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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jack Whitley who wrote (36769)	2/28/1998 1:15:00 AM
From: Clare	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

<<However, another point repeatedly made in the biography is Mr. Buffett's constant desire (based on boyhood dreams of owning a toll booth on a highway near his home) to own businesses whereby the owner would exact a small toll from each customer (as long as there were millions of customers and thus millions of small transactions). >> So applying this to technology stocks, which stocks do you think will extract this small toll millions of times? AOL comes to mind, since they extract a toll for each online shopping transaction. Credit card companies also get a % of a transaction. Brokerage firms, telephone companies, online bill payers (Checkfree), online content aggregators like Yahoo, AOL, Excite, etc. Microsoft (with their Expedia, Carpoint, etc websites). Help me out here. I can't see Ascend in this position since their products are sold as the toll booth turnstile, but the toll doesn't go to Ascend, the equipment maker, it goes with the transaction or content. Actually I think this is an interesting topic (although OT here). "Tech Stocks the Generation-X Buffett Would Buy"

To: Jack Whitley who wrote (36769)	2/28/1998 7:53:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 61433

There are two sides to this that are very interesting. In his biography (unauthorized but unimpeded by Buffett) Mr. Buffett indicated that he didn't buy technology companies because he would never by businesses he didn't fully understand. You could make a case that networking is somewhat complex and getting a handle on a "sure thing" is tough, what with the constant technology shifts and competition. One could make a case like this for all high tech products. That leaves out close to 70% of the market as a guess. I do not know the real percentage so I made it up. Glenn