Hewlett-Packard to Buy Rival Compaq -NYT http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/010903/business_tech_hp_compaq_dc.html
I thought Carly Fiorina was dumb buy not stupid. Hewlett-Packard can't even staighten out their own problems let alone Compaq. What bar are you guys hanging out in?
Praetorian it'll never happen. Carly is your quentessential modern day businesswoman who really knows her stuff. Afterall, she does have a bachelors degree in Archaeology from Stanford. Sterling
It was interesting to see Maria Bartolomo (Spell?) during a interview...she said that she was talking to some big time CEO last year about computer sales...the CEO said something along these lines....Last part of 1999 and the first part of 2000 my company bought 25,000 computers to get ready for Y2K...so did many other corporations; this amounted to an unpecidented amount of computers and related hardware etc being sold....Now he asked her this question.....Do you think that anyone is going to buy a lot of computers like that again?...Hmmmmmmm! So went the NASDAQ last year...all down hill. Compaq and HWP have to join up if they are going to survive...I think in the future we will be seeing more of these companies joing up together and some of these companies will just plain go bankrupt....Yes some of it is mismanagement, but sometimes things just fall out of favour...are computers going by the way side??....no...but it will be a long time before we see another glut like that again..if ever!!!!! Hopefuly, we will find some new market leaders soon to carry us out of this slump in technology....some are saying it could be Broadband....but I have my doubts...it always seems to be something that nobody could imagine or think of...I hope we find it soon...and I hope that as traders we are all able to recognize that new market leader soon and profit along with it.
I've never done arbitrage, but I've been studying pairs trading lately. There's some regulatory concerns on this deal, but is anyone here going to trade the spread on these? How do you calculate it and at what deviation do you take your position? Thx, Corey
I would caution against trying to trade the spread on this deal. Every arb desk on wall street is looking on this deal and the spread most likely reflects the exact likelyhood of a successful merger.