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

To: Sully- who wrote (38067)	6/22/2001 10:37:41 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 65232

Smarter Money: A Dirty Word at Mutual Funds By James J. Cramer 6/22/01 9:24 AM ET <<Which is bigger, the phone line overbuild or the dot-com overbuild? Is there a bigger glut of the machines that produce faster Web sites or the machines that light fiber optics? Which will be out of business faster, Internet infrastructure plays, e-commerce plays or fiber optic plays? Beats the heck of out me. But I know this. Every one of the mutual funds in this country seems like it is in a mad scramble to dump these kinds of names between now and the end of the quarter. The ones that are most ripe for the slaughter? Anything that smacks of "infrastructure," that once glorious concept that has now wiped out trillions of investor dollars. Infrastucture was supposed to be safe. Everybody presumed we needed more infrastructure. We assumed wrong. If you were playing any of these cycles through the so-called conservative infrastructure plays, the picks and axes of the gold miners, you are flat on your back, down for the count, hoping for the towel to be thrown in. Exodus (EXDS:Nasdaq - news - commentary), as my friend Frank B., said to me yesterday, "was the conservative way to play the Net's budding infrasturcture." Nortel (NT:NYSE - news - commentary) was the "conservative way" to play the fiber optic infrastructure buildout. Commerce One (CMRC:Nasdaq - news - commentary) was the "conservative way" to play the burgeoning e-commerce infrastructure. Akamai (AKAM:Nasdaq - news - commentary) was the conservative way to play the fast Web-hosting infrastructure business. People used to come on television and speak of infrastructure as if it were ineluctable, like gravity. Oh man, what a crock. Phones and the Net, the two dominant themes from 1996 to 1999 are now so on the ropes that the big mutual funds that propped up so many of them are finally kicking these remaining stocks out of their holdings. There is a rush going on right now, as we near the end of the quarter, to show that these managers have nothing to do with either major theme. I am seeing giant blocks come up for sale and be swatted down as fast as possible in what is amounting to be one of the greatest purges I have ever seen. From now till the end of the quarter I think these stocks will suffer inordinately, because no mutual fund manager ever wants to hear the word infrastructure again. Ever. The death of a theme. Getting an indecent burial at the end of the second quarter. Good riddance.>> ------------------------------------------------------------ James J. Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com.