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Strategies & Market Trends : Three Amigos Stock Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Redhead who wrote (13726)	2/7/1999 9:34:00 AM
From: Mr. Big	Respond to of 29382

Remember when www.streetq.com mentioned OMKT - They're on PQT now! The last rumor of OMKT alliance proved true (hooking up with Lycos) I hope this one proves true as well. Big streetq.com More good reading: Actually, I wanted to buy PC Quote stocks a few years back. Too expensive for me at $20+ (sometime 1996) at EPS just around .04 to .06 (max). At that time, there were no proliferation of discount online brokerages to the Public and PCQuote was way ahead of anyone. The lag from the retail internet collapsed this company's stock pricing from the outside viewers (sort of ahead of its time) and plus some management issues PQT plummeted. There was a time in 1997 too that a rumor similar to today's rumor on Yahoo came about and speculators artificially rejuvenated the price only to plummet back on a quick denial from PC quote. Fast forward June 1998, Jim Porter was called in to run the show. Turn around time of cutting losses began, starting Nov 98 Quarterly revenues report (up from -.19 EPS to just -.07). Next Month (March), annual and 4th Q results should show either steadily decreasing losses or surprise positive revenues (care to guess?). Notice that PQT feeds: Ameritrade, JBOH, AB Watley, AMEX (yes, the exchange), CNET Snap!Online, Block Trading, Zacks INDI (Individual Investor - which has rumor of beta testing its link to Yahoo), and MarketGuide to name some. I am not waiting for March earnings announcement. Today, 1 out of 7 investors are online. At least anecdotal reports from Online Brokerages are all record sales. PCQuote earns from those either by small commission per transaction or per bandwidth/server dedicated to a customer The link pcquote.com did exist (THAT particular page was albeit around Jan 19 <see info on your cache if you have been lucky to get that> sometime when PCQuote was getting the best of the web award). I am not sure if it substantiates claim to possible buyout, since it could also be a co-branding/co-marketing effort. Yahoo has a new product (Yahoo Pager) that you can download and get alerts and feeds of stocks, news, sports and other stuff. Again, it does not matter. (I was late getting in more at $2-$3 because those needed cash based on online broker rules. By the time I noticed it crossed the minimum $5 on most brokerages, other people were jumping in loads already). The rumor at the Yahoo message board started 2 pm Feb 4 (Thurs). The PQT stock hitting through the 52-week barrier was happening before that rumor spread. It was fanned by JBOH and other brokerage online stocks. And this should be the reason for a logical backdoor play -- it has to be able to get back to around $12 to $15. With or without a merger. This time, PQT is ripe to be seen as an internet company and that is exactly what the PQT CFO said more or less- "we are finally getting noticed". (ok ok, he also did not deny the rumor).

To: Redhead who wrote (13726)	2/7/1999 9:52:00 AM
From: Sergio H	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29382

Redhead, thanks for the article. Hope you find this article from today's New York Times interesting as well: February 7, 1999 MARKET WATCH The Net Is a Congenial Spot for Stock Touts By GRETCHEN MORGENSON EW YORK -- While the broad market indexes hardly budged last week, shares of a group of lesser-known companies, including J.B. Oxford Holdings and Siebert Financial, were moonshots. Traders watched the stocks double or more in the course of a day on no news whatsoever. What or who was behind the moves? The "what" is the Internet. Siebert Financial, a discount brokerage firm in New York, and J.B. Oxford, a rival in Los Angeles, got hot because they are both on line. Siebert ran from $19.125 on Monday to $49.50 on Wednesday, then dropped back to $35.125 at week's end. J.B. Oxford, which is, by the way, under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for possible market manipulation, closed on Wednesday at $12 and on Thursday made a high of $25.75 before ending the week at $11.75. More interesting is the "who" behind the activity. It seems to be "Merlin," a man posting stock picks in an Internet chat room called trading-places.net. Outside of cyberspace, Merlin is a Scotsman named Chris Rea, 45; he is pictured on the Web site aboard a yacht. Rea said on Friday that he founded Trading Places last September. It is a Web site for day traders, the histrionic types who furiously buy and sell stocks through the day. He calls the company a "facilitator of trader training and trader communications on the Internet." In less than six months, Rea said, he has drawn 817 members to his site who pay $279 a month to get instruction in day trading and access to Merlin's stock picks. But Rea's reach also extends to thousands of people who learn of his picks indirectly, from friends or other traders. Net watchers say that helps explains the violent moves in stocks he pushes. Before the market opened on Friday, Rea said, he recommended Omega Research, a Miami maker of financial analysis software. The stock was at $5.25. "Within half an hour, it ran to $10," he said. Never mind that the stock fell back to $7.125. "Right now we're promoting IMON," Rea added on Friday morning. That's the ticker symbol for Imaginon Inc., a small software maker in Greer, S.C. "We made it rock," Rea said. The stock rose 25 percent that day. On-line investing is rife with dubious characters, Rea said; by contrast, he added, "we see ourselves as being the white knight in this industry." Still, one member of his site who is a professional trader says that the enthusiastic Rea rarely tells people when to sell -- a problem, given that the stocks inevitably fall after their spikes. Rea declined to discuss his background, other than to say that he was a trader for years in London, moved to Spain and then came to the United States 10 years ago. Five years ago, he was in the business of designing and producing mailers for car dealerships. He is not a registered broker. As essentially a publisher of financial information, he is generally exempt from regulation. Only if he were found to be buying ahead of his customers or taking money from the companies whose shares he recommends would he be subject to regulators' wrath. He says he does neither. And indeed, Trading Places is filled with effusive testimonials to Merlin's magic. So this is the way we live now. Thousands of people from all over the nation buy stocks on the advice of a stranger known only by his alias and a blurry picture. Strange days. Strange days, indeed.