We did, but how many of us (or people like us) are in the market? In any case, the bigger news is HPL Tech (a new case of Cooked Book Disease), which prompted the last sell-off.
...Mass emotion is hard to peg. Another flurry of bad news and she will dip hard to be sure. I guess the 3M report was about the best news today. I don't think Worldcom mattered ...everyone knew that was coming.
We'll see. I simply can't see a prolonged DJ below these levels in this economy lasting very long unless another 9-11 happens or we find out on 8-14 that hundreds of CFOs are playing 3 card monte with the books hoping future quarters will bury their shenanigans
I agree on WorldCom. The morning sell-off was those sleeping at the switch the past week.
Nobody knows what happens with an emotional bear. I've gone on the record saying that, if there's no more Cooked Book Diseased companies, the market's on a trampoline and that's stretched to its bottom. Of course, CBD is the big unknown in the market. I have a SWAG "new-investor" feeling as to how many more CBD companies will cause Dow 3000, but I am not going to mention that number because I don't want Dow 3000 (though I will say that it is less than the hundreds you mentioned, especially if some of those are in "key" companies).
Wells Fargo Sec raised HPL to strong buy on May 17,2002 http://yahoo.smartmoney.com/thedatamine/index.cfm?story=20020620&afl=yahoo
Insider & restricted shareholder transactions reported over the last two years LEPEJIAN, Y. DAVID: Declared Holdings
2002-06-05 -
2002-06-26 *19,500 HPLA Sale at $12.60 - $14.45 per share. (Proceeds of about $264,000) 2002-02-05 -
2002-02-13 *30,000 HPLA Sale at $15.10 - $15.55 per share. (Proceeds of about $460,000) 2002-02-05 -
2002-02-13 *30,000 HPLA Option Exercise at $0.07 per share. (Cost of $2,100)
2001-07-26 *10,219,129 HPLA Statement of Ownership
By Cintra Scott
June 20, 2002
Smartmoney
But would you believe that the most loved stock of them all is actually a tech stock? Yup, chip-testing software maker HPL Technologies (HPLA story=snapshot&symbol=HPLA>) tops our list with seven Strong Buy ratings. HPL was also one of the three repeat survivors mentioned earlier, along with Loews ( a holding company for tobacco, insurance, hotel and oil-drilling businesses, and generic-drug maker Impax Laboratories
This CBD is to me simply an exaggeration of what many small businesses like myself occasionally do when it's time for a new bank loan. Of course, we do the opposite when it's property tax appeal time...lol. My dad founded a public company so I know that publicly traded companies should not try to sweep bad news under the rug and hope projections will cover their trail. That is esentially what most of these folks did....in a very big way. Enron and WorldCom paid too much for their never ending acquisitions and ended up hoping cash flow would keep up and it obviously did not. Neither of those companies screwed the pooch in one or two quarters...this was years in the making. AOL has done the same thing but they haven't lied as much about it. That huge goodwill write down a few months ago is evidence they overpaid. Now the question of executives making sweetheart loans and timely options when the house of cards is falling is much more troubling to me ...in fact...it should be criminal.
I agree that the DJ can go to 3000 or so but it will take a combination of events beyond emotive reasoning. I have a friend who is an astute S&P futures trader and he thinks the bottom is around 7K. He's usually right but who knows? We won't know for weeks or even months until after it's happened.
BTW, my family is indeed about 60% in equities portfolio-wise...(un-margined fortunately) so we're feeling the pain. We've been hit with Disney, AllState, AOL and ATT after 9-11 this year. Actually T was on the skids prior to 9-11. Disney and AllState will prevail. AOL may splinter and T may be bought by a profitable babyBell....ironic isn't it? AOL has a fat cash flow and a huge subscriber base....they need to re-organize and get the media folks outta there...it looks like they are doing just that. Still, it will be a long road back for them even in a Bull market.