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Strategies & Market Trends : The Thread Formerly Known as No Rest For The Wicked -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn who wrote (45430)	5/25/1999 10:44:00 PM
From: Jack Colton	Respond to of 90042

Good Morning! Happy Programming. Don't forget your NT permission rules.... Here's a little light reading while you eat breakfast. :-) Jack ***************** Stocks End Sharply Lower For Second Day NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks closed sharply lower Tuesday as investors were again unwilling to step up to the plate as the battering continued in the Internet sector. The Dow Jones industrial average was off 123.58 points, or 1.16 percent, at 10,531.09 after tumbling 175 points Monday. The technology-laced Nasdaq Composite index plummeted 72.77 points, or 2.97 percent, to 2,380.89, a day after ending with a loss of 67 points. Analysts: Internet Stocks May Fall More NEW YORK (Reuters) - Battered Internet shares still have room to fall as the once high-flying sector tumbles amid fears about interest rates and valuations, analysts said Tuesday. Even as Internet stocks ticked lower and a market watcher warned about investors borrowing money to buy Internet stocks, analysts said some leading shares were testing support levels -- prices at which buying pressure might be expected to mount -- and that could presage further declines. First Union Sees Lower Income, Eyes Net CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Reuters) - Regional banking giant First Union Corp. warned Tuesday that 1999 earnings will fall short of Wall Street estimates, due in large part to lower-than-expected revenue growth after last year's $16 billion acquisition of CoreStates Financial. In a strategic shift, the nation's sixth-largest bank holding company has shelved plans to seek another merger with a similar-sized bank, and instead will boost revenues through online banking and faster-growing capital markets and management businesses, executives said. Barnesandnoble.Com IPO Climbs 37 Percent NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of online book retailer barnesandnoble.com, one of the week's most closely watched initial public openings, climbed about 37 percent shortly after its market debut, a gain that paled compared with other Internet-related issues after their IPOs this year. The stock was trading on the Nasdaq at $24.63 early Tuesday afternoon after its IPO of 25 million shares at $18 each. McKesson Warns Of Inflated Sales LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Health care supplier McKesson HBOC Inc. said Tuesday that overstated sales at its recently acquired software unit will force the company to revise fiscal 1999 earnings downward for the second time in less than a month. In a statement that pushed its stock price down more than 10 percent, McKesson said it may also have to restate prior years' results. The company's stock lost almost half its value on April 28, when it first announced the need to revise results downward. Gold At 20-Year Lows; Grains And Oil Up NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gold prices dropped to the lowest level in two decades Tuesday under the weight of divestment by governments and other agencies of once-sacred gold reserves. The drop in gold, fed by fresh remarks from the Bank of England backing the planned sale of more than half of Britain's gold holdings, was the main feature in commodities markets. GM Sets Ratio For Delphi Spin-Off DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp. took one of the final steps in spinning off its supplier unit Tuesday, announcing a $6.53 billion special stock dividend that grants GM shareholders 0.69893 shares of Delphi Automotive Systems Corp. for every GM share they hold. The spin-off ends the 90-year ownership affiliation of world's No. 1 automaker and its supply chain. GM hopes the split will help Delphi grow its business of supplying other customers, while helping GM become less vertically integrated. Consumer Confidence Up For 7th Month NEW YORK (Reuters) - A robust job market and low inflation pushed U.S. consumer confidence higher in May for the seventh month running, the longest upward trend in three decades. ''Neither the crisis in Kosovo nor recent price surges at the gas pump have cooled consumer optimism,'' said Lynn Franco, associate director of the Conference Board's consumer research center, which publishes a monthly confidence index. Datek Gets $300M From Private Investors NEW YORK (Reuters) - Datek Online Holdings Corp., the fourth largest Internet broker in the country, Tuesday raised $300 million in private financing, foregoing a public stock offering that many of its rivals have done recently. Datek, which also owns Island ECN Inc., the second largest electronic stock trading system, said in a statement it had received the money from three major technology investors in exchange for a minority stake in the company. TNP To Go Private In Leveraged Buyout DALLAS (Reuters) - A private investor group will pay about $1 billion for TNP Enterprises Inc., parent of Texas-New Mexico Power, in the first leveraged buyout in the nation's fragmented electric utility industry, executives said Tuesday. Analysts said the deal, including the assumption of TNP debt, may be the first step toward further acquisitions by the investor group to create a larger company as deregulation pushes many electric and gas companies to consolidate.

