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Technology Stocks : VLSI Technology - Waiting for good news from NASDAQ !!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: otter who wrote (5914)	3/22/1999 8:43:00 AM
From: schlep	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6565

Otter, QUESTION for VLSI thread: Please explain the significance of Al Stein excercizing options to purchase shares when he was already vested and had rights to those very shares? In other words, if he was already vested, he would reap the same benefits once vlsi is purchased wouldn't he? Why would he actually need to have possession of the shares when he had vested rights (the only reason i could think of was expiration of grants)? FORE: been lurking around SI for about 3 years now. fore is a good company with not so good timing. they have bought other good companies unfortunately when sales / revenue have not meet expectations thus exacerbating stock price. they have terrific growth and supposedly a very high book to bill ratio for the up coming 2nd quarter. i have seen many times before the stock take a quick move upward only to pull back significantly. the good news is that you can always count on a gradual move upward as well. 27M shares however has not been seen. so you will need to make up your own mind and give dd. your opinions are valued.. Schlep

To: otter who wrote (5914)	3/22/1999 9:25:00 AM
From: BWAC	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6565

Otter, Have you considered the OSX (Oil services index) rather than a specific fund. They have options available on the OSX. I think this is my link to its components and the contract specifications: phlx.com On FORE, Its a good trading stock on which you can hit it big if all the pieces drop in place. I like to trade it around the 15 price. Such as Buy stock at 15 and sell Calls at 17.5......or sell Puts at the 15 strike price. Great premiums on Fore options. 15 is a safe entry point.

To: otter who wrote (5914)	3/22/1999 9:30:00 PM
From: Donald Isenhower	Respond to of 6565

*OT comments on oil services and FORE OT* Otter, I have been getting a lot of useful information lurking here, so I'll throw in my 2 cents worth on the two off-topic items you mentioned: Oil services (I live in West Texas): the services industries around here are dying. If oil stays around $9-12 /bbl you aren't likely to see a recovery in this sector. There is just simply too much production by countries with lower production costs. Obviously this will end, you just have to guess when. Since Hal. and other similar well services are closing offices and laying off people still, the bottom isn't there yet in the industry. Of course stock prices don't match the business cycles timewise, so one expects the prices to bottom before the business bottoms out. Things are getting bad enough in Texas that the state is working on some type of relief for smaller production wells. They are at the point something has to be done since a LARGE number of schools depend on oil income. So they either offer tax breaks to help the industry get through this and succeed with low prices or they have to find tax money some way to pay for schools. So if I was messing with this sector (which I am not), I would spend some time looking at oil futures and see which way the price of oil seems to be heading, which if I could do that I wouldn't be working for a living.... FORE Systems: I have personal experience with FORE and have found them neither much better or worse than other network companies. Although I can say that when my university sent out RFPs (Requests For Proposals), FORE was the only company that came back with a proposal that went somewhat beyond our minimum requirements. So I give them credit for being willing to think more than some others. A big question is just how big will ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) be compared to packet-switched networks. I like ATM better for my university's backbone (we use ATM backbone and switched ethernet to the desktop for about 2500 computers) for various technical reasons, but gigabit ethernet is a major competitor and trust me, when dealing with the "powers-that-be" the recognition of "ethernet" is much higher than ATM and they don't like taking risks (I got called on to answer if I was getting my school on the "leading-edge" or "bleeding-edge"). I think that there are a fairly large number of people doing what we did (ATM backbone, ethernet to the desktop), so I think FORE will continue to do well. We did not put in this system 3 years ago without difficulty or without some pigheadedness on both sides, but when we ran into a problem with a group of network engineers who simply did not "get it", I got the attention I needed by calling a VP in the company and griped and it turned out that he had seen the problem on his side and agreed immediately to my request (which was to send a couple of really good network people out to our site and fix the stupid problem). So my experience is that FORE management are not "jerks" even if we didn't get everything we expected and even though some of the sales pitch solutions had to be pitched out the window (virtual LANs did not work as advertised). Please keep up the good messages on VLSI since I am sitting here trying to decide when to sell and what to move the profits into! Donald