bah. doubletalk non-answers ... nothing new under the sun.

speaking of patent issues: the ibm vs scox trial has apparently entered the twilight zone phase, with scox now replying to ibm's counterclaims by arguing that the gpl (gnu public license) is unenforceable and void. (if you're unfamiliar with the gpl: this is the license by which free software folks allow redistribution of their otherwise copyrighted stuff under rather strict guidelines. so in arguing that the gpl is invalid, scox - which has distributed linux under the gpl - is pretty much arguing that they've distributed copyrighted software without a license to do so.)

back to the world of the mundane ...

nevertheless, its hard to know how much of this move has already been priced into the stocks. e.g. gg put on quite a bit of weight this week, which is a bit out of character. (although there was that dividend announcement, etc.)

but can the hui still run more? i wish someone would tell me belkin, visiting kurdlow and crammer yesterday, said he'd sold all of his miners.

again, i don't get it. how does the qqq end UP 0.03, but the ndx end DOWN 7.5?

yeah, nor i. i was asking around about this a couple weeks ago, because it really seemed that sometimes the ndx and the qqq weren't tracking each other very tightly.

i see you guys here are talking about belkin. i just caught his tail end on krudflow and lamer. i like him! but he sold his gold stocks ... hmm. (said they were acting too much like momentum stocks. which i agree with ... hmmm.

time to sell miners and buy metal yet? dan? mlsoft?

what is the sense in this??

Foreign Central Banks Cut Holdings of US Treasuries-Fed
Thursday October 23, 4:37 pm ET

NEW YORK, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Foreign central bank holdings of U.S. Treasury and agency debt fell in the latest week, taking the total back below the hallmark $1.0 trillion level, as the banks dumped Treasuries.

The Federal Reserve said on Thursday its total holdings of Treasuries and agencies for foreign central banks dropped $6.92 billion to $993.25 billion as of Wednesday, Oct. 22 compared to the prior Wednesday. A year ago that figure stood at $803.48 billion.

Foreign central banks were aggressive sellers of Treasury debt, dumping $11.54 billion-worth over the week to $793.69 billion. In contrast they were buyers of agency debt, expanding their holdings by $4.61 billion to $199.56 billion.

The Fed also releases figures that average the daily fluctuations in custody holdings. Those showed holdings actually rose over the week to stand at $995.40 billion a day from an average $990.78 billion the week before.

As currency interventions have taken center stage in global economic and political discussions before next year's U.S. elections, worries have run high that Asian central banks may lose their appetite for U.S. debt as the dollar weakens.

Recently, Japan has remained aggressive in its purchases of dollars to prevent yen strength that is viewed as constraining economic growth through exports.

However, the U.S. has stepped up pressure on Asian countries to let their currencies float more freely, which could in turn lead to less demand for Treasury and agency debt from these central banks -- and perhaps higher market interest rates here.

I'd surmise that program trading is heavily in the QQQ's and a few stocks. 'Course I could be wrong about that.

wouldn't it more likely be the other way around? i mean, heavier trading in qqq and spy and more liquid stocks, and then lots of program for the arbitrage between the index and the value of the shares?

(e) something else

e.g. many computers don't run windows.

interesting. the bloomberg spin on msft is much different than the cnbc spin ("they beat, i wonder why they're selling off, maybe its the deferred revenues ...")

and coinincidentally: just upgraded my redhat linux after 2 yrs last night. (did it the "safe" way and overwrote my windows partition boy is this getting polished. though they've hidden lots of the options and tweaks that used to be available.

good luck guys.

parker,
now living the totally microsoft-free life

---------------

Microsoft 1st-Qtr Net Falls on Stock Option Costs (Update1)
Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, said first-quarter net income fell as sales rose at the slowest pace in more than three years and the company started treating stock options as an expense.

