Mitchell:
Have you noticed the tone of the messages posted here? Quicken 98 is a minor improvement at best, customer service stinks, a post from a person who still run a 4 or 5 year old version with little incentive to upgrage? This is not the sort of thing that inspires confidence in a software company.
I perceive the recent trading activity (the last year or so) as being mostly inspired not by Intuit's future as a software company, but as a purveyor of financial services over the internet, and a mini mutual fund holding substantial shares of Checkfree and Excite. It is for this reason that I sold my Intuit at a loss a few months back, because I do not want to participate in internet stock mania via investing in Intuit. I feel that the bubble in this sector could all too easily burst, leaving Intuit with near worthless stock and nearly worthless alliances with defunct also-ran search engine companies. Do you feel that their is enough pie in internet search engines such that Excite will have a nice slice? Then stick with Intuit. Do you feel that Yahoo! will probably emerge the top (or maybe only) dog? Then sell INTU while it is still worth something.
Next, take a look at Checkfree. This is the kind of business that I originally bought INTU to participate in, but they sold off that division in exchange for some Checkfree stock. That tells me that Intuit has a poor track record of breaking into a type of business that they do not have experience with. So with the software side not looking all that hot, and a difficult transition into new unproven, and possible very volatile and risky businesses, Intuit proves to be much too speculative for me.
Some people will tell you that the internet is the wave of the future, that Intuit will make a mint being the middleman in peddling insurance, mutual funds and all manner of financial services. Note however, that there are still millions of people to whom the internet is absolutly meaningless, and the existing competition in the form of banks, local insurance agents and hoards of other companies that sell these things already. Think Intuit will pick up a substantial portion of their business? Maybe so, but I would not bank on it.
Anyway, enough of my ramblings, at least Intuit provided me with a nice capital loss to offset some of my gains this year. Hope your experience is better than mine. |
