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Strategies & Market Trends : Graham and Doddsville -- Value Investing In The New Era -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: porcupine --''''> who wrote (1123)	1/15/1999 6:42:00 PM
From: porcupine --''''>	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1722

Lotus still leads groupware market news.com

To: porcupine --''''> who wrote (1123)	1/15/1999 7:03:00 PM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1722

>>I have been recommending IBM since late 1992, when it fell to (a split-adjusted) 25 -- and have taken a steady stream of criticism from (friendly and helpful) colleagues ever since. However, now that Wall Street has discovered that IBM is not going away, I'm less comfortable. Obviously, IBM is no longer the bargain it was then. Nevertheless, is there a safer way to invest in e-commerce?<< My own view (friendly and helpful) is that IBM has been one of the poorest big name tech stocks in terms of business performance during the greatest technological boom period ever. It is barely earning more than it was earning at the 80s peak. Most of the EPS growth has come from leveraging up the balance sheet and buying in more shares than they have in free cash. A strategy that is unsustainable and yet tested. It seems to me that at a time when most top tech companies have doubled and tripled their earnings in 2 or 3 year periods, IBM has been a major disappointment on the fundamentals relative to all its main peers. This covers software, PCs, and some other hardware areas. Only in services has the business been truly successful for the period. And there are questions about the accounting in that business. No doubt it was very undervalued during the dog days. But I think most of the move of the last year or year and 1/2 is more or less industry "stock" momentum and the squeezing of short positions (they are all going up gangbusters - the good, bad, and the ugly) and not a matter of any significant increase in intrinsic value.