A lot of stocks have been left in the dust, a lot of very good companies that should be looked at. |
A lot of the prices have already reflected a lot of takeover speculation so you need a deal really to support current valuations and to get a premium. |
A lot of their publications deal with the Internet, targeting professionals who write software for the Internet. So, in that way you're getting to play the growth in the Internet; the growth of programmers, so on and so forth, without necessarily being right in the fray of it all. |
Consumption is up considerably and that trend is not going to reverse itself. Higher oil prices are going to be with us for quite a while, and while I do think it will moderate from the current levels it is definitely going to have an impact, both on consumer spending and on the economy as a whole. |
Everything used to be complex about Thermo. But they experienced every problem in the book before the restructuring -- nothing is going to bother them now. |
Here's a classic case of a company that's been completely ignored. |
I just think you have to look for the better values to make money in the stock market. |
I think even the most skeptical people about the productivity enhancements due to technology have been totally shocked by how it's played out in our economy. |
I think there's a lot of danger in just staying with the largest companies. The perception is that if you only buy the big stocks, they always go up. We've seen historically that that's not the case. |
I would sell the stocks that have that kind of multinational exposure. It's just like trying to catch a knife in mid-air. We don't know how far down it's going to go. |
The outlook looks better as the market looks to the next six, nine months. |
These guys just made a deal with one of the large online providers of health care over the Internet. The company does over $600 million in revenue and generates almost $80 million of cash flow a year. So, it's really becoming a major player in the health-care information services sector. |
We bought some shares recently in a dot.com company that was absolutely annihilated after this recent rout, About.com ( BOUT : Research , Estimates ), which is the ninth-largest Web property of all Web properties. The stock dropped from 100 in late March, to a low of $21. This is a company with a real business model that had blowout first-quarter earnings. And they are actually going to turn a profit in 2001. Investors went from 'everything Internet is good', to the 'everything Internet is bad' mantra. So now you've got to do your homework and look at individual names and identify the business models that are valid. And I think this is one that can go back to its old high. |
We like Quantum. The company's got $350 a share in cash and no debt, and it's generating a lot of cash flow. Storage has gone through a long period of decline, but we're seeing tremendous new demand coming in for storage every day. We think that pricing is going to improve, and these are companies with huge revenue bases where a nominal tick-up in the margin structure leads to tremendous profitability. We've got them earning over $4 (a share) over the next two years; the stock is at $12 right now. |
We're in this volatile trading range right now until we see what the Fed's going to do. A quarter-point rate increase is clearly built in (bond yields). You really want to see what further direction the Fed's going to give from that point -- whether this is the first of several rate hikes, which I think would be a negative for the market. |