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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (23217)	3/1/1999 8:25:00 PM
From: Doughboy	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 77398

Zoltan, Anecdotally, I can tell you that just before Boeing's disastrous 1998, Smart Money magazine named Boeing one of its Stocks to Own in the Year 2000. As I mentioned in my post, Manugistics was tagged a "gorilla" by the Gorilla book just before it went from 60 to 7 1/2, where it languishes today. If you recall just 5 years ago, everyone thought that small cap stocks were better growth vehicles than large caps and everyone wondered whether that would always be the case. David Halberstam wrote a whole book about Ford losing the car wars to Japan, just before Ford went on a tear and Japan went in the dumps. And need I remind you that a week before the elections you predicted Al D'Amato was a lock for the US Senate? The fact is, no one has the power of prediction sufficient to be right more than, IMO, 55% of the time. There'd be a lot more billionaires out there if there was a foolproof formula. That leaves a good 45% of the time when we're flat-out, red-facedly wrong. Even companies like Cisco have to execute on a dime to remain dominant, and just because Cisco has done it successfully so far (going from dominance in the router market to the big bad wolf in the carrier space was nothing short of brilliant), the past is no guaranty of future success. If they miss (see Intel) they get punished by the market. As I said, I'm long because I think the odds of success by Chambers and Cisco in the long run is marginally better than the success of other people in other industries. That still doesn't mean that Cisco can't see a 50% decline or a period of stagnant returns. You'd be stupid not to be prepared for that eventuality. Doughboy.