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To: GST who wrote (98952)	4/5/2000 10:42:00 AM
From: H James Morris	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 164684

Gst, it appears we can thank Janus for yesterdays come back. From todays WSJ. >Buying by Janus Capital Corp. may have helped the market rebound in the afternoon. Portfolio manager Blaine Rollins of the firm's flagship Janus Fund said he walked around Janus headquarters in Denver around noon EDT advising fellow managers to buy some Janus-favored stocks that then were down as much as 15% or 20% on the day. Mr. Rollins said several Janus managers took his advice. Some of them had plenty of cash to spend, as investors had recently poured record amounts of net new cash into the fast-growing firm. Through late March, Janus stock and bond funds had attracted net new investments of more than $25 billion this year -- more than $11 billion in February alone. Funds including Janus Olympus Fund and Janus Mercury Fund had accumulated cash stakes equal to 15% or more of fund assets. Mr. Rollins, whose Janus Fund had also increased its cash stash while buying Old Economy pharmaceutical and consumer nondurable companies such as Colgate-Palmolive, said he expects earnings to justify more buying in coming weeks, especially in technology. "The data points that will really help the Nasdaq out will be earnings" coming up in one or two weeks, he said. First-quarter earnings "will be a blowout for my tech companies." Maybe so, but the tech-laden Janus funds have been among the hardest hit in the weeks-long correction in the Nasdaq. Janus Venture Fund is down 32%, Janus Global Life Sciences Fund has shed 31%, and Janus Enterprise Fund is off 24% from the March 10 Nasdaq peak through Monday night. But investors in Janus's various funds generally are sitting tight. In buildings across the Denver area and in Austin, Texas, Janus phone representatives fielded a higher-than-usual number of calls Tuesday. Most investors simply asked about their portfolios, and of those who made transactions, more purchased than redeemed, Janus officials added. Investors are "becoming conditioned to buy on the dips," Mr. Rollins said. At Oppenheimer Enterprise, with $1.1 billion in assets, manager Mr. Tracey Tuesday sold some shares of a few Internet companies that are running low on cash. Then, late in the trading day, he said he "did a little nibbling" of stocks he likes. Battle-weary after the close of trading, he said he feared "we'll retest that low," suggesting some Nasdaq stocks will fall back toward their lows of mid-Tuesday. Mr. Tracey's fund ended the day down 5% and is down 7% for the year. As of early March -- a long month ago -- the fund was up more than 30%. The dip in stock prices during the past two days gave some portfolio managers, including Amerindo Technology Fund's Alberto Vilar, a chance to say, "I told you so." Mr. Vilar, whose fund had a blazing 248% return in 1999, has been predicting a correction in technology -- and particularly Internet -- stocks since the end of last year. Accordingly, his fund has significantly raised its cash position this year, going to the high teens, he said. Still, that cash cushion wasn't enough for Amerindo Technology to sidestep the recent market meltdown. As of Monday, the fund was down 12.9% in 2000. While Mr. Vilar is bullish for the next few years, "we were due for correction based on prices, not on fundamentals," he said. Robert Zuccaro, the manager of technology-heavy Grand Prix Fund, has similarly raised his cash. The Wilton, Conn., fund has expanded to 20% cash just in the past three days, he said, and as of Monday was still up 22.1% for the year. Asked how he had been handling the market plunge of recent days, Mr. Zuccaro replied, "I'm sitting under my desk with my flak jacket on." While he still expects this to be a good year for stock investing, right now "stocks have been breaking down."