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Technology Stocks : IBM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Newey who wrote (5852)	10/26/1999 12:36:00 PM
From: art slott	Respond to of 8218

Like Einstein and Edison even Gerstner's IBM can take a step backwards. Particularly when it involves (in large part) a milennium bug that shows up every 1,000 years or so.

To: Jacques Newey who wrote (5852)	10/26/1999 12:53:00 PM
From: Arrow Hd.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8218

Jacques, what unnerved investors was the prospect of a slowdown during the fourth and first quarters due to the uncertainty surrounding Y2K and the fact that major customers are freezing their data centers and will not be installing hardware, software and to some degree will need fewer services as these company's projects are put on hold so operations can be frozen at a point in time such that any resulting computer hits can be isolated. Alan Abelson's self serving crap is just that with no intellectual value to be found. This is not new news. We have discussed this scenario on this thread as early as last Fall. Gerstner stated in the January CC that the revenue/profit model had to be changed in 1999 to move second half performance into the first half with at least a 55/45 mix versus the reverse due to the potential for a fourth quarter stall. He had already done his DD for the year and probably didn't need to say anything (and probably shouldn't have). If the street needed to be "talked down" I am sure the IR is good at doing that. Now that they have been put on notice a second time I am sure they will adjust earnings and to a number the company can make which will bring more howls of "manipulation". Anyway, no company is immune to every possible disruption even Intel and Microsoft and there are plenty of good companies to include in a basket of tech stocks including IBM at this price range. The fact that Y2K is probably overblown does not change the perception. A lot of pent up demand is sitting on the sidelines waiting for this event to pass so the world's CIOs can get back to business and when that happens starting next second quarter there are going to be phenomenal investing opportunities in E@Commerce solutions (software and hardware), bandwidth solutions, telcom, wireless (my favorite for next year), ERP and other Enterprise applications, and the services business for implementing the infrastructure. IBM will be at the center of most of these initiatives and is why it is worth owning at this level for the long haul. But you had a nice list of stocks too so no one has a monopoly on success.