Not for Warren Buffett

Web data management software toolmaker Sagent Technology went public
today, offering five million shares at $9 each.

Warren Buffett probably didn’t even notice.

The billionaire investor, according to a Reuters story, reiterated his
skepticism Wednesday about Internet and high-technology stocks.

“I simply can’t look at high-tech companies, Internet companies, and say
with a high degree of assurance where those companies will be in 10
years,”
Buffett said at a Paris news briefing.

Well, neither can anyone else, Mr. Buffett, but the fun and challenge is
in trying.

Maybe when you’re one of the two or three richest people on the planet
you can afford to invest conservatively. However, thousands of other
smaller investors see Internet stocks as an opportunity to improve their
net worth and participate in a game that previously had been closed to
all but the wealthy and Wall Street insiders.

And while Buffett quite naturally wants to be confident about the
long-term prospects of a company before he invests, a decade is a long
time out for brokers and day traders who ride the stock charts every
day.

After all, a lot of people made small fortunes buying and selling stock
in Netscape, a company that didn’t even come close to lasting 10 years.
Some of them, of course, were just lucky. Others, though, recognized
Netscape’s unique position in the browser market in the mid-’90s, before
Microsoft woke up and put an abrupt and inevitable end to that.

Others, unfortunately, hung on too long, or bought Netscape shares in the
$70s, only to see them fall to
half that amount by the time AOL bought the company out.

The folks in the latter category failed to see the handwriting on the
Big Board, either because they were in denial or simply weren’t paying
attention to what the market was telling them.

That’s why services like internet.com’s Internet Stock Report exist. Our
goal is to keep ‘Net investors fully informed through:

  • four daily reports that provide news and analysis regarding Internet
    stocks, IPOs and market activities

  • special features such as the Internet Stock List, IPO Watch, IPODEX
    and, of course, the groundbreaking ISDEX

  • newsletters such as the free Internet Stock Report and Hotwatch, a
    monthly paid subscription e-mail newsletter highlighting the 10 hottest
    Internet stocks to watch as chosen by internet.com’s Senior Investment
    Analyst Steve Harmon

Next week we will introduce an exciting new weekly paid subscription
newsletter that promises to give Internet investors an even better grasp
of market trends and opportunities.

The e-mail newsletter, Internet StockTracker, provides the latest
performance data on individual Internet companies and specific Internet
sectors. Each Friday subscribers will be e-mailed a breakdown of how
each Internet company’s stock has performed in the past week, as well as
a brief analysis of the reasons behind the most noteworthy movers in
each sector.

Subscribers will be able to see which were the top 10 gainers and
losers, and how each sector did collectively. For example, if you had
received Internet StockTracker #2 last Friday, you would have seen in
black and white the disastrous week security companies had following
concerns about soft Q1 revenues due to Y2K concerns.

Among the sectors broken out are: Portals; Content/Community; Etailers;
E-commerce Enablers; Security; Performance Software; Internet Services;
Speed/Bandwidth; and ISPs/Access Providers.

As new Internet companies go public, such as Sagent, they will be added
to StockTracker.

The number of Internet companies selling stock promises to double this
year alone. Internet StockTracker will help investors quickly size up
what’s happening in the market each week, so they can adjust their
portfolios as needed to capitalize on news, trends and events.

More information about Internet StockTracker can be found
here; you also can see a sample newsletter.

I bet even Warren Buffett would like it.

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