OT. From W.A. Fleckenstein market rap, just around the corner in SI:
Techs explode on Windows news... Near the lows of the morning after a couple of hours of trading, it became known that Microsoft intended to release Windows 2000 a little bit early, and the tech tape erupted. This was the apparent logic for the old-tech Roman candle that we saw: "Gee, the new Windows 2000 will precipitate a PC upgrade cycle and since the thing is such a memory hog, we'll need more memory." So that got Micron and Intel and the PC stocks all fired up.
Never mind that this is complete and total nonsense: Everyone has already upgraded everything and Windows 2000 is not going cause anyone to go out and buy new PCs, but this is what passed for logic today. Of course, it could also be due to the fact that Friday is an option expiration and that Intel and Microsoft, et al., have heavy weightings in the Nasdaq 100. That's something that's been used for hedging by these high-flying funds to the extent that they hedge anything. So it's not clear what the real reason was, but the events inspired some huge moves in those stocks.
More market cap for Microsoft... In terms of the market-cap gains, hands down the winner was Microsoft, up nearly 10 points and adding close to $60 billion in market cap. And let's not forget the company only does about $20 billion in revenues. So thanks to Windows 2000 coming out early, Microsoft added to the market cap three times its annual revenues - just another benchmark for what works in the mania.
On csco:
Market a mixed bag... The S&Ps and Nasdaq futures initially opened lower this morning due to some angst about Cisco. Bubblevision and the analysts were quick to point out that the cautionary comments in the 10Q were the same thing the company always says. What they did not point out is the company added the word "significant," which has not been in there in the past, indicating Cisco may have some extra concern. This was enough to rattle the tape for a little while.
Then they tried to run them up and sold them off hard. We went into the usual flop and chop. Some of the high fliers were coming under pressure and the Internet stocks were seeing some selling in the early going. Other tech stocks were kind of a mixed bag - some were down and some were up, all in the same industry.
I work directly with Windows2000; I like the stuff. But I just don't see PC users going to upgrade soon. Don't count on Novel with it NDS to just play dead in the enterprise space. Cheers! |
