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Technology Stocks : COM21 (CMTO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rod runyan who wrote (1724)	2/11/2000 2:56:00 PM
From: Kerry Lee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2347

cnbc.com Garret Van Waggoner as I recall trimmed his CMTO position last year but this article implies he has been buying ( again). There are a couple charts on the CNBC wesbite that show that CMTO is one of his largest positions: <<"In a nutshell, we dig deeper into the stories than most people do," says Raiford Garrabrant, one of Van Wagoner?s chief analysts. Garrabrant was working with Van Wagoner when he was managing the Govett Smaller Companies fund {GSCQX} in the mid-1990s. (Garrabrant followed Van Wagoner when he left Govett in 1996 to start his own firm.) "We all think more like portfolio managers than analysts," Garrabrant says. The entire team works together, meeting with companies, analyzing data, and testing out the newest technology to decide which companies have the product and the management to create staying power. Their strength is in technology, so that?s where Van Wagoner tends to front-load his portfolios. The Van Wagoner Post Venture Fund has a 45 percent weighting in the sector and rode it to a 237 percent return in 1999. It?s up nearly 5 percent through the opening weeks of this year. The Van Wagoner Mid-Cap is nearly half technology, and it?s up 4.69 percent this year after a 127 percent return last year. "What we are seeing in terms of growth opportunities right now is unprecedented," Garrabrant says. "Unfortunately, investment opportunities are not quite as good." High valuations have rubbed the sheen off of some of these stocks, but Van Wagoner and his group are still seeing a lot of potential in broadband access and the race between the phone companies and the cable companies to get there first. "Our focus has been on the arms merchants ? the people selling the technology to the companies that are trying to sell you the service," he says. The group has been buying up a lot of Copper Mountain {CMNT} for all of its funds because it sells the phone lines needed to provide the service. Following that same angle, Van Wagoner has also been a big buyer of Com21 {CMTO}, which sells high-speed equipment to the broadband market. Another area poised for explosive growth is wireless Internet, Garrabrant says, so the funds are investing in companies like Phone.com {PHCM} and RF Micro Devices {RFMD}. But the fund company?s success is based on much more than a strong showing in the technology sector, Brewer says. "[Van Wagoner] says he?s just been at the right place at the right time, but he?s been in the right companies as well," he says. "I know tech funds that don?t come near his performance." All of this technological savvy, though, creates a lot of overlap among the Van Wagoner funds, along with a lot of volatility. That?s good news for the investors who missed out on the Emerging Growth and Micro-Cap funds before they closed and still want part of the action. But the company has announced plans to close the remaining three funds if and when they get too big to maneuver. It will cap the Technology and Mid-Cap funds at $2 billion, and the Post-Venture fund at $1 billion.>>