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Strategies & Market Trends : Market Gems:Stocks w/Strong Earnings and High Tech. Rank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SMALL FRY who wrote (62955)	9/23/1999 11:19:00 PM
From: Mr. Stress	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 120523

Futures already tanking hard. Tomorrow won't start off very well. Maybe we'll rally after the morning sell-off. mrci.com

To: SMALL FRY who wrote (62955)	9/23/1999 11:19:00 PM
From: Susan G	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 120523

Ballmer's comments raise old questions for Net stocks ====================================================================== By Andrea Orr PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept 23 (Reuters) - If technology stock prices are too high, as Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) President Steve Ballmer said on Thursday, then what about Internet stocks in particular, which have seen some of the most exorbitant price increases in market history?. Ballmer's remarks to business writers in Seattle that technology stocks are overvalued left many people wondering if that meant Internet stocks would have to fall even further before they were fairly valued. "Not so," was the short response from some analysts who have followed and faithfully promoted many Internet stocks through volatile price swings including a sobering correction over the past several months. Abhishek Gami, analyst at William Blair and Co. in Chicago, noted the average Internet stock is down 35 percent from its all time high. And that comes at a time when the outlook for continued growth in the Internet is still staggering. "I think we're still a ways away from the Internet being a mature industry," added Andrea Williams from the online brokerage E*Offering. "We still do not even have half of the U.S. population online." But behind that simple response was a more complicated answer. Like any other industry, some stocks in the Internet sector are wildly overvalued, while others are cheap, analysts acknowledge. Because so few of these companies are being measured with traditional valuation standards, separating the darlings from the dogs can be particularly difficult. "Of course, based on traditional valuations almost all of them are overvalued," said Williams, who noted stocks like Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) , eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) should be measured by their future potential rather than their current earnings, or losses. If analysts are quick to stand behind those industry blue chips, their confidence wavers when asked about some of the lesser-known come-latelys to the "dot com" arena. Williams said she thinks a number of e-commerce companies are overvalued because they have given up virtually all their margins in an effort to acquire customers, when many of their target customers are already taken. At the same time, Gami insists America Online Inc (NYSE:AOL). is a real bargain at its current price. It is not that he believes in every Internet stock, but he does resist the notion of all of them being classified the same way. Many analysts also said they resisted the notion of Microsoft's Ballmer making such a call. "I'm not sure why he said it," said one analyst who asked not to be named. "I mean, he's not (Federal Reserve Chairman) Alan Greenspan." Earlier today Ballmer told a group of journalists at a technology conference in Seattle: "There is such an overvaluation of technology stocks, it is absurd," and added "I could put our own company and others in that category." Copyright 1999, Reuters News Service