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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stitch who wrote (5140)	12/31/1998 11:31:00 PM
From: Yogi - Paul	Respond to of 9256

Stitch, <<I have been looking again at telecommunications so am open to any suggestions from the group. Anyone looking at at IDTC?>> They came up in a screen a while ago. Great price to book, a lot of cash. Terrible return on assets, equity, investment. Company didn't make my first cut. I see it hasn't got much better. marketguide.com Nokia has made me more than a few bucks but pretty rich up here. Tellabs, General Instruments, and AT&T are in my portfolio. I have traded CTV a few times recently. << Do we really get too close to the subject that we disconnect from market mania? Perhaps>> Well constructed portfolios can be coldly efficient. You get overweight-- you sell. Underweight-- you buy. Doesn't matter if you love or hate the sector. You have to maintain diversity. Often you miss out on sector upside manias but you do sleep well (usually <g>). I realized long ago that I was far to emotional a human being to invest without rigid constraints. I get all the excitement I need with the 10% of my portfolio dedicated to speculation in technology which, btw, is 90% cash right now. Yogi

To: Stitch who wrote (5140)	1/1/1999 12:10:00 PM
From: Kevin Linder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9256

Stitch: Unfortunately I won't be cruising these boards that much or doing as much investment research because I just moved to western Massachusetts for a new job. I think the basic telecomunications stocks (building the internet) will be a good place to invest this year. LU and CSCO should be good companies going forward. The upcoming Y2K will slow down a lot of corporate IT spending on some software segments. Data Storage though should continue as executives worry about data integrity and price/performance makes such sense to upgrade. I think basic computer spending by consumers may slow this year because INTC must push the MN speed up to support higher CPU speeds at the same time that prices of computers are falling. IBM and DELL should do pretty good here. A couple friends are very high 9and have been for a while) on UIS. UIS is building a pretty good market in the service arena. I don't think I will be adding or changing my mix of holdings in the HDD sector. I think basic, high quality companies like DIS, MCD, GE will perform pretty well. You might also keep an eye on Caterpillar. They have weathered (succesfully) a huge number of global downturns and may recover faster than other companies if things start looking up. As a side note, you may want to keep an eye on insurance companies. There may be a disintermediation problem developing with some of these life and annuity problems. All cash value life/annuity products contain minimum interest rate guarrantees of 3-6%. If interest rates continue to fall several of these companies may begin to fall and fall rapidly. Take a look at the recent Mutual of NY IPO (MNY). They were just crawling out of a Disability Income mess and have very little Variable Life sales, so they should have a fair amount of risk to interest rate fluctuations and market conditions. (No inside information, just investment analysis). Maybe moving out here Lawrence will talk to me more often ;). Hope everyone on this thread is doing well and will have a good 1999. I have enjoyed participating in this thread and will check in from time to time. Kevin Linder

To: Stitch who wrote (5140)	1/1/1999 2:12:00 PM
From: Robert Douglas	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9256

Do we really get too close to the subject that we disconnect from market mania? Perhaps. You would never kiss anyone if you looked at them really closely. <g> Knowing and seeing all the warts on an investment can be counterproductive if it consistently keeps you from investing. I know some very smart people that have been in cash since 1987 just because they can see too many negatives. Investing is a balancing game where you need to weigh the negatives against the positives. If you wait for the perfect investment, you will wait forever. Lawrence - or is it now gloom and doom Larry? - thinks the market is efficient. I think the market only likes to pretend it is efficient - that there is a reason and a rhyme to every move. The reality is that stocks can move down when things are good and move up when things are bad. [HDD stocks recently?] This can be maddening at times, especially when the most informed miss out because they know all the problems. All my years of finance have taught me that placing value on an equity is highly dependent on some very sensitive inputs - like interest rates, profit margins, growth rates etc. A small change in any of these can produce large changes in value. So if analysts were brutally honest they would make statements like, "Seagate is worth $30 a share give or take 50%." With such a large range and with so many unknowns, the emotional element enters in and you get the "random walk" that gave birth to the notion of market efficiency. I always like to use the rule of thumb that if any opinion is mocked, then the consensus must be so strong that it is already in the market. Sort of like the way anyone who said anything positive on Asia was mocked several months back. Once the bad news is in the market there is nowhere for it to go but up, even if the bad comes true. Knowledge is only unproductive if it closes your mind. -Robert