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Non-Tech : Ashton Technology (ASTN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stuart T who wrote (1317)	5/25/1999 6:01:00 AM
From: mst2000	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 4443

Interesting question - I have an interesting answer - I am at the Desert Inn for the week (for the ICSC "convention") and happened to be at the Spa (wonderful!!) getting a massage, went into the steam room and struck up a conversation with a guy who had been at a meeting of stock traders who focus on the technical "charting" perspective. In the course of moving the conversation toward my favorite subject (I admit it, ATG is a favorite topic of stock talk for me), I asked the guy whether it was his opinion that the chart never lies, or that news trumps the chart each time. His answer to me (which I thought was profound and prescient) was "One way to look at it is that the chart usually predicts the news". I think he may well be right: e.g., that the street must be on to something that we little individual stockholders do not have the benefit of . . . clearly the stock has a buzz going that any self-respecting person must acknowledge even if we're not sure what it is -- I would think NYSE specialists and floor brokers have a pretty decent sense of what is going on between the NYSE and ATG/PHLX. Perhaps the possible merger of the NYSE and PHLX (and the inevitable effect that would have on ATG stock), perhaps the Gomez IPO, perhaps the sense that major brokers are stepping up to take on large liquidity positions in VWAP -- all of which, when combined with the herd mentality of daytraders and momentum players, and the incredible greed and stupidity of the short traders, has caused the stock to rise perhaps more dramatically than its financial strength (or lack thereof) would have suggested would be possible at this early stage - usually the sign of a stock that the street believes will print money down the road. In short (no pun intended), the chart is predicting the news -- in this instance, I personally happen to believe it may be the NYSE/PHLX story, because the Reuters story several weeks ago was NOT an ATG PR piece - Reuters (which owns Instinet) is certainly no friend of ATG, and I'm sure the reporter wasn't making it up. But I do NOT believe that ATG stock will be adversely affected in the LONG TERM if the NYSE/PHLX deal does not materialize or on any of the other possible items not happening. ATG must be viewed as a totality, not trashed one slice at a time, out of context, with little regard for the truth behind the total picture in favor of short term profit. One irony in all this is that the short traders will probably have many excellent opportunities to make money trading ATG stock short over the next 6 months or a year, given to inevitable and predictable price swings, but instead they cling to (indeed, revel in) the arrogance that any stock that has hit an 4 bagger in a month must be total BS -- so they trash talked the stock at 8 and now get to look at it break 17 before settling back to 16 5/8. Is it not ironic that they have taken so little real effort to understand the company they are trashing, and as a result, they are being hurt right now . . . when, if they would simply let things take their course (to much higher prices than we have today), legitimate trading opportunities will emerge over and over again in both directions without necessarily affecting the underlying soundness of ATG as a long term investment. They just aren't satisfied with the reality of price swings -- no, the short contingent apparently feels emotionally invested in the idea that ATG must be a complete and total joke for them to feel good about themselves (which it clearly is not) -- sad, but since they choose to rely on the superficial over the thoughtful, In any event, there could be a lot of reasons, good and bad, why ATG is so strong recently, but my fundamental belief is that the good things are so good, and the bad things so inconsequential, that except for a few nimnuts who can't get over their ego-driven desire to see ATG's stock and stockholders hurting (in the long run), the investment community sees ATG as a pretty strong company within a matter of months. That it has happened so quickly is exciting, but in the end this was a stock that would have found its way to a healthy stock price sooner rather than later anyway. MST