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

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (15477)	11/13/1998 11:19:00 PM
From: RockyBalboa	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18691

Congrats, Roger, good timing. I read through lots INFO facts and realized what crap it is but when I have seen the frenzy at 11 a.m., rethinking of GMAI and avtel recently I shied away. What happened if the guys just said: "Let's do it again." GMAI a $1(!) stock only days ago. No idea where to get shares to short. But as ever: thinks should cool down and not only INFO but many others are offered as shorts. The Pinkish long pick MALL, a UBID pre-IPO play should drop like WCAP then. I missed shorting NAVR today at 5. Today MALL was a good play on the long side and I won't short MALL until the UBID IPO clears up and gets done but then MALL should drop once the frenzy is over. C.

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (15477)	11/14/1998 11:46:00 AM
From: Steve Woas	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 18691

Roger, I tried to short INFO and my broker said they couldn't do it. What broker do you find best for shorting and daytrading in general? I would also like to what broker people used to short GERN the other day when it was at the top. All the brokers I called had none for shorting. Thanks, Steve

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (15477)	11/14/1998 7:09:00 PM
From: Ploni	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18691

Regarding brokers who report that a stock can't be shorted: It won't help too many people, but I've heard something interesting regarding this, from a gentleman who posts on SI and other places. He daytrades out of an office set up for that purpose, and explains that before he hits the button to short an issue, he is supposed to check with the bookkeeping office to make sure that it can be shorted. However, sometimes he "forgets" to check this out ahead of time. He almost always closes out his positions at the end of the day, so that by the time the bookkeeping office sees that he's shorted something that they can't borrow, he's already out of it. I think a few times he's taken something home, and I'm not sure what they've done to him. I know this won't help many people, as most of you have real jobs and don't have the time to go trade in a daytraders office. But I thought it was interesting, that there are some people who can short such issues, even if it's in an unofficial manner. The only other people who can make money on the short side from garbage such as AVCO and GMAI are market makers, who can always short, regardless of whether a stock is marginable or above 5.

To: Roger A. Babb who wrote (15477)	11/14/1998 9:00:00 PM
From: larry	Respond to of 18691

Roger and all, More opinion on DELL... 'Is this Dell's Last Hurrah or just a pause? by: Fundamentals10 Dell's last earnings report showed signs of strain. The million dollar question: is this a prelude to DELL missing their earnings numbers (as they did in late 1995) or is this just a slower period soon to be followed by a stronger period. Most CFO's and CEO's use good times to build up reserves on their balance sheet and in their business practices so that they can get through rough spots without having to miss earnings numbers. If you look carefully at an earnings report you can sometimes discern that a company is using up reserves to make numbers. This often but not always precedes an outright miss of earnings numbers. So what are the signs of strain in the DELL earnings report? There are quite a few. Rather than put them all in one long message I'll try to spread it over several messages. But first a quick summary of the signs of strain: Revenues were lower than many if not most analyst estimates. Earnings barely beat estimates (if you use an extra decimal point they were 27.8 cents vs a 27 cent estimate). Days Sales outstanding rose. Operating expenses as a per cent of revenues decreased (signalling that they held back on hiring and on other discretionary items to help them make the quarter). Gross margins declined and on the conference call they signaled that further declines are likely next year. Lastly, the balance sheet gave an indication that a large number of employees exercised options during the quarter. None of this is definitive, it may just be a passing storm (some will argue that it is not even a storm) but it is something to be aware of. ' larry!