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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (27531)	1/5/1999 1:36:00 PM
From: Tito L. Nisperos Jr.	Respond to of 70976

Jacob, At least you made money on those LEAPs!... You may want to trade some of the LEAPs like you trade stocks: --- when you think the stock is ahead, sell the LEAPs then buy back when the stock declines in its Step building process 8 to 11% ... Good Luck!

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (27531)	1/5/1999 1:41:00 PM
From: Q.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Jacob, by shifting from semi equips to oil service, you've made the same sector rotation as me, and for the same reason: value. The similarity of these sectors is considerable. Oil services are highly cyclical in the same way as semi equips, as both of them rely on capital investment by their cyclical customers. These customers sell commodities (oil and drams). Both of these commodities are selling at low prices now, due in part to overcapacity. The difference is that semi equips have bounced up to early 1997 levels without a commensurate improvement in sales or orders, or in overcapacity, whereas oil services are languishing ever lower, having now dropped to the levels of 3 years ago. Semi equips seem to vary from highly undervalued to highly overvalued, and they now look more like the latter than the former.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (27531)	1/5/1999 2:19:00 PM
From: w0z	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Thinking about the oil service sector also...then I heard some comment about $5 oil being made by Kuwait(?)!!! Might be very tricky to try to time these sectors exactly. It may be early to buy oil service and early to sell semi equips. The best plan is probably to begin a phased shift rather than a complete switch. The IBD sector rankings are usually good indicators and they are saying sell semi equips and buy oil service, but the timing might be early for both...after all, if I had been lucky enough to hold AMZN, I would have sold it many $$$ ago!

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (27531)	1/5/1999 5:26:00 PM
From: Robert O	Respond to of 70976

Jacob, thanks for sharing re: your LEAPs. I hope you don't mind (since you made your trade public here and especially because it turned out quite nicely) if I recap a little. By my reckoning thru today's prices: jacob: bought 3 7/8 Sold 19 1/2 Rtrn 403% buy stk: bought 23 1/8 Sold 49 3/4 Return 115% buy Jan.'99: option bought 1/4 Sold 9 3/8 Return 3,650% So, you did GREAT, certainty better than the underlying stock from the day of your buy in (in fact YOU ARE THE LOW buy in on your LEAP buy!). But, a Jan. 1999 call would have netted you a monster return. Of course having invested all my cash in a flatliner since October, I envy your move and patience, even after dumping half the position. RO

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (27531)	1/5/1999 8:18:00 PM
From: jason	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Jay: I also have some AMAT 40-50 call spread leap (Jan of year 2000) and a few shares of the stock, which I acquired when everybody dumped it last fall. Personally, I think you probably have sold your AMAT too early this time. In 1996 during AMAT's run from about 12 to 54 (post split), I sold AMAT way too early, and saw the stock to nearly double from its break-out point (~29 post-split). So who would say that this time around AMAT would not go through the same cycle again before it tops out at around 100? Personally I think the party hasn't started for AMAT yet. I won't sell my AMAT shares until those major Wall Street firms come out one by one to put AMAT on their recommended lists. On the oil service sector, I agree that they are dirt cheap. But I tend to jump into things too early (e.g., TLK), and would sit on the sideline a bit longer this time. Good luck investing! Bluesky Qin