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Technology Stocks : IBM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike Perras who wrote (4820)	3/19/1999 7:45:00 PM
From: Arrow Hd.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8218

Mike, this is a complicated issue. Analysts with brokerage firms do have rules they must follow. Trading ahead of customers as an example would be out of bounds. Stock manipulation is another. What they say though is influenced by many interelated factors. For instance, is there an investment banking relationship. How much stock does the firm have in-house in street name and so on. There is also a difference between the firms institutional clients and the retail customer. It is not likely they would spring this kind of news on lets say Fidelity if Fidelity was giving MS soft dollars for research. This is why so many active investors have gone it alone with on-line trading for low commissions. Why pay retail and follow their advice when you are a second class customer. Also, the on-line investor is more apt to stay with the small and mid-cap stocks where there are no analysts or the analysts are not giving the company much coverage. But frankly, even with IBM, you could kind of see this coming. I have been nervous for a few weeks. Just not acting well. So when this news hit fortunately my partner called and I was able to take action. I have no idea what next week brings. I do believe you will see more firms hit the panic button, lower earnings and revenue targets, lower price targets, etc. This could even trigger a major market selloff and result in a 10 to 15 percent correction. The market technicals stink in so many ways. We are entering the earnings warning season and if the market leaders, as thin as it is, start to cause concerns as we saw today with IBM it is not going to take much more for investors to want to take some money off the table. I hope you have a good weekend too.