From The SDLI thread and article about the Fund I invest in. PBHG Technology & Communications fund (PBTCX
<<SMARTMONEY.COM: Reversal of Fortune
By DAWN SMITH and HAYLEY GREEN
NEW YORK -- Just when May looked like a washout for technology funds, they made a comeback in the eleventh hour. Overall, tech funds still fell 3.5% in the past month, but they sprang to life in the week ended Thursday, rising 14.3%. Fueling this performance was the Nasdaq Composite Index, which rose 11.8% over the past five days, including a record-setting rally of 7.94% on Tuesday.
Optimism was rampant at the )PBHG Technology & Communications fund (PBTCX, which climbed 20.9% this week, making it the best-performing U.S. stock fund for the period, according to Lipper. And portfolio manager Jeff Wrona didn't want to see it end. Thrilled to see the Nasdaq up 200 points in the midafternoon, he added, "Hopefully it will be at 300 by day's end."
After restructuring the fund's portfolio in March and April, when he sold off many larger stocks, today Wrona is relying on smaller stocks, such as Web infrastructure company InfoSpace (INSP), fiber-optic chipmaker SDL (SDLI) and Sycamore Networks (SCMR), all among the portfolio's top 10 holdings and top performers for the week.
Robert Horton, portfolio manager at Scudder Technology (SCUTX), up 18% this week, also watched SDL shine. But he notes that the company has been reporting good news for most of the past two months. "Even under bad conditions it was overperforming because it has great fundamentals," Horton says. Other stocks standing out in the portfolio are Applied Materials (AMAT) and Micron Technology (MU).
Among Firsthand Funds' five tech funds, Firsthand Technology Innovators (TIFQX) and Firsthand Technology Value (TVFQX) stood among the top five U.S. stock funds this week, up 19.3% and 18.5%, respectively. Citing a buy-and-hold strategy that has guided the portfolios through the recent volatility, manager Kevin Landis sees strength in optical networking and digital-subscriber lines, two areas in which Firsthand is getting "about as much exposure as we can get," Landis says.
In the optical-networking arena, Landis likes Corning (GLW), which is building off its historical strength in the fiber sector by putting together a fuller suite of technology products. Another pick is DSL player GlobeSpan (GSPN), which is selling to giants such as Lucent Technologies (LU) and Cisco Systems (CSCO). . . .
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