For Thur Oct 12 2000
Stock market follies
Boy, it sure is a funny, wacky, zany stock market out there, isn't it? What a load of laughs and joy it brings people, much like the thrill of a plunging roller coaster. Investors are strapped in their seats with their hair blown back and their eyes bugged out, white knuckled, stomachs in knots, and it's too late to jump. Whee ha!
What happened to the big Internet boom? NASDAQ investors are getting hammered. Did it level off? I know for me it did. For years I would upgrade my computer the instant something newer came along. Now it's fast enough, my software is slick enough, and I haven't had to buy anything new in a long time.
We bought a cell phone. Now we're done with our wireless needs. The new phones and services are nothing special yet. I don't need to surf the Web in green monochrome during my commute on a monitor the size of my thumb. I'm barely satisfied with my 19" monitor at home. Besides, if I'm surfing the Web while I'm downtown, where is my life?
I shop on the Internet as a last resort, not as a preferred medium. I can usually find any on-line product here in town or right next door at a super store, cheaper, faster, and with a quicker return policy. I guess Internet shopping will become big business out in farm country.
Now, with DSL, my Internet is fast enough for my current needs. I'm usually looking at text, anyhow. I'm having a hard time figuring out what I would do in my house with unlimited bandwidth. I could teleconference with my mother and we could share liver spots. I could stream a movie across the fiber line. Wow. That would be just like HBO, only on a smaller screen and no ottoman. I could adjust the temperature of my refrigerator while on vacation.
"Honey, I'm enjoying the surf here in Hawaii just fine, but I'm worried about our eggs. I'm going up to the hotel room to log in and crank that 'fridge up to 5."
All these hopeful Web businesses with impossible-to-remember names like www.Isurehopeyouwillshophere.com and www.somethingorother.com are fading out about the time they receive their fifteenth rent and utility bills. Boo.com, a clothing interest, recently sold its inventory for pennies on the dollar. Just one example.
Look at semiconductors. Every type of chip is made by a different company. Company A does sound. B does video. C does processing. D does memory. E switches. Then sometimes E doesn't get along with A, or C is out of sync with D, and B wants E to behave differently. Why don't they lock arms instead of horns and form one big company, like Chips R Us or MicroHard.
I see consolidation on a grand and continuous scale. We don't need 647 Internet Service Providers, 29 phone companies, and 380 search engines; we don't need multiple companies running excess fiber around the world, or big satellites bumping into each other. We just don't need electronic versions of everything. We have right now a massive duplication of online services and gizmos as everyone fights for supremacy in whatever this new direction is for our next millennium. Who but the few will stand when the shakedown comes?
Is it shakedown time?
I buy shares of stuff. It's fun. I like doing it. I've been buying shares of stuff for about a year and a half now, ever since I read a book on it. Luckily, I never bought an Internet stock, except PSInet, and it's down like 75-percent. Youch! Jiminey, that stings. And I got a semi. Simtek. It sits there on its dirt runway like an airplane made by aborigines after seeing a picture of one in a torn-up magazine.
I'll tell you what I do do, but it's probably bad advice. Experts would poo-poo me, I'm sure. I buy futuristic electric green. I see a great need for electricity, a cleaner environment, and the harnessing of hydrogen. One of my companies makes clean diesel out of most any hydrocarbon feedstock. Another company makes an assortment of parts for alternative fuel vehicles. One company makes microturbines that generate electricity using low BTU fuel. One makes moldable lithium ion batteries for HEV cars (hybrid-electric like the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius). And then, of course, the kings of the hill, are my fuel cell companies. God bless them every one, for now at least.
Bring on the holidays!