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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (20700)	3/19/2000 11:10:00 AM
From: JohnG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Mike. OT. Wireless price comparison srvc (soon to be IPO) firm CTIA and Andrew Seybold. iqorder.com It is helpful to take a glempse into the future--active March or April. While shopping at your local circit city you simply enter the item part No into your wireless internet phone and it promptly returns net-net web store prices and sources for the same item. Now that is powerful if it works. JohnG

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (20700)	3/19/2000 12:07:00 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 54805

I don't think exponential growth can increase forever at the same rate We all know the things that stop companies from increasing sales forever. I agree with you that the internet can help solve this problem. If the company can set itself up for as much "bottom up" management as possible, and use the hell out of the internet to get sales, it can certainly go a lot further than normal. The internet will be a two edged sword. 1) It will allow Gorilla's to sell a lot more product. 2) It will cut the margin on King's, and thus hasten their fall, because competition will have an better avenue to get at their business. The site being set up by the Auto companies for competitive bidding is a good example. This will drive margins down. This type of thing is in its infancy, and I think it will become a major buying conduit for most companies. The whole world becomes a "thieves market", and everybody can compete.

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (20700)	3/19/2000 12:18:00 PM
From: saukriver	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

Law of Large Numbers--Multi-Trillion Market Caps? Mike, Your post really asks the extent the law of large numbers (cos. can't grow as fast from $250B to $500B as they can from $5B to $10B) is undermined by networking effects. Is there an easy way to find the market cap for gorillas MSFT and CSCO circa 1991 and the companies with the highest market caps in 1991? The current market caps for CSCO and MSFT no doubt looked impossible measured against the highest market cap companies at that time. We have no problem today contemplating a company growing to a market cap around $500B. To what extent will that appear more common as a number of companies grow to that level and the playing field of the highest market-cap companies shifts to $1T-$2T-$3T? BTW, I have a hard time seeing Microsoft growing to a $2T market cap company because I have a hard time understanding where it wants to go today. It appears to be more of an annuity of desktop OS royalties attempting to turn itself into an ICGE-type holding company for a series of investments. Some of Microsoft's investments (the splashy $5B preferred stock with/loan to AT&T announced at the time of AT&T's acquisition of Media One for which T gave no commitment of exclusivity) appear ill-considered. OTOH, Cisco has a better sense of the challenge in front of it and what it needs to do. saukriver

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (20700)	3/21/2000 2:18:00 AM
From: saukriver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Changes in Market Caps. of 25 Largest Cos. Over the Past 30 years Here is a link to a terribly interesting chart sent to me by a lurker. I post the link with that person's permission: technologyreports.com The chart highlights changes in the market cap for the 25 biggest companies over the past 30 years. Few things to note: 1. Market cap for most non-oil companies declined in the 70s. 2. IBM grew faster in the 90s than in the 80s. 3. MSFT's market cap was less than $5B in 1989. 4. The market caps biggest companies grew roughly 10x in the 1990s. Please keep in mind that the growth in market cap over time reflects growth by merger as well as other forms of more beastly behavior.