Henry, thread: R.E. Y2K testing......
Silicon investor is filled with dozens of threads championing countless Y2K stocks. It's a total waste of time & very unproductive to start a thread on favorite picks.
There's only one thing that needs to be mentioned - everything else on the Y2K threads is irrelevent.
The key is this:
We all know how the media is always the catalyst for any market frenzy: The 'net stocks, the cancer stocks, etc.
Y2K will be different because the boom in related stocks will last for the entirety of 1999. The 'net stocks and cancer stocks had only brief rallies, and now only a select few continue to soar.
What will happen is as follows:
The media has been keeping Y2K in its back pocket and will unleash its awesome marketing and readership/viewership boosting power starting Jan 1 1999.
Your first issue of Time or Newsweek for 1999 will start the frenzied
panic. The headline will probably read 'only 364 days left until the end of the world'.
As the weeks and months progress in 1999, the media-constructed panic will only increase, culminating in a spectacular rise in all solid Y2K stocks in the 4th Q of 1999.
Nothing short of world war will keep the global media from bombarding us with various doomsday scenarios. And I personally believe that the procrastinators and Y2K sceptics in the far east will fall to their knees in submission of this great beast. A global recession is almost certain, with a global depression not unfathomable.
Picture the GM work stoppage. It made quite a noticeable dent in GDP figures. Imagine if there are 50 or even 100 GM-sized companies outside the U.S. who may have procrastinated and been sceptical of the problem and therefore will remain unprepared at the midnight hour. If they all have to stop their manufacturing operations for say, 2 months while the problems are fixed, the effects on world growrh will be devestating.
I do plan to position myself accordingly, because regardless of whether Y2K turns out to be a hoax or a beast, the preceding doomsday scenarios that will be relentlessly spun by the media will surely cause the street to pile into the available plays. |
