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Technology Stocks : WCOM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MGV who wrote (3654)	12/29/1998 7:32:00 PM
From: Jake0302	Respond to of 11568

Bullish Reuters news story on options activity in WCOM. kinda OT: 49er Steve, I just switched my IRA out of an underperforming mutual fund into stocks... including WCOM and AOL... great minds... U.S. OPTIONS/Internet investors eye MCI WorldCom CHICAGO, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Interest in call options on MCI WorldCom (Nasdaq:WCOM - news) swelled Tuesday as investors smitten with Internet stocks turned their gaze to the telecommunications giant, traders said. Recent media attention spotlighting MCI WorldCom's role in providing a big portion of the Internet's backbone has raised awareness of the company among the public, said market makers in the options. ''MCI WorldCom is a true Internet play as one of the biggest providers of Internet services,'' said a market maker at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. ''WorldCom is a real company, as opposed to some of these other things,'' said a market maker at the Pacific Exchange in reference to recent logic-defying leaps in the share prices of numerous Web-affiliated companies. January 75 calls in MCI WorldCom were the single busiest options at the Pacific Exchange (PCX) Tuesday with over 3,100 contracts traded. Also heavily traded were the January 70s and 80s, February 75s and 80s, March 70s and 75s at PCX and June 70 calls at the CBOE. The PCX trader said spread trades in which investors rolled up short ''covered write'' positions into higher-strike calls fueled much of today's activity in the options. Implied volatility, a key factor in determining options prices, has trended steadily higher in recent days, to the upper 30-percent range for at-the-money January options, but is still a far cry from such Internet high-flyers as Amazon.com (Nasdaq:AMZN - news) at 120 percent, market makers said.