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Strategies & Market Trends : Mr. Pink's Picks: selected event-driven value investments -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr. Pink who wrote (4991)	12/7/1998 1:03:00 PM
From: steve susko	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18998

staying long on FHT? notice this thing pop at the open and then trend down all day.

To: Mr. Pink who wrote (4991)	12/7/1998 2:02:00 PM
From: Starfish*	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18998

Did you see this FP release? First Plus Sued For Securities Fraud, Announces Berman, DeValerio & Pease LLP BOSTON, Dec. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- FirstPlus Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE: FP) has been sued for violating the federal securities laws in a class action filed today in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The action is brought on behalf of all persons or entities who purchased the common stock of FirstPlus during the period of June 5, 1997 through November 2, 1998, inclusive. The action charges that FirstPlus, a consumer finance company which makes loans to homeowners based on the value of their home, falsely claimed strong growth based upon its conservative accounting practices inflating the price of FirstPlus stock from its low of $21 to a Class Period high of $61 7/8. The Complaint further charges that defendants overvalued the Company's existing loan portfolio, failed to record adequate loan loss reserves and became increasingly dependant upon outside sources of capitalization. The inflation of FirstPlus shares enabled the Company to use its shares as currency to purchase other sources of revenue, including Life Financial Corporation. These purchases were designed to enable FirstPlus to post 1998 earnings growth. The action also charges that Defendant Daniel T. Phillips, as a means to avoid alerting the investment community of the sale of a significant number of his FirstPlus shares, utilized the inflated price of FirstPlus to obtain more than $50 million from 3.7 million FirstPlus shares during early 1998 by placing his FirstPlus stock into a family partnership and then obtaining margin loans collaterized solely by his FirstPlus shares. On November 3, 1998, FirstPlus shocked the investment community when it revealed a 70% decline in generative earnings, an $85.2 million write down, and that it would begin dismantling FirstPlus to avoid bankruptcy. FirstPlus' common stock, which were traded at $54 7/8 during the Class Period, dropped to below $3 7/8 per share. If you purchased FirstPlus common stock during the Class Period you may wish to contact either Kathryn A. McElroy., Jeffrey C. Block, Esq. or Donald F. Campbell, Senior Paralegal, of Berman, DeValerio & Pease LLP at 800-516-9926 regarding your rights and interests in this matter. You can write to us at One Liberty Square, Boston, MA 02109, or send us an E-Mail at bdplaw@bermanesq.com. You can also visit us at our website at www.bermanesq.com. In addition, under the federal securities laws you may, but not later than sixty days from October 30, 1998, move the court to serve as lead plaintiff of the Class, if you so choose. To serve as lead plaintiff, however, you must meet certain legal requirements. You may contact the attorneys at Berman DeValerio & Pease LLP to discuss your rights regarding the appointment of lead plaintiff. Berman, DeValerio & Pease LLP, with offices in both Boston and San Francisco, has substantial experience in prosecuting class actions on behalf of defrauded investors and consumers. It has successfully litigated numerous actions charging companies with issuing materially false and misleading statements and has been singled out for its excellence by many courts. SOURCE Berman, DeValerio & Pease LLP CO: Berman, DeValerio & Pease LLP; FirstPlus Financial Group, Inc. ST: Massachusetts, Texas IN: FIN SU:

To: Mr. Pink who wrote (4991)	12/7/1998 10:18:00 PM
From: Mr. Blonde	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18998

Short VNWK I submit to you, the master, my entry for a shot at a Pinky award: Short VNWK at $35. Mr. Blonde ----------------------------------- Visual Networks (NASDAQ: VNWK $35) - Short sale This is a play where a technology that is piggybacked onto more dominant products gets gobbled up by the big players. e.g. remember when Quarterdeck's old QEMM386 memory manager (software for applications on PCs using more than 640kbytes) was completely obliterated with a new DOS upgrade from Microsoft. Next up, Visual Networks' "Visual UpTime" product. VNWK sells "Service Level Management" software to telecommunications service providers to strap onto Frame relay gear(and soon to work on ATM gear as well) to monitor performance and provide troubleshooting tools. Their product is called "Visual UpTime." But Cisco is now embedding these functions inside their frame relay boxes and others. See the CiscoView network management system and associated tools suites which are offered with no additional cost. Check out Cisco's Network Management Suite at cisco.com Valuation VNWK has shown about 70% annualized revenue growth for many quarters. As a result the valuation is very high. At $35, the company's price to annualized revenue this last Q is 13. It's annualized P/E is currently 80+. Book value is near cash value of $2.00 per share. Once revenues start to slow down because Cisco and others make VNWK's products redundant, the stock should trade below $10 at least. Service provider revenue is currently 65% of total and concentrated with three customers: Sprint 25%, AT&T 18%, MCI 17%, and others 5%. VNWK is a flash in the pan. Update: VNWK: Visual Networks ($35) is still being outdone by Cisco. I still expect the stock to crash when customers fully accept Cisco's own software for network management. Looking for the stock to trade in single digits in 6 to 18 months. VNWK has 3 to 6 months left of growing revenues max, then dissapointment. Wall Street should lower expectations sooner than that. The big networking customers supposedly like Cisco's monitoring software. They are ready to ship now. CSCO has 80% of existing base of routers etc. You can download new CSCO monitoring S/W into old units. Its a firmware upgrade for the boxes to enable the monitoring features. No volume production ramps necessary. Ascend/Cascade may still need to use VNWK. But they are less than 20% of the market. Basically, 80% of VNWK's market goes away.

To: Mr. Pink who wrote (4991)	12/8/1998 11:00:00 AM
From: Kip518	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18998

CBS Marketwatch ready to go public internetnews.com time to load up on DBCC again?

To: Mr. Pink who wrote (4991)	12/8/1998 1:33:00 PM
From: Sir Auric Goldfinger	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 18998

CBTSY an old MO name is about to get hyped by Monkey. Although a lot cheaper than it used to be, it's still not cheap. That said, Monkey will run it over the next few days. Sitting right on it's 50 day moving average. A lot of option activity and volume in stock is 638,000 versus a 20 day average volume of 500,000 and its only 1:30. Spec. accounts only, this is a maybe 2 o4 3 day trade.

To: Mr. Pink who wrote (4991)	12/8/1998 2:31:00 PM
From: WebDrone	Respond to of 18998

Hi Mr Pink, I would like to contribute an interesting item for discussion: Compare Mall Mzon Mwhs All three are catalog/internet software/hardware sellers, all starting to get very volatile. I watched Mall from the sidelines, because of the silly nature of the on-line auction of old computer junk story- but InterNut Mania reigns! Good call. I have no conclusions yet- but found something curious to look over. Perhaps others would enjoy looking at these, too. It is interesting to compare them to CDWC, which looks more like the "real thing." One interesting twist may be that Mzon and Mwhs have significant business in macintosh software and hardware; the Apple iMac is selling very well, which may represent a spike in earnings. Then, you get to argue if AAPL is for real again, or just in a last hurrah. Back to lurking- WebDrone (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em)