Gary, You are way off on the eps front. You must be looking at the 20 cos. that get all the press, not the real world. S&P 500 eps were $38.73 in 1996 to $39.50 today. 2 whopping percent in growth. The earnings suck, big time. Meanwhile, the index is up 70% in helium stock price. Thanks to Bill Fleckenstein for those #s.
2. True, Boeing alone would not cripple Dell, though it could throw a monkey wrench into their growth numbers. But Boeing is, of course, not alone. All 4th quarter the disastrous eps from large cos. came rolling in. I don't think we even get close to 2% growth this year, and they sure won't be wasting expense money on golly gee boxes that don't help productivity. Especially not with Y2K eating whatever IT budget they have.
3. Are you sure about Compaq and IBM being the largest Dell customers? Dell is, temporarily, still the only firm that is all Intel junk inside. Compaq leads in sales of low priced pcs, which do not have overpriced mpcs inside. IBM has a lot of AMD processors in their best selling pcs, also.
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