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Technology Stocks : Softbank Group Corp -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: b_spiral who wrote (5130)	5/24/2000 4:05:00 AM
From: Seeker of Truth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6020

Thank you,b_spiral. In 1929 there were relatively few scientists/engineers around. The technology that was astounding people then was radio. It provided new sources of entertainment as the reception improved. Most people were not involved in the technical part of radio, production of radio equipment etc. Antibiotics had not yet been discovered. The pharmaceutical industry was pathetic. Today there are far more engineers/scientists at work. Just today I was lunching with a nuclear engineer from MIT. It seems that there is now a vastly improved, much much safer reactor design which has been tested for 10 years in the real world,(20 years on a smaller scale). The fissionable material is embedded in silicon carbide to make tiny beads which are then embedded in graphite to make balls about the size of a basket ball. It takes millions of years for an appreciable amount of the radiation products to migrate out of that. By that time they are spent,i.e. decayed anyway. Basically only the heat comes out. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island would be impossible with such a reactor. The graphite balls can easily be handled without elaborate precautions. The number of living and working scientists greatly exceeds the number of scientists who are dead or retired. Is it rare to meet somebody who works in technology? In other words more and more of the population is engaged in one or another rapidly developing industry, rapidly developing because it is producing or depending on new technology. Compare again with the radio business in 1929. I'm not counselling everyone to get in there and buy at this very time. But the similarity to 1929 isn't there. Do we have huge numbers of people buying stocks with only 10% down? Most people tuck them away for their retirement. Do we have governments ready to shut down international trade as soon as unemployment starts to rise? Globalization increases each year. Last thing I heard was that overfull employment was a problem, not anything else. It seems to me similar to 1998, which by the way wasn't a great year for Softbank stock. And please note that the Dow Jones index hasn't varied much in a long time. In other words many huge companies are going their way, fairly normally. The tech companies still have exploding growth; the severe stock market decline hasn't changed that. Interest in internet start ups have declined the most. Most of them are just idea companies. So the stocks affected most are the incubators of start up internet stocks. Doesn't it make sense? We are in an environment where lots of people are making good money at their regular job and saving some so the available funds to buy stocks are regularly increasing. Also the fast growing technological stocks are increasing their profits every quarter, thereby reducing the P/E ratios. Surely the fundamental direction is positive. Remember, when 31 people want to rent 30 houses the tenants panic and are fearfully paying higher and higher rents. When 29 people want to rent the same 30 houses the landlords panic and reduce the rents. The stock market amplifies every oscillation.