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Non-Tech : J.B. Oxford -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PaperProphet who wrote (700)	2/5/1999 9:57:00 AM
From: Sir Auric Goldfinger	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2220

Uh oh: Today's WSJ:"Small Brokerages Surge On Internet-Stock Fever (see end):By AARON LUCCHETTI and LARRY BAUMAN Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL First it was booksellers. Then compact-disk vendors and auction houses. Now, tiny brokerage firms have caught e-fever. A handful of small brokerage-firm stocks have surged this week on the hopes that they can transform their businesses by using the World Wide Web. M.H. Meyerson rose 4 15/16, or 66%, to 12 3/8 Thursday, continuing an ascent that started when the Jersey City, N.J., company said it would provide Internet-brokerage trading services. JB Oxford Holdings jumped 3 7/8, or 32%, to 15 7/8. Siebert Financial fell 6 1/4 to 43 1/4, but has more than tripled since the end of last week. The jump for the small brokerage firms surprised many observers, because many online companies lost ground in the face of service glitches and news that New York's attorney general has launched an inquiry into online brokerage firms in response to customer complaints. Stocks of the largest online-brokerage firms suffered. Charles Schwab lost 1 1/2 to 66 1/2 on the New York Stock Exchange; Ameritrade Holding fell 14%, or 17 51/64, to 110 3/4; ETrade Group slipped 1 3/4 to 53 1/2. The broader small-cap market also retreated, as many stocks were hurt by the weakness in technology shares. The Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks dropped 5.94, or 1.40%, to 417.79. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index plummeted to its third-largest one-day point decline and its 22nd-largest decline in percentage terms, falling 83.34, or 3.34%, to 2410.07. But the rapid increase in the value of small online brokers' shares was the surprise of the day. "What happened to some of these small stocks is flabbergasting," says William Meehan, chief market analyst for Cantor Fitzgerald. More than 33 million shares of JB Oxford changed hands, according to Automatic Data Processing, twice the number of the company's shares outstanding, and more than the shares traded Thursday in Dell Computer,Cisco Systems or Microsoft. While the Internet angle may indeed improve the prospects for these small brokerage firms, not all investors are convinced. For one thing, JB Oxford has been under federal criminal investigation. One of its recent SEC filings said the investigation appears to be looking at possible market manipulation by former officials.* In an interview Thursday, Christopher L.Jarratt, JB Oxford chairman and chief executive, described theinvestigation as "old news" that didn't reflect on what he sees as the company's promising future. "We like the ones that have known for a long time that they want to be on the Web," says Brian Salerno, a portfolio manager at Munder Capital Management's Munder NetNet Fund, which invests in Web stocks. Companies that are simply trying to climb aboard the Web bandwagon don't interest the fund, he said."