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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: On the QT who wrote (88281)	1/9/1999 2:16:00 AM
From: Craig Lieberman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

I appologize in advance for the tone of this post and its length. Summary... Whisper number is cover for daytraders pump and dump around earnings. Lets not add to the hype in our excitement. I still think we should use private messages or email for estimates and keep them under wraps. Details: The whisper number is a fallacy used in hind sight by weak minds to explain whatever happens to a particular stock after the earnings announcement. lets say the analysts average is .32 and the company reports .34/share. If the stock takes a dive, then the presumption is that the company MISSED the whisper number. If the stock takes off then the presumption is that the company exceeded the whisper number. In other words the whisper number is the sum total of all the worlds expectations and nothing less or more. If, on the other hand, the game is played by larger and larger numbers of online active daytraders who notice a pattern emerging (one that DELL rises in anticipation of earnings and then is unpredictable afterwards), there is a self fullfilling prophesy. The daytraders will pour money into the stock during the days and or weeks preceeding the earnings announcement and then FLEE just before earnings. the brave/foolish ones may stick around until the next day because they read the tea leaves, or even believe in the company somewhat. But eventually they pick up their bat and ball and go to the next game. This flood then flight is more responsible in my mind for the rise and then possible short term fall of DELL stock around earnings than any Whisper number stuff. Therefore, I still believe that we as a group should consider laying low one quarter to keep from playing in the hype game. After all, the longs are somewhat unaffected by this if you have a time horizon more than a few months. We think we are helping ourselves by getting excited by prospects for a great earnings quarter. I suggest instead that we email our earnings estimates to two independent members on this board. They can tabulate the results independently and report AFTER the market is closed on earnings day what the numbers are. This gives us plenty of time to gawk at our estimates prior to the announcement of earnings without ANYONE trading based on OUR own HYPE at least before the announcement. Michael Dell is an example we should follow. He is tight lipped this quarter after being burned before. Lets do the same thing. IMHO, Craig