We might have been one of the first web sites out there to tell you, nearly to the day, when the dot com crash was going to happen. Now, we will be one of the first to tell you about the return of the new and improved Internet market. If you have been an investor that has been staying as far away from any stock relating to technology, we now are going to give our worthless advice that it may be in your portfolio's interest to change your attitude.
spring fashion: dot com is black
10 april, 2002
by johnmichael patrick monty monteithWe all know about the countless domains that have been auctioned off due to their parent company biting the big weenie. Since April of 2000, virtually everyone has stayed as far away as possible from anything relating to technology, and for good reason. However, please try to refrain from laughter when I say this … But … Presently … The tech stocks do not look all bad. In fact, some look downright good.
Now, we have never been one to bore you with hard evidence to support our opinions here at Sanitypages. No, we prefer to make this stuff up as we go along. Still, just this once, we will give you a couple of reasons for our change of heart.
First, we will bore you with the hard evidence of stock prices. If you do the numbers on your portfolio you may note that tech stocks have made a mild come-back since their all-time-low stock prices. Amazon.com, Drugstore.com, Marketwatch.com, and many others. No, these companies are not making the 5000% stock gains that many stocks did in 1999. However, they are gaining at a healthy rate. If you invested in these stocks at their lowest point, you would have profited nicely (nearly 500% in the case of Drugstore.com.) While there are certainly tech stocks out there that are not gaining dramatically, when you do the numbers you will find that tech companies in general are holding their own or doing slightly better than the blue chips. While this might be surprising in the context of constant negative tech news, nonetheless, it is true.
Second, a brief moment for the more wishy-washy evidence of a web designer. From about April 2000 until about a month ago our parent web design company, See-Me Web Design, had remarkably few new customers. From the moment the tech bubble burst, suddenly no one was interested in putting up a new web site. Before the crash we had numerous requests, and often those web design requests were for very expensive web design projects that were not only beyond the scope of our company, but beyond the scope of what the customer needed. However, the web design business is starting to pick back up. Even more important is that the requests are far more realistic this time around. Companies are actually THINKING about what they are doing as it relates to their web presence. Not only is the technology world coming back to life, but they are much smarter this time around.
While investing is always risky, there are cautious reasons for increased confidence in tech investments. With nearly every investor staying as far away from tech companies as possible, most of the bad apples have already rotted away. The remaining dot com companies either had enough common sense to put away a slush fund to keep them alive for a couple of years, or they have a good enough business model that they could overcome the bad press. Either way, you can find the answer fairly easily by researching the reports on the company as you would any potential purchase.
There certainly will be more Internet stocks to fall from the market tree over the coming years, however you should not ignore these fruits all together. In fact, I dare say there are some excellent ones still waiting to be discovered. We are not giving you any sort of investment advice, nor are we suggesting that you should increase your technology portfolio. However, it is our worthless opinion that the days of ignoring technology investment opportunities are now officially over. Long live Dot COM!
