Tom Taulli

Egreetings (EGRT) had its IPO in the middle of December last year. The IPO was priced at $10 and shot-up to $14.25, but then closed at $10.56 on its first day of trading. Now, the stock is trading at $10-1/16. Then there was, of course, Blue Mountain, which is a major competitor. Excite@Home purchased the […]

Last week, Barron’s Alan Abelson had a list of stocks to sell short for the New Year. On the list was Quest Software (QSFT) . Actually, this should be good news for Quest Software. Barron’s has missed the boat many times with Net stocks and I think this is the case with Quest Software. Interestingly […]

What is good for Time Warner (TWX) is not good for America Online Inc. (AOL). As everyone knows, AOL and Time Warner decided to merge yesterday. The new combined AOL will have a market capitalization of a staggering $350 billion. It’s the biggest merger in corporate history. Shareholders of Time Warner loved the deal. The […]

I’ve heard the phrase “derivative security” several times. What does it mean? Reply: As the name implies, this is a security that derives value from another security. For example, a call option is derived from the value of a stock that trades on an exchange. The call gives an investor the right to buy 100 […]

It has been a 20-year overnight success story: the World Wrestling Federation (WWFE) . The founder and CEO (and basically supreme leader) Vince McMahon seems like a blowhard. But don’t let this fool you. He is one of the savviest business leaders in the country. Taking control of his dad’s wrestling business, McMahon has created […]

Even though the market staged a rally yesterday, Amazon.com (AMZN) remained sunk — ending the day off 12-3/16 at 69-3/4. Volume was 38 million shares. The big concern for investor: Simply put, Amazon.com may never make any money. After all, since the founding, the company has lost over half a billion dollars. Or, perhaps the […]

First mover has been the Holy Grail of Internet investing. How about the first mover in business-to-business? I would say VerticalNet (VERT) would fit the description. The company went public in the days when only a handful of people even heard the acronym B2B. However, when it arrived on the scene, I thought the structure […]

Simply put, MyPoints.com (MYPT) specializes in a business that makes lots of sense on the Net. Basically, it is a supercharged rewards program. You sign-up for the service and answer a long questionnaire, which determines your preferences. Mypoints.com then periodically e-mails you various offers. If you visit the sites, you get points. You can then […]

What do you think of the brick-and-mortar Toys ‘R’ Us? Reply:It seems that most investors think Toys ‘R’ Us (TOY) is hopeless. In fact, the stock is selling close to its 52-week low of $13-1/8. Of course, the company missed out on the online boom for Christmas last year. As for this year, there was […]

Yesterday, I wrote my column on the top 10 stocks for the millennium. This is the final installment. Healtheon (HLTH): The US spends a whopping $1 trillion on healthcare. And there seems to be no end in sight. Interestingly enough, 20 to 30 percent of the expenditures are wasteful. Healtheon has a solution and, of […]

I decided to post this article a few days before the new year (who knows, there could be some type of Y2K glitch). These are my top 10 picks for the New Year. This column is Part One; tomorrow, I will post the final installment. Let’s get started: CMGI (CMGI): Sure, the stock price has […]

Intuit (INTU) has always been a pioneer of wedding technology and personal finance. It was in 1983 that Scott Cook started the company, because his wife was aggravated when she was trying to balance the family checkbook. Since then, millions of people have been balancing their checkbooks because of Intuit, as well as preparing taxes, […]