Immanuel Wallerstein

Jordan Hayes jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com
Mon Sep 6 10:59:31 PDT 1999


From dhenwood at panix.com Mon Sep 6 10:07:26 1999

>I'm wondering how much is due to financial returns, how much from

>productivity growth (value added/ hour) in manufacturing.

Some share of profits come from the bubble, no doubt, but

the numbers I used were for nonfinancial corporations.

Don't forget that for some high-flying "nonfinancial" stocks, financial returns (as opposed to core-business returns) can become not insignificant to earnings: MSFT and INTC are two companies who have benefited greatly from participating in the public market and adding to their earnings by taking advantage of out-o-whack volatility -- in particular by selling puts.

Microsoft in particular is making in the three-digits of millions (!) per quarter in the derivatives market. The last 10-Q I read said 3rd quarter total investment income was $720M ... note that in the same perios sales and marketing expenses were "only" $990M, so we're not talking about small potatoes ...

/jordan



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