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Technology Stocks : JDS Uniphase (JDSU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DOUG H who wrote (1712)	11/4/1999 8:04:00 AM
From: Jenne	Respond to of 24042

The Oligopoly of Mutual Funds By James J. Cramer 11/4/99 7:46 AM ET In any other business, they would call it an oligopoly that controls prices. In our business, we call it a virtuous circle. I am talking about how a small group of mutual funds has virtually cornered the market on a couple of very hot stocks. Cramer's Latest: Join the discussion on TSC Message Boards. Take this JDS Uniphase (JDSU:Nasdaq). Look, we love these guys. We see them every time they come to New York. They are bullish. They are great. Let's stipulate that business is on fire. But that's been the case every day this year. Yet it keeps going up. It never gets discounted. How does that happen? I blame it on the mutual fund oligopoly. I knew to buy more stock yesterday because there was a write-up in Investor's Business Daily with a manager, Garrett Van Wagoner, who loves the stock. When I read it, I bought stock. How could I not? I knew Garrett Van Wagoner would get money in from the article. I knew he would buy more JDS Uniphase. I knew that others would read the article and send it up. And I knew that if I bought it, I could make money because of that virtuous circle. It gets worse. Between now and year-end, I think it would not be surprising to see the oligopoly -- the high-growth mutual funds that all own the same stocks -- keep getting money in and keep taking up the same stocks. Sure, there could be a lockup-expiration selloff. And yes, there will be insider selling. But not enough to offset this kind of concentrated buying. Not enough at all. Each day, the brokerage houses will scramble to fill these orders. They will short these stocks because they won't have any supply. And they will be the victims of the oligopoly. But they can't squeal. Their best clients are causing the pain! So the Justice Department will never break up this cabal, especially as it favors higher prices! Random musings: Wrote my second personal finance article about how to sell, but it got buried at the bottom left of the site, so you probably didn't see it. I have to tell you the outpouring of support I have had for doing this stuff is unbelievable. I can tell that the biggest group of readers we have out there is not the daytrading cohort or the leave-it-to-brokers mob, but those who are diligently trying to figure out stocks and mutual funds and want someone to talk to who doesn't charge them. The answer, of course, is community. We at TheStreet.com have to provide this community. We are not a monolith about this stuff. We are more of a noisy autocracy, and I am not the leader. If I had my druthers, I would reorient this whole shooting match toward helping one other and supplant the current paradigm of asset-gatherers who charge a high percentage coupled with customer-service people with little knowledge of the facts and brokers who still charge full commission. This is who we are. We are the smartest, best people who have no desire to bag one another or make money off one another. We are the new paradigm, and we are foolish if we let someone else embrace it instead of us.