Weekend Cocktail Chatter
You know the stock market isn't feeling especially jaunty when the best news
it gets all week is that economic growth might be slowing. But there are all
sorts of things that people seem to be worrying about, despite the fact that
earnings in the latest quarter are expected to be exceptional and that it
increasingly looks as if the Fed won't raise interest rates when it meets on
Tuesday. Among the worries: It's October. Halloween, you see, really freaks
Wall Street out. Anyway, it'll be October all month. Which should mean that
I'll have a lot to write about, at least. And so, on to this week's Cocktail
Chat.
1. "3Com's shares continued to do well as the market reacted to the news
that the company is planning to spin off its Palm division . Of course,
if you're 3Com, is it really good news that investors think more highly of a
division that accounts for just 12 percent of your revenue than they do
of the entire rest of your company?"
2. "Successive headlines on
TheStreet.com's International news
page read: 'Central Bankers Look Set to Lengthen the Good Times' and
'Leaders Fiddle As World Burns.' In the New Economy, apparently, burning worlds
are good times."
3. "Rumors swirled about a possible deal between America Online and
broadband-access provider Excite@Home , a deal that would finally give AOL
entry into the world of high-speed Internet access. Actually, the deal would
really be between AOL and AT&T, which has 58 percent of the voting shares
in Excite@Home. Excite@Home's executives say no deal will be done without
their full approval , but it's a little unclear what that means. Can they
filibuster like Republican senators, or what?"
4. "TiVo, maker of that device that lets you save TV programs to a hard
drive and replay it whenever you want, went public Thursday and saw its
shares double . I'm still not sure how different this thing is from a VCR.
But I do want one, which has to bode well for the company."
5. "Avon issued an earnings warning, and saw its stock price get
clubbed . Of course, what else can you expect when you consider that the
Avon Lady way of selling is essentially the anti-Internet. Whatever the
opposite of a .com stock is, that's Avon."
6. "Calling for an end to the patchwork of state and local tax rules,
AT&T CEO Michael Armstrong complained that his company had to file
39,912 different tax returns in the United States alone. AT&T's
accountants and tax attorneys are reportedly confused about exactly why that's
a problem."
7. "The
Wall Street Journal
said that traders blamed Tuesday's
stock-market volatility on 'a change in the composition of the Standard &
Poor's 500-stock index, shock at the soaring price of gold, rumors that some
investment partnerships were madly selling stocks to cover losing bets
against gold, end-of-month portfolio changes, anxiety over interest rates and
worries about possible market troubles as the year 2000 approaches.' What about
the plague of locusts and the rain of frogs?"
