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

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (43572)	1/15/1999 4:12:00 PM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

I got a kick out of this ... biz.yahoo.com esp >>''Airing Michael Jordan merchandise on the evening of his retirement announcement demonstrates our skill at identifying and responding to market opportunities,''

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (43572)	1/16/1999 9:24:00 AM
From: Tommaso	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 132070

As you know, I did not have the courage to mess with any kind of puts until some of these things had run up ten and twenty times their low points in the past year, which (as most people on this thread know, anyway) resembles nothing so much as what occurred toward the end of the South Sea Bubble. Even if the general stock market resists the collapse that most of us look for (on account of the stable inflows from IRAs, 401K,s etc, and pension plans), each one of these stocks (YHOO, AMZN, INTC, DELL, AOL, and a number of others) is individually vulnerable to a huge decline because they have been bid up by a combination of margins going long and shorts being forced to pay up and get out. I have therefore (I hope, anyway) stumbled onto what looks to me a once-in-a-lifetime way of diversifying on the short side by building this portfolio of two-year-out LEAP puts, and so far it's working, being up several percent yesterday on account of the big YHOO decline, and even not doing so bad on others, perhaps because of a growing fear that others besides YHOO are vulnerable. Originally I had thought about holding these for a year, but because of the decay of the premium I don't think it makes sense to try to aim at capital gains treatment. I guess all this could be quantified more carefully--but it was those Nobel-Prize-Winning quantifiers who brought on the LTC debacle, so maybe seat-of-the-pants will do just as well. I welcome criticism and exceptions to these ideas. Too bad this is the only time in several centuries that one can try out something like this. If it works, congress will probably pass a law against it.