Daily News from New York, New York • 28

DOW JONES 7" 66.49 10,623.64 NASDAQ 2,023.43 500 5.51 1,214.36 Stocks still risky, so cash a good bet hj Lai ont get too greedy. This is not the time to try to be a hero. By RACHEL SCHEO DUty NEWS BUSINESS WRITER Why? Because this stock market is starting to You shop Zabais for look dangerous. I'm still relatively fully invested, Street Flea Market in Chelsea for urbane junk. When your hard drive unexpectedly crashes zapping tax records, newly completed musical scores or the lone copy of the novel that functioning properly since a was to catapult you to fame friend had inadvertently insert- me.

GE and Honeywell will be fine. GE is a great company, and Honeywell could easily end up in the hands of another suitor, like United Technologies. The risk is the potential of a tit-for-tat financial war with the Europeans. It is not just that they blocked a deal between two American compa- nies. They tears, say staffers, who discuss this problem in the tone of highway patrolmen discussing the failure of drivers to obey seat-belt laws.

"It's like the invincibility of youth," Glickfeld, the manager, said philosophically. "You bought this expensive machine and you think it's never going to fail, but they do." TekServe's owners, David Lerner and Dick Demenus, first met in 1970 when they were both working as engineers at the noncommercial, leftist radio station WBAI. The pair eventually went into business together designing things like electronic pill dispensers and cassette players to accompany museum tours. Then they noticed a need for repairs on early-model Macintoshes, which were prone to overheating in the early days, and TekServe was born. Like any true New York institu- but for the first time in months, I am selling more than I am buying.

Stocks are not as cheap as they were. At the bottom of the market, stocks were screaming, "Buy me." The values were incredible. But most of the great bargains have disappeared. Now all I hear is them saying is: "I am cheaper than I used to be." That's not a good GUERRILLA INVESTING good Nova and the 26th ed a tainted disc. "And, of course, we had a deadline," Ferdschneider joined in.

"We're definitely going to have separation anxiety we're addicted to eBay. The Internet is like a cancer. It's just entwined itself in our lives." He was not alone. One longtime TekServe staffer said she'd seen people leaving their machines for a few days actually kiss their computers goodbye. The mantra at TekServe is "back-up and back-up and backup again." But everyday someone still walks into the shop in i paper columns on laptop each C5ty," be calling on TekServe Sarah Jessica you make a beeune for lek-Serve, New York's Macintosh repair' shop.

Since it opened on a bustling block in on 23rd Street more than a decade ago, TekServe has become an institution, an indispensable haven for New Yorkers with computer woes. "Let's say they have a flashing question mark instead of a happy face, and they've lost all their data clearly it's not a very happy day," said Ken Glickfeld, a manager at the "Of course we want to help this person who's going out of their mind." Upon entering the shop's digs in a cluttered fourth floor loft, customers are soothingly instructed to take a number please. With an old-fashioned porch swing and 10-cent Coke machine for waiting customers, amid stacks of ailing Apple iBook and PowerBook laptops and some candy-colored iMac monitors, TekServe's ambience is, as one employee put it, "a cross between the NASA command center and a country general store." One recent afternoon, several dozen distraught-looking customers waited patiently and fanned themselves (the air-conditioning was on the blink.) They included a stout man with a yarmulke, another wearing ostentatious gold jewelry and a Hawaiian shirt, and a woman with streaked blonde hair clutching a tote bag from the 92nd Street Y. In the corner, a fish named Lisa swam happily in her tank. A small white mutt named Charlie trotted about.

Every now and then a member of the "intake" staff a disproportionately tattooed bunch who favor Teva sandals would call a number and someone would bustle over to receive triage on their machine. "We Have The Zip Drive Click of Death," announced Bill Carney, a hiply dressed fellow in Buddy Holly glasses, to the staffer charged with examining his malfunctioning laptop. Carney and his partner, Harvey Ferdschneider, photographers who shoot rock "n'roll portraits for a living, said the drive hadn't been spoiled the retirement party of Jack Welch, arguably the greatest execu tive of our time. Perhaps we will be magnanimous and let the issue slide. But this isnt the American way.

Someone in the government or at GE may want pay back. Perhaps this will mean breaking a deal between two European companies or a European takeover of an American company. Or perhaps it will involve other more subtle measures. Nothing may ever happen, but investors do not like uncertainties, and this one could be big. There are still good reasons to be bullish.

The consumer is buying cars and houses. The heartland of the economy is strong, and the inventory correction in tech will run its course. But the biggest plus is that the Fed will keep easing until the economy turns. Betting with the Fed is almost always a smart move. Still, I think this market has many risks.

I dont think we will go back to the lows, I do think there's a chance. I would take profits in stocks that are performing badly or have excessive valuations. I would put my money in companies with more solid current fundamentals and I would keep some cash on the sidelines. Peter Siris is a New York hedge fund manager and author of "Guerrilla His fund owns a few shares of Lucent Siris can be reached at and asks those who E-mailed him recently to re-send their messages since some were oca- dentally deleted. enough reason to sustain a strong rally.

The economy is weaker than I had thought it would be. I have been bearish on tech and telecom, thinking the inventory overhang would hurt these companies. But even I didn't realize the pain that Lucent, JDS Uniphase, Nortel Networks and others would endure. Tech isn't dead, but neither is it ready to pick up. If John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, still thinks his company is going to grow 30 to 50 a year, I have a bridge -to sell him for cash, not Cisco stock.

The consumer is weakening. Some of the softness is weather-related, but some is caused by losses from what economists call the wealth effect. You can bet those dot-com paper billionaires are buying fewer BMWs and $2,000 custom suits than they did a year ago. With lousy sales numbers, you'll find better bargains for shoppers, but perhaps not for retail stocks. Bankruptcies are edging up fast.

This is bad news for stocks of credit card companies and some banks, which have been acting as if they can do no wrong. If people are going broke, do you really want to own the companies lending them the money they cant pay back? The potential thumbs down of the GE-Honeywell deal by the European regulators scares 'lu' Parker, who turns out news week In HBO's "Sex and the for help ki upcoming episode..