Net income fell to $2.61 billion, or 24 cents a share, from $2.73 billion, or 25 cents, a year earlier, the Redmond, Washington-based company said in a statement. Net income included 6 cents in option costs. Sales in the quarter ended Sept. 30 rose 6.1 percent to $8.22 billion from $7.75 billion.

Sales this period will be $9.7 billion to $9.8 billion, the company said, above the average analyst forecast of $9.31 billion. Profit will be 23 cents to 24 cents a share. For the year ending June 30, Microsoft said it will earn 86 cents to 88 cents, up from a previous forecast of 85 cents to 87 cents. Sales will be $34.8 billion to $35.3 billion, up from a forecast of $34.2 billion to $34.9 billion.

Microsoft has boosted sales of software for running server computers after the release of Windows Server 2003 in April as companies such as Jet Blue Airways Corp. and Arcelor SA use the program. Server programs helped boost sales as revenue from Windows for personal computers rose less than 1 percent.

Shares of Microsoft fell to $28.30 in trading after the report. They rose 2 cents to $28.91 as of 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. They have risen 12 percent this year, compared with a 17 percent increase in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Net income includes a 6-cent a share expense for the cost of stock options. If Microsoft had expensed options in the year-ago quarter, net income would have been $2.04 billion or 19 cents a share.

In the year-ago period, Microsoft's revenue rose 26 percent because a deadline for switching to a new licensing plan came in the quarter. Sales of PC Windows rose 33 percent in that quarter.

Microsoft Chief Financial Officer John Connors had said in January that boosting sales last quarter would be 'daunting.' Some investors took that to mean the company might break a streak of quarterly revenue gains that dates to the first public sale of Microsoft shares in 1986. Increases in server sales helped Microsoft avoid a decline.

'They've got a really good product set in server,' said Heather O'Loughlin, who helps invest about $800 billion at State Street Global Advisors, the fifth-biggest Microsoft investor, with 299.8 million shares. 'I've heard great things from companies that have looked at Windows 2003.'

Companies are switching to servers with Windows or the free Linux operating system because they are cheaper than the 30-year- old Unix programs sold by computer makers including International Business Machines Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Customers like Arcelor SA, the world's largest steelmaker, and snowboard maker K2 Inc. have bought Windows 2003.

Last Updated: October 23, 2003 16:37 EDT

don't forget my piggy bank, kopn ...

Lol uh oh I smell doo doo. gg

where there's bulls there's bulls***. maybe the wind has been blowing in the wrong direction, so you hadn't noticed before ...

speaking of being rolled out of long-term storage: did anyone notice that abby jo conehead was resurrected today?

http://www.thisislondon.com/news/business/articles/timid69459?source=

i'm a bit puzzled, though. i thought the general window for topping was within 3 days AFTER she appears.

hey! you think its a joke! mark my words!

Greenspan catures Sadam tomorrow. Could happen!

nah, they have bin laden in cold storage for just such an emergency. although i'm sure they'd prefer to thaw him closer to the 04 election.

> We have a real problem in our country if we can't get good
> legislation through because of the minority filibuster. It
> should need a super majority to get these things through.

bite your tongue.

if its good legislation, it'll come back. what's the rush?

> You have to be able to forecast the explosive growth from last
> quarter to this one and the guidance given. It is called
> growth?

grrr. i remember owning rfmd and i remember shorting rfmd. i remember them making 10 cents in a quarter just 2 years ago, and then missing the next quarter by 25%, without ever issuing a warning. (in fact, reiterating their guidance twice during sept 01. if you remember, cell phones were "hot" then because of their use in the twin towers ...).

these guys, the poweramp guys, the rf component guys - tqnt, anad, ahaa (now swks), rfmd - they all do the do-si-do every couple quarters as they vie with each other for contracts from handset manufacturers. if you think back a couple days, you'll remember that nok's projections weren't so hot, and anad didn't impress anyone and sold off.

they only good thing i can say about rfmd the stock is that they did a good job of holding the price above 20 while their 10% shareholder (trw? i think) sold off all its shares.

otherwise, growth is in the eye of the beholder.

however, your offer does sound appealing. if i promise to make 0.06 every quarter for the next 10 years, will u give me 20$? i'll even sweeten the deal and pay a quarterly 0.06 dividend!

