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Strategies & Market Trends : Rande Is . . . HOME -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rande Is who wrote (4288)	3/15/1999 10:21:00 AM
From: Rock_nj	Respond to of 57584

WKWG is hot! Opening new search engine at the end of the month.

To: Rande Is who wrote (4288)	3/15/1999 1:56:00 PM
From: Rande Is	Respond to of 57584

E-commerce winners and losers. . . Those who best understand where money can be made via the internet will make the higest offers. Is it E-commerce? Is it message boards? Is it information? Is it portals or infrastructure? In my opinion, it will soon be reported that E-commerce sector has more LOSERS than winners. . .and as the masses run for the exits, the smartest investors will already know which WINNING companies to be waiting to grab. The sleeper story of the month was Spiegel's disappoining revs from their Eddie Bauer division. Eddie has been sold in the most high profile areas of the internet, like AOL, Yahoo and At Home. This should have ALREADY started showing up on the Eddie Bauer bottom line, as it pours into the SPGLA company. But it has NOT. That tells me that internet sales are being diluted by so many new website's opening. That further tells me that the REST of the E-commerce group will soon be feeling the effects from this. Oh, SPGLA could just be an isolated incident. But if you don't believe that the high number of websites opening is not contributing to dilution of market share, then your head is in the sand. And as the larger department stores add sites and the manufacturers find clever ways to sell directly to the end user via the back door, this dilution, in my opinion, will become substantial. None of this has ANYTHING to do with whether or not E-commerce stocks will rise. . .they have risen based on speculation and not fundamentals. But it does speak to the longer term prospects. The whole idea of E-commerce explosion has been based on the ASSUMPTION that everybody and their brother would be buying online. And that may happen. . .but most E-tailers are turning to deep discounts to keep customers interested . . or are focusing on selling stale inventory at reduced prices. VERY VERY few are selling products at full retail and doing so successfully. And that is what I am talking about here. If SPGLA takes off, due to wild increases in revs from their internet sales, then by all means. . .let's buy them and others like them. . .but that is NOT what their latest financial showed. And that is what is disturbing me about E-commerce in general. Perhaps Paul Allen is placing a bet that message boards are certain money from the internet, with his GNET investment. We know that portals make money. We know that certain information providers do well and E-brokerages are raking it in. Server makers, browser designers and infrastructure providers are all doing great. But Amazon is not making any money yet, and already BKS, BAMM, BGP and others are all gunning for their piece of market share. And if internet investors EVER lose faith in AMZN, then the entire E-comerce community could be in serious trouble. But even then, the smart investor will know which stocks to be watching, on any loss of confidence that might occur. Rande Is