>>One money manager with a large New York-based investment house repeated the oft-quoted belief that supplying technology to the fickle consumer market is a risky business, while supplying it to companies is a steady earner.
The real money being made in technology is by companies that focus on using the Internet to sell to other business customers, he said.
''There will be business-to-consumer companies that will work, but it's a crap shoot,'' he said of the difficulty in picking winners in the face of mercurial fashions and the tough competition from rival Web sites.<<
Sunday February 14, 3:14 pm Eastern Time
Pinstriped money mgrs peer into Net stock demimonde
By Andrew Hay
NEW YORK, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Professional investors love to hate easy-money Internet stocks, with their nerdy-hip appeal, thin-air valuations, flaky earnings, and nebulous outlooks.
But at a Wall Street technology conference last week, the big money managers couldn't keep away from those very companies -- with their near-unstoppable gains.
Over 2,000 investors who gathered for the 13th annual Goldman Sachs Technology Symposium heard just about every company present its ''.com'' business plan to make their hardware, software and computer services Internet-ready.
But it was the pure-play Internet companies like America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news) and eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY - news) which drew some of the biggest crowds and had men in banker-blue suits sitting cross-legged, captivated by the presentations.
''You couldn't get into some of the rooms,'' Ken Zolot, a private investor and Goldman Sachs client said of presentations by Internet companies like E*Trade Group Inc. (Nasdaq:EGRP - news)
Like most investors, Zolot recognized the thirst for knowledge on Internet companies in general, but he noted that the real success stories are still enterprises that provide the tools for electronic commerce.
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