AOL knows how to play it cool. It's not going to tip its hand until it knows an offer is real. |
Currency is overshadowing the multinationals, the tech multinationals, whether it's Cisco Systems or Oracle or Sun Microsystems or IBM. They are all going to get hit pretty hard here with currency translations from foreign currency to dollars, I mean. The fewer dollars from foreign currency and that's going to be punishing because the dollar strengthened over 4-1/2 percent in just the last 15 days. That's unheard of. That's a record, almost. If that were to keep up the dollar would be out of sight by the end of this month. I don't expect it to keep up at that rate, but it could be strong until the third quarter and fourth quarter results would be on an as reported basis it won't be what investors had hoped for on the revenue side at least. EPS will be protected to some degree. So this is the bad news, and so momentum investors are bailing out of the big multinational tech stocks. And where are they going to go? That's the key question, |
Everybody now is trying to save money, and they can do that by outsourcing their 'commoditized' assembly, repair and service business to these companies, who do that much more efficiently, |
For people who are not as daring as the momentum investors who have driven some of these Internet stocks to unbelievable heights, I would advise that they stick with more conservative |
I think it characterizes the volatility we've been seeing on the Nasdaq. The economic signals are too mixed to start speculating that we are at the end of the problem. |
I think it's a great idea. Why not participate in some of the buzz surrounding the Internet stocks? |
I think that the stocks will recover again because the small investor that logs on to the Internet just sees the romance and the lure and says 'buy,' |
I think we're just at the beginning of a great period for Network Solutions, |
I would say it's going to sell off, ... I don't see any driving force to push it up significantly as people think about what it all means. |
I would stay away pretty much from the bulk of the Internet stocks. Internet stocks that don't have any earnings, |
IBM has told us over and over that the first quarter would be on the flat side. The market has already digested that, so now it's unlikely they will disappoint, and things will look brighter mid-year or so. |
IBM stood fast; no warnings, and so IBM is somewhat of an exception, ... And on the technology side, IBM has some very unique technologies that they developed in-house that give it at least a year-and-a-half to two-year lead. |
If Intel shareholders got caught in the crossfire, they should hold, ... This is not the end of Intel. They will get out of this situation, although it may take six to nine months. Until then, fiber optics and the disk storage sectors are the preferred place to be, rather than the PC sector. |
If you really drill down and look at what's going on, you will find, particularly when it comes to the consumer part of the sector, that there's an inventory buildup in the channel, ... So sooner or later, the channel stops ordering. There are no miracles here. The market is maturing, the product is becoming 'commoditized,' and these are very difficult times for these vendors. |
It certainly can last through the end of the year into January, |