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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (36271)	11/14/1998 1:53:00 PM
From: Skeeter Bug	Respond to of 132070

>>The most interesting thing in IBD was an 8 page ad from Compaq about their new direct model for businesses. Boy, I bet that was cheap. <G><< so, cpq can't sell computers and now they get into the stock selling business. ge, we're almost like dell so buy me! ;-)

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (36271)	11/14/1998 3:10:00 PM
From: Frodo Baxter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

>To All, Media review: Barron's. 1. A letter from a brilliant Houstonian is published under the squib, "Dismal Science," in the Mailbag section this week. Alas, it is nothing new for participants on this thread. Just the same comments I made about Paul Krugman when last week's profile appeared. The letter after mine was much more vicious. Hopefully, Krugman's students will tack them on the dais before he delivers his lectures. <G> Thanks for the backhanded compliment.

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (36271)	11/14/1998 8:48:00 PM
From: novice investor	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

Hi Michael, Do you have any methods to analyze "investor behavior?" I realize this is rather silly question and comes dangerously close to technical analysis but I have been trying to gather data on this issue and so far all I've got are some bogus psychology theories and useless statistics. Last winter, with bearish view on the market I've converted all my assets to money market funds. When the market dipped this summer I bought some stocks and many calls in dozen different companies. This part was time consuming but easy; the company fundamentals were available and analysis methods used on their prospectuses are, well, traditional techniques. Deciding appropriate time to sell the calls, however, is giving me headache. While the prices of my calls have appreciated, they are still not "over valued" by fundamentals and I'm more concerned about general market collapse before my calls expire. In an attempt to "gauge" the market sentiment, I've visited local discount brokerage offices where stock market "in crowd" hangs around. I remember the NIKKEI stocks in 1989 when it hit near 40000 the Japanese investors were euphoric with expectation of 50000 within 1990; they were not at all concerned with the price to earning ratio of 400 on some of widely held stocks. The "in crowd" I've found in Cupertino, Santa Clara, San Jose and Palo Alto were definitely enthusiastic but not quite euphoric yet. Their overwhelming support for Intel is predictable in Silicon Valley and as I've mentioned before, they do not really analyze anything. Their method of selecting stocks is similar to my wife's grocery shopping; they look for "sale on name brands." If the company name is familiar (they've seen ads on TV) and if it's on sale (it's at or near annual low) then it's a good buy. Once they own the stock, they cling onto them with religious fervor. One strange thing is that they cling tighter onto losing stocks because they don't want to lose real money by selling at a loss?! While most of them knew about Dutch tulip mania and claim they would never pay $10000 for a tulip bulb, one of them did pay that much for a baseball card. I believe current market is over valued and some time soon the financial institutions will pull their money out based on fundamentals. However, with so many individual investors with their vaguely bullish sentiment involved I have no concrete method to determine the "individual investor behavior" factor creating artificial lift to overall market. Please help. Thanks, NI

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (36271)	11/15/1998 12:51:00 AM
From: S. maltophilia	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

<< He said, concentrate on the investment first and consider taxes second. Is he getting wiser or is this a blind squirrel finding an acorn? <G>>> Thanks for checking out IBD and saving me a buck-g-. Obviously if you invest like that your Schedule D is your tax shelter. I still remember their ad where some yuppie twit says he prefers IBD because they don't make him read those long articles about herding yaks in Irkutsk. Hell, that's the best part of the WSJ. I even own a book titled The Best of the Wall Street Journal and it doesn't contain a single chart<G>

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (36271)	11/16/1998 8:52:00 PM
From: Jeff Leader	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

3. However, Abelson is right on about the SIA flapdoodle projections and he is the first one in the media to print the fact that the SIA was predicting 17% growth for chips this year. They weren't that far off except for the fact they forgot the negative sign. <G> Adam Lashinsky of the San Jose Mercury beat Abelson by a day... mercurycenter.com Lashinsky is a good read. Best in the Bay Area, since Herb Greenberg packed his bags and went for the big$ at thestreet.com