***Way Off Topic***
Interesting how many networking fans are on this thread. I don't want to drift too far off, but thought I would post this. I have no idea what in the world Cramer is saying? Does anyone else? Who in the heck wrote off the telecom business? Did I miss something? I follow the networkers pretty closely, and I don't remember there being a period when they were trashed? Anyway, FWIW I thought I would post his little rant. By the way, he implied all of us Asia worriers were just blowing a huge opportunity to make money. That's what attracted me to his article in the first place.
Someone asked me about Applied Innovation(AINN). I bought some AINN as part of my basket of networking stocks. It was almost two years and six months ago. It's gone up a big fat zero in that time frame. You know the AINN guys speak the right language, but they have trouble with the execution(understatement!). They may get it right sometime, but you get tired of hearing how they are going to partake in the communications revolution, and end up heading downhill three years running. Where it counts, the bottom line.
It's been interesting talking about networkers here. On the "proper" threads, the talk gets extremely technical for investors. Those threads almost seem to attract networking professionals who don't really care about investing, but would rather talk shop.
>>Cramer Bemoans the Media's Bearish Fixations
By James J. Cramer
6/9/98 Let's get specific. Let's take an industry that we all know and love to trade: the telecommunications business. Here is an industry that going into the year everybody had pretty much written off. Ascend had missed a bunch of quarters. Bay was a basket case,with a preannouncement of bad earnings delivered in the fourth quarter on CNBC's "Squawk Box," of all things. And Mark Haines, the host of the show, didn't even have to push the guy! Holy cow, what a downer. Cisco couldn't get out of its own way and Lucent was being shorted heavily because of woes here and abroad. What a bunch of losers.
Now where are we? Lucent has doubled off of a string of awesome quarters. Cisco is kicking butt as usual. (It was then, too, but the press and the analysts were too busy worrying about Asia.) Ascend, even without the S&P addition, is on fire, but thanks for the kiss anyway, McGraw-Hill! Ciena, everybody's favorite to miss the quarter, gets a sweet kiss from Tellabs, which itself is doing quite well. Three companies are rumored to be buying Bay and its earnings may be turning around. Heck, even Telco (TELC:Nasdaq) worked.
Where am I going with this paean? To show you how when everybody gets really negative about a growth industry (and Barron's trashes the growth prospects, and analysts want to distance themselves from the group because the charts are bad), that it may be, as it was in this case, just one more giant buying opportunity. You could have thrown darts at this group six months ago and made fortunes.<<
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