RFMD will be 20-25 bucks.

so is that what 0.06/quarter is worth nowadays?

KLIC killing the shorts

while that might be a comforting thought, klic short interest was huge in march, and has tripled since then: the higher it goes, the more they short ...

According to the FED productivity has risen 6%. Why are wages falling?

isn't this just axiomatic? rising productivity means fewer workers are needed for the same work, meaning workers get cheaper. and that's not even counting competition outside the u.s.

We need some explainations. NOW!

don't worry, be happy. trust in your elected and non-elected leaders.

wall of worry, sloop of poop kinda thing.

If so, why are they laying them off in record numbers

coincidentally, i was wondering yesterday what http://www.fuckedcompany.com was up to lately, with this new economic revival and such like. it seems now like the web site is a score card for continuing layoffs, with a good healthy dose of "laying off americans and sending business to india".

c'est la vie.

Was TXN that good?

apparently good enuf to make everyone forget about nok.

> 0.95

if that's the 3-month average, then it might mean that september, by itself, actually posted a b/b over 1 .... if that's statistically significant, i don't know ...

> In CA, grocery workers are on strike

grocery and public transit ...

though, of course, that might be a reason to play "costco" and "whole foods", e.g., since they and trader joe's are about the only large food stores not affected ...

Lean Inventories May Finally Lead To Hiring

whoa! which country?

i've seen similar - cases where the bad print wasn't an obvious 'typo' like $1 off (esp on pmcs, earlier in this rally).

> will not run XP Pro

although your old hardware will probably run a linux desktop more responsively than your new hardware will run an xp one.

sorry, just my periodic windows bashing.

futures don't look too erumpant tonight. too bad, dagnabbit ... i wanted to go short in the a.m. (csco!)

aww. well, not 2005, but still ... this is not fair ...

They have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan Era and probably did not know he had ever been shot.

some of us have whining parents with no love of reagan.

Tianamen Square means nothing to them.

and some of us have watched mtv ...

a complete change in the way health care is delivered.

outsource to thailand?

oops. forgot the

for some contrast:

Intel's Grove: US software, services face meltdown
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 11/10/2003 at 00:03 GMT

Acknowledging that it was National Depression Day, Intel co-founder Andy Grove warned that US software and services would go the same way of the US steel industry. "It would be a miracle if it didn't happen in the software and services industry,'' he said.

Grove attributed the crisis to higher labor costs in the US, and the diminishing number of people with "advanced qualifications". US steel manufacturers saw their share fall from 50 per cent to 10 per cent. He confessed to being a "skunk at the garden party" before his Washington DC audience.

His honesty is commendable, and Grove has done the industry a service if he can alert complacent politicans. But Grove all but admitted that he was part of the problem. Intel's CEO Craig Barrett said recently that 1,000 new jobs created by Intel since the crash were offshore, in India and China. Grove said CEOs faced a conflict between generating profits for shareholders and "doing the right thing for the country". He advocated higher R&D funding at universities, better collaboration between companies and "raising the hurdle for intellectual property litigation".

Short of drastic cuts in salaries for software and services engineers in the West, it's hard to see what will even the balance. Software CEO Brad Wardell of Stardock Systems says IT staff simply expect too much.

"The majority of IT people still want to be paid at dot.com wages. The job simply isn't worth that much," he told us. "Let's say I had to pay $120,000 a year for one American IT guy: we wouldn't hire as many artists and designers. The IT guys is costing two other American jobs."

