Dale, great to hear from you. Rather than make an exhaustive search I'll probably just nominate some things I have 'prejudices' in favor of... the sorts of stocks like APCC that just seem to be warm fuzzy can't miss sorta things. Off the top of my head regarding your picks I confess to hating CMGI, maybe because everyone else likes it. It certainly has done well, and they seem to know when to sell some of their hot holdings, so I guess it could be considered a sort of 'low maintenance' proxy for the Internet.
RNWK is certainly intriguing. I'd like to hear more about why you like it. It seemed overvalued when it IPO'd, but of course there now seems to be a rapidly multiplying number of possibilities for the co. just remembering the last couple of things I've read. But... to me, the chart looks toppy...
I know this all is more commentary than you might have wanted. ...:) but I have to add this: Peter Lynch said don't buy disk drive companies. Now of course one could trade them ... but on the whole this advice has proven almost invariably to be sound. You can list hundreds of "former" disk drive companies and many that were bought at $55 and now have trouble breaking $3 (Iomega being the most famous example, currently bouncing nicely but on the whole only a good investment for those who got on at the start...and very bad for all those Fools who bought in at $30). I tried my hand at the disk drive thing (actually RAID fiber channel disk arrays but whatever... CPCI has been one of my poorer performing picks). Western Digital traded as high as $52 before dropping to $8, faring slightly better now having bounced to $15. Still, most of the recommendations came in the 30's and 40's. Seagate is a little more diversified, but nonetheless has had trouble staggering back to $30 from $50 a year ago. Quantum was promoted up to $40 from $15 this year, before returning to $15...possibly it's currently overvalued and going through the promotion mill again, having just broken $20...valued at $3 billion with lousy hard drives, in a low margin competitive business and no earnings to speak of. Hmph. Well you get my idea about the disk makers. How can Maxtor thrive if Seagate can't? If anything it seems like it could be a value play, but I'm a bit confused about this one. Isn't this an older company, yet they seem to have just recently IPO'd? Fill me in please! (Too lazy to look it up.)
PLCM: there is a lot of competition in videoconferencing. Also a lot of 'story stocks' in this sector. Sounds like this one delivers but the whole sector seems rife with competition. Heck, even Corel tried to promote itself that way for a couple of weeks. Seems like whenever someone wants to dump stock they get into videoconferencing.
MFNX: I know nothing about fiber optic networks. Obviously the whole data/pipeline/telecom field has so many possible picks it's hard to sort out. One day they look good, the next, who knows. Stocks that have baffled me: TLDCF, ANDW. One that really blew me away: Mitel. One that really stunk to high heaven: OCCF. Who knows.
I know, I know, more unsolicited commentary. Doesn't do justice to your bottom-up analysis.
I haven't had time to think too much about my picks, but one query for now: does anyone have an opinion about Network Associates? I have a warm and fuzzy feeling about McAfee antivirus software just now. I found and destroyed a boot sector virus called Antiexe.a ....sounds like a kind of flu (not sure which is worse).
A couple of my others will definitely involve e-commerce, my favorite theme. I'll return to the well on Mpact Immedia which is going to be listed on NASDAQ later this year. More importantly they have become a more integral part of BCE Inc having just been renamed BCE Emergis, that is, a subsidiary of BCE Inc. (BCE is Bell Canada Enterprises, NYSE: BCE, market cap 23.8 billion, gee somehow I will never adjust to AMZN having a market cap rivalling behemoths like this~!!!!!). This stock will be seeing a lot of institutional money in the coming year. Overpriced perhaps...but surely going higher in the next 5 years.
I recommended Mpact at the beginning of this thread when they were just a little e-commerce player with a neat credit card verification application and some other little stuff. I'll recommend it again.
I'm also interested in combining E-Commerce and consulting. If there are any consulting companies small or large that will especially benefit from specialized services in E-Commerce...especially any medium sized concerns that are starting to grow quickly...I think these would be intriguing and worth a bet in the old Gorilla Game. Time for some research!
Happy New Year,
WS
PS Selling Internet stock: I'd like to get into that business. |
