Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Redback Networks, Inc. (RBAK) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: William F. Wager, Jr. who wrote (218)	7/7/1999 10:28:00 AM
From: Peter V	Respond to of 1956

Getting Comfortable With Networkers fnews.yahoo.com Wrong! Jul 07, 1999 Getting Comfortable With Networkers By James J. Cramer Maybe it's easier to find the next Cisco (Nasdaq:CSCO - news) than it is to find the next America Online (NYSE:AOL - news) . Isn't that what the run-ups in Redback (Nasdaq:RBAK - news) (which is the name of the Australian beer these guys were drinking when they came up with the idea for the company), Clarent (Nasdaq:CLRN - news) and Juniper (Nasdaq:JNPR - news) are saying? Here are three companies that have all the right products, all the right bloodlines and are sired by, or compete with, Cisco and other top networkers. (In fact, people are combing the prospectuses of new issues, looking in the competition section and buying if they see Cisco's name. That's viewed as a positive despite Cisco's take-no-prisoners attitude.) No matter that these players are niche players vs. the full-court press provided by Cisco. People want the buzz. These have the buzz. In spades. Juniper made it easy to find. One of the investor-relations people from Cisco's team actually went there ahead of the roadshow. Clarent was a little slower out of the gate, but it took off on Friday like an ICBM. Redback had a bunch of geniuses from Bay as its founders, which tells you that good things can happen, as Bay made a ton of money for people before succumbing to a Nortel (NYSE:NT - news) bid. These stocks, plus Ariba (Nasdaq:ARBA - news) ($5 billion in market cap already!) and Brocade (Nasdaq:BRCD - news) (business to business and fiber channel -- both great buzzwords right now), were on fire last week. All of them are extremely expensive. All of them have the momentum of Apollo's Chariot at Busch Gardens, meaning you can't get in front of these. Guys like us are frantically trying to sink our teeth into these companies, get comfortable with them, with the idea that the next dip is a time to buy. If you don't have confidence in what the companies do, you will almost certainly be shaken out on the next down leg because these stocks have no margin for error. Those of you who traded during the era when Cisco started are not totally surprised by these moves. Cisco started out strong, too. The difference, though, is how fast the market is willing to give unproven companies the benefit of the doubt and take their stocks to heights that even early Cisco lovers can't stomach. But the lesson of the runs in AOL and Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) is that unless you get in early, you miss the best part of the move. That fear of missing the big move, the one that takes these companies to multibillion-dollar status, overrides any worry that maybe the horse is not worthy of the accolades.