"Eventually wages will come back down to more competitive levels," he predicted. "There are still cultural issues and we'll need a local services and software. I can't see India sucking away the entire IT department." ®

Related Stories
Intel CEO admits: jobs aren't coming back to US
US set to make massive H1-B visa cuts


http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/33339.html

Sigh. I can't believe professionals wrtie statements like this.

grr. well they're not finanacial journalists after all.

pmcs longs getting jittery before earnings this week ... and well they should ...

do i read that right? vix @ 17.6, vxn @ 27?

Even though consumption has lagged most of the year, the trade groups said there are signs machine tool demand has begun to improve.

"August orders and increased output among many of our customers appear to be signaling an end to the decline in manufacturing technology investments," John Byrd, president of the AMT, said in a statement.

how do they get this from these august numbers? the aug numbers are below the previously released july numbers, and july numbers were overstated ... so why does the july release signal a turnaround anymore then the august release?

sometimes this eager search for bullish spin everywhere feels like the announcements that can turn botox samples in iraq into wmd's.

If your a hedge fund you should contact me, I can probably help you out of your mess. Otherwise good luck to you.

lol. nah, i'm a college student and hope for a rather more noble profession. :-P

Opposing these factors in the present, we have an all time high # of Shorts outstanding against the current Net pool represented as the markets current float which is considerably lower than at anytime in the last four years.

i suppose. as i said, i can't find the numbers across all shares, only per stock. on the stocks i tend to watch, and even those i don't watch regularly (msft, csco, etc.) the short interest doesn't seem anywhere close to record highs.

conversely, a stocks like brks and klic, which had short interest around 20% in march, have seen their short interest nearly double (or for klic, nearly triple), all in a very linear fashion, as their prices have tripled (resp. doubled) over the same period. on the face of it, it looks to me more like folks becoming aggressively short on recognized overpriced junk, and creating shorting opportunities. (and note, these are no longer hitting new highs now.)

anyway, if i had to guess, i'd guess that the increased volume has some offsetting effect here: in these two cases, as the short interest has increased by 100-200%, the short ratio has decreased by a similar amount.

though i'm not sure how you put it all together. but clearly your static picture (total outstanding short interest) and the 'instantaneous' picture (how much of the float trades every hour, say) seem to be at odds, since you're suggesting that the stocks become less liquid, but the volume suggests they're more liquid. though perhaps its all a program trading illusion.

If the institutions don't sell, there's nothing to stop investment banks from issuing lots of shares.

its an interesting question, because dvdmogul's "supply/demand equation", as you point out, takes into account only the demand created by short interest. on the other hand, that from trimtabs.com (their "liquidity theory" studies) seem to take into account almost everything else, exclusive of short interest.

speaking of which, from trimtabs (dated mid september):

http://www.trimtabs.com/news/liquidity/latest.html


[...]

BOTTOM LINE: WE TURN AGGRESSIVELY BEARISH. NO CORPORATE BUYING & $2+ BILLION DAILY OF CORPORATE SELLING HAS MARKET VULNERABLE.

We turn aggressively bearish from bearish. The reason is the resurgence in the new offering calendar and the continuing dearth of corporate buying. The risk is if there is a new pool of $100 billion or so of cash to keep stock prices from selling off.

Between new offerings and insider selling, we expect that companies will be draining the checking accounts of stock market players by close to $2 billion daily. For the players to keep buying hot new offerings, they have to either sell other stocks, or not buy.

In our model portfolio we short 4 Dec. S&P 500s.

dvdmogul:

though what you're saying sounds logical, do you have any statistics on short interest at market tops? (e.g. does large scale short capitulation preceed topping?) i can't seem to find a place with numbers on total short interest, just for individual stocks ...

(my recollection, though, through our bear market rallies over the last couple years has been that short interest has typically hit its lows at bottoms and highs at tops, at least in the individual tech issues that i follow, like pmcs, ntap and so forth.)

