John,
I think it is important to keep the following things quite separate when talking about "Y2K Investing" -
1) the debate over the issue itself, its complexity, seriousness, etc.
2) the fundamental business impact, in terms of earnings windfalls and other "good" consequences to "winners", and loss of earnings, and other "bad" consequences, to "losers"*.
3) investor psychology and sentiment, and their effect on stock prices.
Buying or selling a stock based on some incorrect combination of these is dangerous. (My favorite example is: "There are bazillions of embedded chips out there, so ABC is a buy at any price." After that comes "The Y2K market is $600 billion, so if XYZ can get just 0.02% of that, this stock should be at $150 by..."). Paul Thomas does a good job of focussing on #2, and there was once a Mad trader who did very well playing #3.
*Note that some entities may be both winners and losers, e.g. the programmer who makes a fortune in 1999/2000, and is out of a job soon afterwards, or the remediation company later sued out of existence by clients.
Kevin |
