CMVM isenta de OPA entrada da Visabeira na Martifer

[Pata-Hari]

Li este fim de semana um artigo em que se falava exactamente da ebay e da amazon Estive para transcrever e acaqbei não fazendo. Mas como vem mesmo a propósito, aqui fica.

World of investing | James K. Glassman: Yes, tech stocks have a future
By James K. Glassman (International Herald Tribune)
March 15, 2003

Monday marked the third anniversary of the peak of the Nasdaq composite index — the technology-heavy stock index that, thanks to the bursting of the tech-stock bubble, has dropped to around 1,300 points from more than 5,000 in 2000.

Investors can be forgiven for never wanting to own another high-tech stock for the rest of their lives. But that would be a big mistake.

While many technology companies turned out to have chimerical business plans and shed 90 percent or even 100 percent of their stock prices — the Nasdaq Stock Market itself has shrunk by about 1,000 companies — others have retooled, hunkered down, cut costs, invented products and grabbed market share.

For the fourth quarter of last year, 84 of the 208 publicly traded Internet companies made a profit, according to Pegasus Research International. These include LendingTree Inc., an online mortgage broker whose price has quintupled in the last three years, and Digital River Inc., which manages online software sales for big companies and has doubled since May.

Forged in a terrible crucible — the first recession in 10 years, terrorism, impending war and a bubble to end all bubbles — many of these survivors became hardened and robust. And some of them are now paying handsome returns. EBay Inc., the online auctioneer, has risen by one-third in the last 12 months to $82.46, while Amazon.com Inc., the biggest Internet retailer, has gone from $16.31 to $24.43. That may be little solace for investors who bought eBay in 2000 at $120 or Amazon in 1999 at $113, but still.

Anyway, past is past. What about the future of tech stocks? I’m optimistic, but investors need to follow some careful guidelines: 1. Technology is a sector, not a retirement plan, so don’t go wild. Depending on how you define it, tech represents between one-seventh and one-fifth of the total value of the S&P 500. A good rule is that tech stocks and funds, including biotech, should equal no more than 20 percent of your holdings.

But just as you shouldn’t go overboard, don’t go underboard, either. Technology is an important part of the economy. To have little or no tech in your portfolio, especially now with prices so low, is an inexcusable error.

2. Make sure your tech stocks have solid balance sheets. The slump in tech sales could go on longer — and, with war, could worsen. Be sure the stocks you own can weather the storm. The best of the companies have superb finances — thanks to all the cash raised in their initial public offerings and to the nature of businesses that often have low marginal costs.

Take eBay. At the end of last year, it had $1.2 billion in cash and virtually no debt (just a $15 million loan). Better still, eBay generates cash by the fistful because its requirements for making new capital investments in plant and equipment are low. That’s true as well for Dell Computer Corp., which had $4.3 billion in cash at last report and generated about $2.5 billion in cash flow in 2002 with only $300 million in capital spending.

On the other hand, I worry about the staying power of a company like DoubleClick Inc., a leading Internet marketing company. It has sound management and a good business, and it made a profit last year, but its balance sheet is troublesome, with $163 million in debt and $369 million in cash (down from more than $600 million in the last two years). If there’s one clear lesson from the last three years, it’s that fundamentals count.

3. Look for beaten-up techs that could re-emerge as champs. John Buckingham, editor of the Prudent Speculator, the best-performing newsletter over the last 20 years, has just recommended Novell Inc., which sells Internet-based business software. Buckingham notes that while Novell lost money last year, it is ‘‘debt-free and sitting on a mountain of cash.’’ It also registered positive cash flow and, in the past, has been very profitable. Also on Buckingham’s list are Apple Computer Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc.

4. Beware of technology mutual funds. As fickle investors bailed out of these funds, their managers retooled, stretching their definitions of ‘‘tech,’’ or moving heavily into cash.

A good example is Kinetics Internet fund, whose top holding at the end of last year was Kroll Inc. — a perfectly decent company, but its line is business security, not tech.


Similarly, Royce Technology Value held its losses to 13 percent last year, partly by keeping 18 percent of its shareholders’ money in cash. When I buy a tech fund, I expect to own tech stocks; I can do my own cash allocation, thank you. Besides, keeping so much of the fund’s assets out of stocks sounds not like value investing, but market timing.

Using screens on the Morningstar.com Web site, I searched for tech funds that had a manager with at least three years’ tenure, returns of break-even or better for five years, at least a four-star performance rating and expenses no worse than average. I found exactly one: Dreyfus Premier Technology Growth. It’s awfully risky: It has suffered losses of 25 percent or more in eight of the last 10 quarters, but overall it has returned an annual average of 3 percent for the last five years, beating the S&P by 6 percentage points. The portfolio is concentrated (just 38 stocks) but sensible and fair, with only 5 percent cash. The top five holdings at the end of last year were Microsoft Corp.; UTStarcom Inc., a wireless equipment maker that concentrates on the China market; Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which makes microchips; Dell, and Cisco Systems Inc., the Internet infrastructure provider, which earned $2.8 billion in a poor economy last year on $19 billion in sales.

5. Diversification is a must for technology, so lean toward exchange-traded funds. Those are index-style funds that trade like individual stocks and carry low expenses. The best choices are QQQ, based on the Nasdaq 100 and about three-quarters of whose assets are technology (including biotech and telecom); iShares U.S. Technology, which mimics the Dow Jones technology index, and SPDR Technology, which owns the tech stocks that are part of the S&P 500.

The only major difference between iShares and SPDR is that SPDR includes traditional telecom companies, such as the giant regional Bell Verizon Communications Inc., which is among its top five holdings, and SBC Communications. As a result, iShares is a purer play and more concentrated. Microsoft represents 18 percent of its assets; International Business Machines Corp., 11 percent; and Intel Corp., 9 percent. Overall, the top five holdings represent more than half the value of the fund and the top 10, two-thirds.

That’s another problem with tech: It’s hard to avoid portfolios, either managed or index, that aren’t top-heavy. In the end, the paradox is that, once you have gotten over your fear of technology, you find that there are really no easy ways to invest in it. My own preference is a mix: an EFT or two, some bright-idea stocks, some companies like Amazon that could be powerhouses of the economy in five years or more, and a few beaten-up values. But however you do it, do tech.

Among the stocks mentioned in this article, James K. Glassman owns Microsoft and Dell; he also owns QQQ and SPDR Technology. His e-mail address is jglassman@aei.org.

[Lion_Heart]

Pois e Ulisses,esse para mim e uns dos melhores negocios da net.
Vender coisas novas ou usadas a bom preço,para todo o mundo .As vendes ate vendem mais caro!
As leiloeiras online nao tem muitos custos (e tudo entre comprador/vendedor) ,nao precisam de armazens,stocks,pessoal (so uns quantos tecnicos.E o melhor de tudo e quer o leilao se faça ou nao eles ganham sempre.O caso do miau por ca tb e muito bom

[Ulisses Pereira]

A maior leiloeira on-line do mundo continua imparável. Deixo aqui dois gráficos da EBAY, não para fazer qualquer análise, mas apenas para mostrar o espectacular desempenho desta acção.

Pelos vistos, o facto de ter um PER de 100 (!) não assusta os investidores que querem ter na carteira uma das sobreviventes das dot.com e um caso de sucesso.

Bear Market? Quem diria que a EBAY já está muito perto de... máximos históricos?

Ulisses