Microsoft now at 49; was 119 last year... Apple at 19; was 75 last April... Can you say CRASH boys and girls?

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I knew you could...

-- Looks like the (doomers@were.right), October 17, 2000

Answers

Priceline was 175; now 5...WebMD was 75; now 7...Intel...Home Depot...etc etc

-- etc (etc@etc.etc), October 17, 2000.

Are you getting-off on this?

-- (nemesis@awol.com), October 17, 2000.

Good thing I've got beans and rice.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), October 17, 2000.

Crash? Maybe. It's been a long gradual one though.

How the shakeout in the new technology stocks has anything to do with the Y2K doomers and their predictions escapes me though. What exactly were they right about?

-- Buddy (buddydc@go.com), October 17, 2000.


That the world would end as we know it, based on faulty computer processing. It included a stock crash too, don't ya know.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), October 17, 2000.


Wasn't it a ten-year Y2K thing?

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), October 17, 2000.


Duh. The K stands for thousand. It is the year two thousand problem. Therefore, you should be prepped for the next thousand years or you will be dead.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), October 17, 2000.

With JIT, ten years was/is pretty subjective; regardless, ...

I believe it was something like: fix-on-failure wouldn't work, inventories would go down, mfg. would start to fall off because of inventories, payrolls & layoffs, economy and government services would gradually disappear, martial law, etc ...

Besides, moving to hills and buying precious metals, would did I overstate or leave out?

-- Crypto Byte (cryptobyte@hotmail.com), October 17, 2000.


You left out the part where pollies will be shovelling lime on the hastily-dug and shallow graves of the corpses of their children.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), October 17, 2000.

Does the adage "Buy low, sell high" ring a bell? Seems like now is the time to buy. Of course you do have to pick the right stock that will eventually recover and go up, not one that will totally tank.

That's always the rub, isn't it?

-- The Engineer (spcengineer@yahoo.com), October 17, 2000.



How low is low? When is the low at the lowest, just before the upturn - right. No worries ...

-- Crypto Byte (cryptobyte@hotmail.com), October 17, 2000.

The Y2K doomers (and I myself was a pessimist) were not right in any way, shape or form. Y2K did not prick our bubble economy, it has just sprung leaks of its own accord, at least in the tech stocks sector. (Not that I think all stock price declines have been justified; I think Apple's was just nutty.)

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), October 17, 2000.

In the world of DOOM, y2k was just an especially dramatic possibilitity. OK, it didn't happen so now there will be a never-ending scenario of apocolyptae (plural?) and now and then some of them will come true, or partially true.

And that will make a doomer's day.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), October 17, 2000.


Uneasy days ahead for US credit markets

http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003tcB

-- (also@see.this), October 17, 2000.


http://www.smh.com.au/news/0010/16/text/business12.html

http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=003wZd

Behind the Street's PR machine, meanwhile, worries and fears continue to mount. Not about the fate of investors but the fate of the major investment banks and brokers.

In August, this column focused on the Perfect Storm that some insightful Streeters were predicting because a hitherto unnoticed hurricane was sweeping in just as the storm front battering Wall Street markets and technology stocks met the strong economy/Fed interest rate action storm.

Said institutional broker Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette strategist Tom Galvin at the time, "A serious credit crunch is unfolding behind the headlines. DLJ's leveraged finance specialists are increasingly concerned about the possibility of an impending financial recession rather than an economic recession".

In recent weeks the third storm hit. But the biggest waves so far have hit Wall Street and not corporate America. The junk bond market has sunk, taking with it billions of dollars of the investment banks' money, and the biggest whisper game right now is which firm is most underwater in the high-yield market.

The second biggest whisper before Friday was about reports of a central bank, possibly not far from New York, selling US Treasuries to raise funds for intervention in financial markets. Friday's rumour was that the Nasdaq market had been the beneficiary. That certainly would explain much, but wave-calming in the junk bond market would seem more needed right now. Barton Biggs over at Morgan Stanley (which coughed up to high-yield losses last week) believes the deteriorating financial position of many telecom companies and their falling coverage and credit ratios could prove a problem for institutional lenders and the banking system.

It also could prove a problem for tech stocks. Their technology might be great but their share prices are still overvalued if share buyers, like the speculators who have lost most of their money in the dot com and telcom bubbles, suddenly realise they are playing in a global Ponzi scheme.

So far there is no sign of a shift to the panicky bearish sentiment that always goes with market bottoms, so a rebound ahead of a further fall is possible but oil prices might prove the best guide.

-- F (w@i.w), October 18, 2000.



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