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Strategies & Market Trends : VOLTAIRE'S PORCH-MODERATED -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RR who wrote (36847)	5/11/2001 1:51:48 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

Jingle Bulls By Cory Johnson The sad truth: Tech stocks don't go up or down because they should. They go up or down because people buy or sell those stocks. Good companies see their shares languish. Bad companies become popular and their shares surge. And who controls this paradoxical cruelty? The more than 4,000 money managers who gathered in San Francisco last week for the J.P. Morgan H&Q Technology Conference, that's who. Top executives from 415 companies gave financial presentations to these money managers in hopes of keeping current investors happy and drawing in new money. To a large degree, the mood of these men and women and their inclinations to buy or sell determines what happens to individual tech stocks and the market as a whole. They've been gathering at this conference for the past 29 years, and there is a strange familiarity to the market volatility. (Familiarity even though host Hambrecht & Quist has been through more name changes in recent years than Sean "Puffy"/"Puff Daddy"/ "P. Diddy" Combs.) The disposition of money managers was, by and large, positive. It can't hurt that the Nasdaq has been on a fantastic tear, up 37 percent since April 4. "Four weeks ago a money manager called me saying that my stocks were the most overpriced in the entire market - when they were hitting their bottom," says J.P. Morgan H&Q's Jeff Lipton, who covers optical component makers such as JDS Uniphase. "But two weeks ago, people were calling me saying they looked pretty cheap. There has been noticeable change in sentiment." The feeling in this moneyed crowd was that the market seems to be putting in a bottom, even as the broader economy continues to show signs of weakness. "A lot of the old hands here at the conference wouldn't admit to me that they were buying stocks in this rally," says Christina Morgan, J.P. Morgan H&Q's co-director of global technology investment banking. "But they're getting ready to start buying. They're making their list and checking it twice - it's been something of a Santa Claus conference." CEOs presented to money managers, then went into greater detail in breakout sessions. But the real action was in one-on-one meetings, where money managers lined up outside hotel rooms waiting for private briefings with management. Kicking the tires was the order of the day. "I think most of us are cautiously optimistic," says Bruce Lupatkin, a hedge-fund manager at North Bay Technology Partners. "The smarter people who've been around tech for a number of years are definitely thinking that yesterday's leaders may not be tomorrow's leaders," he says. "So there's a sorting through the wreckage, looking for some of the names that could be leaders going forward." But are these investors expecting Santa Claus to come too soon? Companies have had little to offer. Most firms had been offering guidance on earnings conference calls during the previous few weeks, and speaking on stage in front of all these investors there wasn't much new information. In a way, that in itself was news. There's a growing consensus that even if business is bad in the second quarter, it won't be as bad as in the first. The bad news is baked into stocks, and the worst, many say, may be over. "A lot of people didn't like this rally because the fundamentals at these companies are still so bad," says Nick Moore, who runs a hedge fund for Oakland, Calif.-based Jurika & Voyles. "There were a lot of people saying, 'Can you believe this piece of crap is rallying?' But at the same time, there's a growing sense that things aren't going to get much worse." Earlier stories from TheStandard.com: biz.yahoo.com Ö¿Ö