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

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (47965)	2/20/1999 1:49:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

To All, Barron's review. A better issue this week, though still not top drawer. 1. Too bad Ken Sanders is having fun in Atlantic City, as one of his favorite stocks, Old Republic, got a tout in Abelson's column this week. No, it won't make up for being 100% wrong on Dell, but it's something. <g> 2. A great small piece called "Mania Milestones," by Robert Sobel. He discusses the RCA overvaluation in 1929. With great potential, the stock peaked at $573. 30 years later, after more than fulfilling all expectations, including #1 in tv sales and the #1 tv network, the stock was worth not quite half that price. I see lots of that in today's market, except that the cos are not going to be as successful as RCA was. <g> I will look for Sobel's book, "When Giants Stumble," when it is published. Should provide some ammo to make the lemmings even more angry at me. <g> 3. IBM had a full page ad for nearly all of their PC and PC related line. If a small business uses the corporate American Express card, they get 10% off any of these items. Uh, I thought there was no buildup in the channel and small businesses were buying like crazy? <VBG> 4. Joe Granville, of all people, makes an intelligent comment about stock splits in the Market Watch segment. I am no Granville fan and vice versa, but his evaluation of the stock split scam as signalling a market top is right on. In the same column, John Liscio proves once again that he understands neither productivity nor math logic. The fact that productivity is difficult to measure for certain industries is a given. However, that doesn't translate to "it is being understated." It is just as likely that it is being overstated. And least likely to be fairly stated. But he wants productivity to be higher, so he says it is overstated. <g> 5. John Hussman, of Hussman Econometrics, has the letter of the week. If we drop down to a fairly bloated market pe ratio of 20 times and have eps growth of 5.7% over the next 10 years, the S&P 500 will be priced where it is right now. <g> Too bad we won't get the 5.7% is my main comment to that logic. 6. Abel Garcia, gunslinger manager of my old firm, Waddell & Reed is profiled in the mutual fund section. Abel pays much too much for tech stocks, but at least he missed Dell. At least one of the tenets of investing that they espoused when I was there is still in place: if it sounds like snake oil and the guy is wearing snake skin boots, the odds are it is snakeskin. Sadly, Abel's overpriced pile of crap will get killed in the tech downturn ahead of us. MB 5.