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To: H James Morris who wrote (35007)	1/15/1999 7:17:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 164684

'Another martini, please' The big Net investors who know not By Rebecca Lynn Eisenberg, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 9:11 PM ET Jan 14, 1999 Zapman on Net value SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- "Rebecca, you should start a hedge fund," laughed my investment-banker friend, whom I'll call Todd. We were eating a celebratory lunch at MoMo's, the most hip dining spot in San Francisco this week. Todd had just earned a client $2.1 million on Lycos (LCOS) and was riding out a buzz on Internet-stock investing. "I'm just trying to share the wealth, don't you see?" He replaced his Nokia phone to the inside chest pocket of his Armani suit and smiled warmly. I stabbed my chopped salad and glared. "Too bad you didn't buy Broadcast.com (BCST) instead," I responded snidely, hoping that my bitterness wasn't too transparent to all the well-dressed Financial District types on all sides of our table. "I mean, do you even have a theory for Lycos' market performance?" "Who needs a theory?" Todd responded, brushing crouton crumbs off his slacks. "You know I'm not that kind of investor. I'm a technical guy." He reached for the bread. "Oh, of course. A technical guy," I sniffed, as a waitress drew near. "Another martini, please." I toyed with my olive. "It's just not right," I said. "The only reason that the stock goes up is because people -- companies, investment bankers like you -- buy it. Meanwhile, you buy it for no reason whatsoever other than the fact that you think it will go up. I haven't met one investment banker or broker who can articulate the business strategy, the value-add or even, sheesh, the product or service of any of these companies. They couldn't tell a portal from a Pentium, a search engine from a Linux server. People must be confusing Broadcast.com with Broadcom (BRCM)." Todd gave me a sympathetic look. "How is your salad?" His question was futile; I was on a roll. "Doesn't the irrationality of it drive you crazy? Broadcast.com goes up a hundred points, even though it has absolutely no strategy moving forward. Disney (DIS) and Infoseek (SEEK) announce the launch of a really miserable product, and Goldman Sachs wets its pants. Meanwhile, Snap! is a great product, and no one is noticing. It makes me insane." Todd took a sip of his tea. "Snap?" A cell phone rang at the table next to us. We both glanced over. "You know, the CNET (CNET)-NBC portal. It's great. Anyway, so Amazon.com (AMZN) tops 600," I continued, "and does anyone at CIBC Oppenheimer even understand what is so wonderful about one-to-one marketing?" I stirred my second martini, which had just arrived. "Do they even notice that it has never posted a profit? And Yahoo! (YHOO). This is getting ridiculous." Todd looked concerned. "But, Rebecca, you were the one who's been boosting the Internet for years now. Your freshman dorm. Jerry Yang. Branner Hall. You love Yahoo!" "Yes, I love Yahoo! But that doesn't mean that I think it should be selling for $450 a share. Yahoo! and Amazon reinvented the business model for the Internet age. Yes. But these prices have nothing to do with anything. No one moving these stocks understands anything about computers, or technology, or the Internet. But the stocks go crazy. It is all your fault." Another cell phone rang, and this time it was Todd's. He pulled his Nokia out of his pocket again. "Yeah. Yeah. OK." He turned toward me. "Rebecca, I gotta go. It's my client. Can you drop me off over at the Ritz?" "Sure. I'm finished." I took a breath. "So, tell me, how do you like the IrDA feature on that phone?" "What's IrDA?"