Word: aol
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...that matters is the audience size. Maybe you remember how silly AOL seemed sending out all those free disks for years and years. Now, according to the latest tally released yesterday afternoon, the dial-up king has 17 million customers. Key is the value of users, not at this point in the game for how much they'll give you but for how much some other web contender will pay to include your users in their "network." (Watch for Yahoo to start calling itself just that, now that GeoCities gives it a big property with a completely different brand...
...Compounding the problem, Net stocks have relatively few shares in circulation, and that makes them difficult to borrow and sell. The ones you would want to short--those without earnings or a compelling business plan--are precisely the ones whose shares are hardest to borrow. You can easily short AOL, but it has a real business and is least likely to plunge. Available shorts include portal companies, among them Yahoo and Excite. But again, they're not first choice...
There are three Net indexes on which you can buy put options: Amex Inter@ctive Week, Goldman Sachs and TheStreet.com The Amex also sells long-term options (LEAPS) on individual stocks, including aol, Yahoo, @Home and Ascend. Those expire in January 2001 and give plenty of time for the bubble to burst. But the stock would have to fall 50% in that time for the LEAP...
Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, the colorful arbiter presiding over the jury-free Microsoft antitrust trial, yesterday interrupted Microsoft's cross-examination of the last government witness to ponder outside comments from America Online's Steve Case. Could AOL's chief become the star witness in the biggest antitrust trial since the Model T? MORE...
...course, there have been some Micromoments as well, most notably when AOL announced it was buying Netscape. Microsoft immediately seized on this as proof that, in the rough-and-tumble world of software, you have to play rough sometimes or you will most certainly get tumbled. Further, Microsoft could now argue that it couldn't have a monopoly when faced with a giant competitor. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson was intrigued...