<I>TSC</I> Weekender: This Is the First Weekend of the Rest of Your Life
You don't like to do the same things on your days off as you do during the workweek. And neither does
TheStreet.com
. Starting today, we're kicking off weekend coverage that focuses more on what you're doing, thinking and talking about when you're not making money. Just as our Easy Money martini icon (one olive, please) has moved to the
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Weekender column, the Easy Money credo -- to provide a more leisurely look at Wall Street -- has sloshed over the entire weekend coverage.
At the top of the site every Saturday,
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Weekender will bring you a quick wrap-up of the biggest stories of the week (see below), as well as a more offbeat look at financial news. Click the links for The Pulse, BrowBeat, HAX and FLAX and other short items in the box for the latest on what Wall Street is talking about (as overheard by
TSC's
reporters). Also on Saturdays, our Easy Money feature will scrutinize the personalities and attitudes that make up business life. Today, former trader
Eugene Finerman examines that profession's sullied reputation.
Plus, every Saturday morning after the 10 a.m. ET airing of "TheStreet.com" on
Fox News Channel
, we'll post a new column called
The Cutting Room -- a chance for one of the
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guests on the show to give his or her impressions of that weekend's show, expand on a thought or get in one last "I told you so." Meanwhile, the columns you love will continue: Technical Forum, Tax Forum, Options Forum, The Daily Question, Traveling With Wings and Cramer's Take Two.
Sunday
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takes a preparatory bent, telling you what's on the Street's mind and schedule in the days ahead. Look for Investor's Bookshelf and columns from
Gary B. Smith
,
Jim Griffin
, Editor-in-Chief
Dave Kansas
, IPO expert
Ben Holmes
and, of course,
James J. Cramer
. This week, we're presenting a special article by political economy guru
James K. Galbraith
on Election 2000. And throughout the weekend, our three Coming Week features -- focused on the U.S., Europe and Asia -- get you going before the markets do.
We hope all this will be the perfect complement to the continuing markets coverage, breaking news, analysis and commentary in
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all week long that informs, educates and helps make you a rich man or woman. Love it? Hate it?
Tell us what you think.
The Internet Becomes the Inter-Not
After many predictions of doom, it finally happened: Internet stocks
lost
it. Over the first three days of this week, the
TheStreet.com Internet Sector
index fell 11.9%, bringing its losses over the past month to more than 25%. Higher interest rates, the seasonal tech doldrums and threats to bellwether
AOL's
(AOL)
business left people wondering if this was The Big One for Internet stocks or just a momentary setback for
Bob Pittman's
retirement portfolio.
But a little perspective, please: The DOT is still up 20% for the year, AOL is only back where it was five months ago and Net stocks' mid-April fall from their peak was much steeper. We say, wait for a sure sign that the correction is real: the media replacing those tiresomely ubiquitous "
paper millionaire" stories with the more heartrending riches-to-rags version.
The Trial of Jobs
The Emperor is down to his skivvies. It's getting increasingly difficult to say the
Fed's
not going to raise interest rates during its Aug. 24 meeting, and the market knows it. Stocks and bonds convulsed this week before a new set of hot economic data -- just the sort the ultimate
G Man
has repeatedly told us he's been keeping his eye on. Productivity down sharply. Unit labor costs up sharper still. And if that weren't enough to make G-Love break out the special sauce, Friday brought the news that
nonfarm payrolls and hourly earnings for July had increased much more than economists thought. Indeed, as the market scrambles to discount an August hike, some have started making their bets on what'll happen on Oct. 5.
Rising interest rates aren't the only thing the market's been discounting lately. There's still the matter of the stocks themselves, especially in the technology and Internet sectors. Aside from the always antagonistic relationship between high growth stocks and higher borrowing costs, investors seem to have suddenly reached a consensus:
eBay
(EBAY) - Get Free Report
is
reeeeaally
expensive.
The Big Sleep
Remember when the market would get all atwitter when news broke about big ol' staid companies -- like those humongo chemical outfits? The
announcement of a $9.3 billion merger between
Dow Chemical
(DOW) - Get Free Report
and
Dow
component
Union Carbide
(UK)
jazzed up the blue-chip index briefly on Wednesday morning, but, at the closing bell, the Dow had shed 2.54 to 10,674.77.
It's big news, they tell us. But it barely made a peep this week. Profitable companies worth lots of money doing massive deals -- and the market wrings its hands over
(AMZN) - Get Free Report
noprofits.com. Can't the big guy ever catch a break?
-- Staff reporters David A. Gaffen, Thomas Lepri, George Mannes and Gregg Wirth contributed to this article.
