To: Elliot W who wrote (8727 ) 1/24/1998 8:27:00 PM From: TChai Respond to of 10836
Exactly how many "Enterprise" software companies are there that are doing well in the market lately? I don't know all the details about other company, but I know of one company that has done well in the enterprise. BI enterprise business has quietly gone over 50% of the revenue. As far as stock prices of all these software companies are in the dog house, one needs to look back in time at the so called conventional wisdom. When the saving and loan fiasco was at full swing in '90. The conventional wisdom is that all banks are 1) lying about their balance sheets 2) going to suffer huge losses and 3) possibly shutdown by the tens if not hundreds. Bank stocks good or bad suffered huge decline. Examples: Bank of New York (BK) Fall'90 price: 3, Today's: 50's Chase (CMB) Fall'90 : 8, Today's: 100's Bankers Trust (BT) Fall'90: low 20's, Today's: 100's When the Clintons took office and Hillary decided to make a name for herself by going after the health care industry. Conventional wisdom is that profit would be down for these companies. That whole sector was in the dump from the best drug makers to latest biotech. People who at that time bought the Merck and AHP, etc., could have kissed Hillary's feet. A few years back when client/server was all the rage, the conventional wisdom is that the mainframes are dead, and so IBM. The were dumping IBM like it's a disease. People who ignored conventional wisdom and bought IBM at split adjusted 20's laughed all the way to the bank. Today, the conventional wisdom is that the Asian fiasco will cause a slow down and shrinking profit for US high tech, thus, good or bad tech stocks alike are in the dump. I will not be surprised to see good solid tech stocks, like BORL :-), move 300-500% from this point within the next 2-3 years. Have courage in the face of conventional wisdom, and you will be amply rewarded. regards.