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

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (22782)	10/23/1998 5:43:00 PM
From: Verkaylac	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164685

my concern is that if she was really doing her job...maybe her estimates should be for 50 to 70 cents positive given all the hype and the level of the stock. If it is only relative to "expectations"...that she helps set, then she can always drop her estimate below whatever the company tells her they are going to come in at... then low and behold its an upside surprise and the Co has hit a home run!!!! Then again...IMHO, this practice is now SOP on Wall Street isn't it? Low ball the current qtr, while you keep future qtrs jacked up.

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (22782)	10/23/1998 6:46:00 PM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164685

William, May I suggest that you read the following article from the WSJ. It appears that the only way that Amazon.con hasn't been busted is they're not enough cop's to watch the crooks. Given enough time, they'll catch the crooks. By then you and your fellow speculators will be living in a catholic monastery in some tax-excile. interactive.wsj.com

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (22782)	10/24/1998 6:46:00 PM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164685

The Internet Capitalist SG Cowen Internet Research 11 valued, reflect on the power of increasing returns to gain comfort and perspective. (And for a good primer on increasing returns, see www.santafe.edu/arthur). A Few Thoughts On The Microsoft V DOJ Case Given the sheer weight of the attention paid to this case, we are reticent to add to the girth of the words, missives, and tomes dedicated to the Microsoft/DOJ trial. But since we've just dug around the stump of increasing returns, we'll continue our digging as it pertains to Microsoft, since increasing returns most certainly is an important factor (perhaps the most important factor) in the trial and since a healthy debate (some would call it raging) certainly still exists within the investment community and Silicon Valley about the proper role of regulation in free markets and Microsoft's competitive tactics. At its core, the debate centers around whether increasing returns markets (which naturally tend to produce monopolies, however short lived) should be regulated, with specific data, like Microsoft's ability to increase prices over the last few years on its operating systems and applications, used as evidence toward the affirmative. Our own position, given the history of Federal regulatory interference, is that this shouldn't be contemplated without a serious and sober appraisal of the implications. At the end of the day, one's views on this entire subject come down to an assessment of whether the cost of inevitable, but usually short-lived monopolies (in any high-tech business) is greater than that of increased government interference in the entirety of the high-tech economy. There are plenty of measures one could use (on both sides of the debate) to determine if, in the specific case of MSFT v DOJ, their quasi-monopoly has been beneficial or harmful to consumers, competitors, venture capitalists, or shareholders (determining if it will be beneficial or harmful in the future is a far more difficult exercise). Where we come down on this specific debate doesn't really matter (since a plausible argument can be made on either side and because Joel Klein still hasn't called to ask us our opinion). But if we had to choose between one or the other, we'd rather the markets discipline Microsoft than the government, since the markets have shown that they are capable of doing so (the Microsoft Network, Microsoft Money, etc.) where the government's disciplining role has been laughable, if not dangerous. Indeed, we can't imagine the Street would be pleased to include government regulation as a risk factor in every ROI calculation one makes about a new and attractive investment. The retort that Microsoft has been able to summarily increase pricing over the years and that this is prima facie evidence of monopoly power is a canard. Microsoft has been able to raise prices, no question, but this doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to us thanks to the substantial (profound?) increases in the functionality of operating system services. Microsoft sells software, not hardware; their prices need not come down with time in response to Moore's law. Thought of holistically, the price/performance of computing generally (of that functionality derived from the underlying hardware, networking, and software layers combined) has come down drastically; that Microsoft has been able to extract more value (read: $'s) from the price of computing merely suggests to us that they've benefited from the general and inevitable progression of value up from the hardware and networking layers toward the software and application layers in the computing stack. In other words, Microsoft's