5:11pm 10/11/03 SILICON VALLEY JOBLESS RATE 7.5% VS. YEAR-AGO 8.8%

well, its useful to know when folks are lying with statistics. though, locally, the news is reported accurately:

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/6989100.htm

Posted on Sat, Oct. 11, 2003
Silicon Valley loses thousands more jobs
BUT JOBLESS RATE FALLS AS PEOPLE MOVE OR STOP LOOKING
By Margaret Steen
Mercury News

Silicon Valley's job market continued to limp along in September. Although Santa Clara County's unemployment rate fell to 7.5 percent from a revised 8 percent in August, the county lost 2,300 jobs during that time.

``I still think it's going to be sometime beyond the end of this year before we see the economy really come to a bottom and level off,'' said Steve Cochrane, senior economist at Economy.com.

Although the decline in the unemployment rate may seem like good news, it was caused largely by people leaving the labor force, either moving out of the county or giving up their search for work. The number of unemployed county residents dropped by 6,400 to 67,800 in September, but the number of employed residents fell as well.

The number of jobs in the county, which economists generally view as a more accurate indicator of the economy's health, continued to fall. The number of jobs in September, 864,800, was the lowest of any month since February 1996.

The figures, which were released Friday by the state Employment Development Department, showed that many of the job losses came in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and manufacturing.

Economists said it's not clear how soon the apparent national recovery will translate into more jobs for Silicon Valley. There are mixed signals about a recovery in the tech economy. Investors are expressing some confidence in tech companies, some of which are putting out new products. But others are still struggling; Sun Microsystems recently announced more layoffs, for example.

``I'm certainly expecting a significant recovery next year, but I haven't heard of any evidence that it's happening yet,'' said Richard Carlson, an economist and partner at Spectrum Economics in Mountain View.

Silicon Valley's job situation remains grim compared with that of the rest of the country. In August, the most recent month for which comparisons of large metro areas are available, the San Jose metro area had the second-highest unemployment rate, just behind Portland, Ore., with a rate of 8.1 percent. Miami and New York had the next-highest rates.

``It is still one of worst-performing metro area labor markets,'' Cochrane said. ``I think San Jose is still going to be the laggard for another year or two before we see any kind of catch-up start to take place.''

Statewide, the situation was similar to that in Santa Clara County. California's unemployment rate stood at 6.4 percent, seasonally adjusted, in September. That's down from a revised 6.7 percent in August. For comparison, the U.S. unemployment rate was 6.1 percent in September.

California lost 16,600 jobs from August to September.

There are some anecdotal reports that hiring is picking up locally. But that still isn't translating into jobs for many who are looking.

``It seems like there are at least more real jobs advertised, things that are more suited to me that I'm starting to see,'' said Patty Breslin, 40, of San Leandro. She has been looking for technical support or client services work for more than six months. ``I haven't been able to get more responses to those things, but it seems like there's more offered.''

california data.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-caljobs11oct11000432,1,7433034.story?coll=la-headlines-busines...

re jobs. well on a local note, from latimes:

State's Job Losses Worsen
Payroll drop last month diverges from upbeat U.S. data but may be a statistical quirk. The jobless rate falls as many quit looking for work.

By Marla Dickerson, Times Staff Writer

California's job market swooned in September, posting its biggest monthly loss this year and sending payrolls to their lowest level since employment began its long slide 2 1/2 years ago, a government report said Friday.

[...]

scox bubblewatch.

from rhat vs scox trial. interesting that the bubblicious scox stock makes an appearance here:


In sum, SCO's campaign is designed both to slow the growth of
LINUX, and to reverse its failing fortunes by convincing LINUX users
that they need to pay SCO a license fee to use the lower-cost LINUX
operating system. As SCO's own representatives have proclaimed, if SCO
is successful at this effort, it can add "billions" of dollars in
undeserved revenues to its declining bottom line. Additionally, SCO's
campaign is designed to further what, upon information and belief, has
been referred to as the "LINUX Lottery" -- the ability to reap personal
profit by carefully timed purchases of SCO stock.


http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/pub/Main/SCOvsIBMReferences/RH-Decleratory-Judgment.txt

n.b. scox is trying to delay discovery.