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Technology Stocks : Discuss Year 2000 Issues -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: flatsville who wrote (9001)	10/26/1999 6:07:00 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 9818

Thanks Christine, flatsville, and "astute lurker." This is from Metcalfe's April 26th column, where he explains how he came up with November 8. Wow! When it was my turn to talk, I took it upon myself to predict the exact day the Internet stock bubble will burst. With Y2K looming, I used the following date-day algorithm, thanks to reader Peter Sprague, for calculating on which day of the week a future date falls. Take the future date's year and set A to 2 if 1999 or 3 if 2000. Set B to the result of using the date's month as an index into the vector [2,5,5,1,3,6,1,4,0,2,5,0]. If the year is 2000 and the month follows February, add 1 to B, because 2000 is a leap year. Finally, add A, B, and the day of the date's month, divide by 7, and use the remainder ("modulo 7") to select the day: 0 for Sunday, 1 for Monday ... and 6 for Saturday. So, for example, Jan. 1, 2000, is 3 (for 2000), plus 2 (for January), plus 1, modulo 7, which yields Saturday. What a relief to know we'll have a whole weekend to work out any Y2K problems that might arise. Among those Y2K problems will not be the bursting of the Internet stock bubble. Internet stock values are grossly inflated by "dowager corporations looking for Web gigolos to take them to the Internet Riviera," so investors are sure to bail out way before any Y2K problems arise. Some say Internet stocks are not worth their multiples, but the eventual winners will be, so place your bets. Others say investing in all Internet stocks will prove profitable even though nine out of 10 will fail. This kind of thinking will inflate the bubble, at least through the summer, if I know anything about stocks, which, again, I don't. The bubble will burst sometime after October reports of disappointing third-quarter earnings and warnings about fourth-quarter shortfalls are announced. The pressure to get out ahead of year-end tax-loss taking will build. Therefore, the Internet stock bubble will burst on -- don't quote me -- Nov. 8, 1999. Sorry they jumped the gun last week. infoworld.com