197)	10/2/1998 5:21:00 PM
From: Dell-icious	Respond to of 27307

The Ax: Readerman Says Lessons to Be Learned from Biotech thestreet.com By Eric Moskowitz Staff Reporter 10/2/98 3:58 PM ET Not too long ago there was an industry that had all the venture capital cash it needed and a public equity market that was receptive to funding new and innovative companies. No, it wasn't the Internet. It was the biotech sector, which grew out of a belief back in the early 1980s that smart biochemists could use recombinant gene technologies to create new drugs that would cure previously unconquerable diseases. It was fun while it lasted. The sector flamed out in the early 1990s and most market watchers would argue it has been significantly underperforming the market ever since. The Amex Biotech Index, since its inception in October 1992, is down 9%. To make sense of the erratic gyrations of Internet stocks lately, David Readerman of NationsBanc Montgomery -- an early bull on Internet stocks -- did some research and number crunching and came up with a report entitled: "The Internet Versus the Biotech Era: Lessons To Be Learned." It turns out that the era's early stages have much in common, Readerman says. He and a team of Montgomery analysts devised a handy "lessons to be learned" from the boom and bust of the early 1990s, then partial recovery, in biotech. In both eras an abundance of capital funds and a rich vein of smart entrepreneurs helped create new markets in Internet and biotech sectors. Wall Street analysts loved them both, arguing that both sectors could maintain their blistering earnings growth rates. This Panglossian thinking cost the biotech high-fliers dearly. Shares of Xoma (XOMA:Nasdaq) -- a biotech heavyweight with a similar early stock price run as Yahoo! (YHOO:Nasdaq) and Amazon.com (AMZN:Nasdaq) -- shot up over 500% from 1984 to 1987. But since then, Xoma's only risen 13%. As Readerman explains, however, Internet companies do not have some of the stumbling blocks facing biotech start-ups. For one, biotech stocks were undone in 1992 by governmental regulations, a factor that hasn't yet surfaced as a problem for Internet companies. "The gating factors for all biotech stocks were FDA approval and Phase III trial success," says Readerman, who says many biotech stocks failed to win final approval from the government that year. One such company was Centicor (CNTO:Nasdaq), which was up 480% from 1988 to 1991, but torpedoed 85% -- from 50 to 7 3/4 -- in 1992 after its development of a cure for sepsis failed in a late trial stage. By contrast, Internet companies are largely unregulated and do not require the same FDA-like government approval process. Another positive for Internet stocks is that the supply of biotech management was rather thin, argues Readerman. The companies, "weak pharmaceutical retreads," were "composed of scientists that had never run companies," he says. Managers at Internet companies, at least so far, seem far more competent, -- just take a look at Tim Koogle and Jeff Mallett at Yahoo! and America Online's (AOL:NYSE) Steve Case. (Montgomery has helped bring a number of Internet companies public, including Yahoo, ETrade (EGRP:Nasdaq) and Preview Travel (PVTL:Nasdaq)). Some may argue, however, that these are the best of the bunch and there are plenty of inexperienced Internet CEOs out there. Another potential pothole for this superhighway of information could be web traffic numbers, which have been growing exponentially over the last few years, warns Readerman in his report. "The law of large numbers will inevitably result in a sequential slowing in Internet traffic," he says. "Long-term winners must build multiple revenue streams from each unique Web page view or visit." Its too early to make a long-term comparison of the two sectors: After all, the biotech industry has been around for 15 years, while the Internet has managed three. Already, however, there are signs that the Internet sector is not exactly the rock of Gibraltar. Yes, it's true that Internet stocks are up an average of 200% over the last three years, with stocks such as Yahoo! and Amazon -- up 1,500% and 800%, respectively, since their IPOs -- leading the charge. But they are both 16% and 30% off their recently hit 52-week highs. And others have fared much worse over the last couple of months: SportsLine USA (SPLN:Nasdaq) is down 59% from its 52-week high, ETrade has fallen off 63%, and N2K (NTKI:Nasdaq) is off 83% from its all-time high. This kind of logic isn't something Internet fans want to necessarily hear right now, but it's important to look back on a time when another industry besides the Internet was a Wall Street darling. Or at least that's what Readerman & Co. seem to be hinting. At the very least, the biotech boom and subsequent collapse is a good lesson for Internet fans that a sure thing is not a sure thing forever.