To: Glenn who wrote (45430)	5/25/1999 10:46:00 PM
From: Esway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90042

Hi Glenn tuff day any thoughts on dell? Did break 35 support. Held in there till the last 15 min. then broke down and dropped quickly to 34.5, wondering where the next major support level is. Heres a small clip from Briefing.com: Dell Computer (DELL 34 9/16 -1 9/16) testing key support... Penetration of 33 on closing basis would send bearish long-term technical signal... However, Briefing.com maintains that stock will rally off support on way back up to 45+.

To: Glenn who wrote (45430)	5/25/1999 10:51:00 PM
From: nokomis	Respond to of 90042

Hi Glen...I guess those T-shirts arrived for a reason...were they the deciding factor, BTW? I'm wearing mine now, but after today, my day job is looking better. best to you, NOK

To: Glenn who wrote (45430)	5/25/1999 10:51:00 PM
From: Jack Colton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90042

Good night. Got to get up extra early to run, since GC went to TX to visit her ill father, and I'm playing Dad's taxi service in the morning. Jack One more: **************** MARKET TODAY Battle of the Brokers May 26, 1999 FULL-SERVICE brokers vs. online traders. Let's get ready to rumble. John "Launny" Steffens, a Merrill Lynch (MER) vice chairman and head of its brokerage group, has been at the forefront of the online-trading debate since he declared last June at a PC Expo Conference that Internet trading "should be regarded as a serious threat to Americans' financial lives." Since then Steffens has been the Great Defender of the full-service brokerages. At nearly every opportunity, he has expounded on the importance of having a broker available for solid market advice. You almost expect Steffens to show up at conferences decked out in an action hero's costume. Now introducing Launny Steffens: Superbroker. Well, Steffens appeared in more traditional business garb at Monday's Forrester Research Open Finance Forum in New York. His message was toned down somewhat from his bold remarks of last summer, since the company has been making some online forays of its own. Merrill now offers online trading for some of its more well-heeled individual clients and the company recently set up a new division that will let corporate and institutional clients access research and trade bonds over the Internet. But Steffens is still a full-service broker at heart and he had some unflattering words for online investors and some of his competitors. Steffens said there is too much panic selling and irrational buying when companies make announcements and online traders rush to quick investment decisions. "Super-active traders getting a hunch and betting a bunch are creating problems," he said. That may be true, but Merrill's reluctance to adopt the Internet as a major distribution channel has clearly hurt the company's image. That was no more evident than when the audience was asked who the leader of the brokerage industry will be in five years. The audience had to pick between ETrade Group (EGRP), Fidelity, Merrill, Charles Schwab (SCH) and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (MDW). The more than 350 conference attendees were provided with little wireless consoles so the results of the vote could be shown on a big screen. Schwab captured 58% of the votes. Merrill barely came in second with 14%, just ahead of Fidelity (13%) and ETrade (11%). Only 4% of the audience thought Morgan Stanley Dean Witter would be the leader. Now if these tech-savvy conference attendees are unenthusiastic about Merrill's chances for future success, then is it any wonder that Wall Street is lukewarm about Merrill as well? In the last 52 weeks, Merrill's stock has fallen 25% while Schwab's has soared more than 340%. There was a lot of hoopla back in December when Schwab's market cap went ahead of Merrill Lynch's for the first time. But if Merrill catches up to Schwab anytime soon, it might rank as a bigger shock than Truman's defeat of Dewey; Schwab's market cap now exceeds Merrill's by $15 billion. But Steffens remained undaunted and stubbornly stuck to the mantra that investors will want their hands held by a broker instead of the convenience of inexpensively executing a trade with a simple click on Schwab's Web site. "The real challenge for [Schwab] is the issue of the quality of people involved, the quality of advice," he said. Steffens expects the firm to hire more brokers in the coming years, saying that the company's most affluent customers value the services of a qualified financial consultant. He said the number of people with more than $100,000 in investable assets will increase from 19 million today to 40 million by 2005 and the number of people with more than $1 million in investable assets will grow from 3.5 million to 10 million. And while he was cagey about what Merrill's future online plans for less wealthy retail investors would be, Steffens said Schwab may have won the first round but that the fight among the brokers is not over. The second round, he declared, will begin soon. Let's get it on! -- By Paul R. La Monica