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Enron Mail |
Why is Enron's stock so volatile now? Since today's session started, ENE
has lost another $2.50! Mr. Ken Lay replies I haven't had a chance to check our stock today, but I think for several reasons it's more volatile. But before I comment on that, our stock price is still up even if it went down that much today. It's up 40% since the beginning of the year when the Dow was down. As recently as mid-December, the stock price is up about 75%. That's one reason why it's so volatile. Some people bought in along the way, they've had a good strong increase, particularly with the uncertainty in the marketplace, people just want to take some money off the table. As we become more of a technology stock, a high P/E stock, a growth stock held by growth portfolios, you're going to have more volatility, just like all the other companies that fit into that category. Throughout the market, technology stocks quite often go up or down not just $3-$4 a whack, but often $10-$12-$15 a whack. What I tell Mark Koenig is I love that volatility on the upside, but I hate it on the down side. We've had a change in the ownership of our stock. Increasingly, it's being bought by the growth portfolio managers, and increasingly it's being sold by the value and other portfolio managers that picked it up at much lower valuations, and now at these values they want to take their money and put it back into lower P/E stocks. I know this makes everybody a little nervous, but this is probably the world we're in now. I'd rather be in this world with a 50 P/E than the more stable world with a 20 P/E.
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