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Wednesday,
19 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
With war now imminent, everybody's
attention (including mine) will be focused on the events in Iraq.
I will therefore be suspending my daily column "for the
duration", as they used to say. Here is an index
sorted by topic of my past columns ... More |
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Tuesday,
18 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
The 281 point rally yesterday demonstrated one
thing very clearly: Wall Street backs President Bush's war on
terrorism and on Iraq. This is not to say that many other
Americans don't back it as well, of course. But for the people who
work in lower Manhattan, it is a personal matter. More |
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Monday,
17 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
Today is the "moment of
truth for the world" in President Bush's words, or
"the time when we have to decide" in Prime Minister
Blair's words. Everyone will be deciding what actions to
take in the next few days - not just President Bush and the UN
Security Council delegates. Iraq and the US will have to decide whether
a pre-emptive strike is in their best interests. Iraq will
have to decide whether to take hostages of, say, the UN weapons
inspectors. More |
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Friday,
14 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
All week I have harping
on the overstated gloom hanging over the tech stocks and the
stock markets in general, and the ubiquitous
explanation that it is all the direct result of
"geopolitical uncertainties". Yesterday my thesis
that this was all bunk was
proven correct. More |
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Thursday,
13 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
If misery loves company, we should be seeking
out the company of our European colleagues. The depressed state of
the US stock markets in general and tech stocks in particular is
making everyone miserable. But the tech-heavy NASDAQ is
actually only down 5% year to date, and the semiconductor index
(SOX) is only down half that amount.
More |
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Wednesday,
12 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
Virtually everyone is saying that "geopolitical
uncertainties" are the reasons behind slow sales, falling
stocks, and rising unemployment. News commentators, Wall
Street analysts, CEOs, and Federal Reserve commissioners are all
singing the song in unison, or so it seems. According to their
song sheet, either an outbreak of war or an outbreak of peace
would resolve our economic ills and bring prosperity once again. But
a recent survey of CIOs by Goldman Sachs, released yesterday,
paints a different picture.
More |
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Tuesday,
11 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
In the current depressed and
flat technology markets, the only way to grow is to take market
share away from your competitors. Some companies are proving adept
at it.
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Monday,
10 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
Today marks the three-year
anniversary of peak of the NASDAQ "bubble". On March 10,
2000, the NASDAQ composite index hit its all-time intraday peak of
5132. We are all painfully aware that the NASDAQ index is
now at 1305, with the futures market indicating a lower open this
morning. To say that the
last three years have been tough for technology companies, their
employees, managers and investors is an understatement. The
question on all of our minds is "When will the wringer-cycle
end? Are we out of the woods yet?" More |
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Friday,
07 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
Boy, the
myths and misinformation about the high tech industry that
journalists perpetuate! Yesterday, for example, Robert Samuelson
dedicated his Washington Post column to trying to explain to the
ordinary newspaper reader what the ruckus is about regarding the
recent FCC decision.
More |
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Thursday,
06 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
In my 2001 book The Slingshot
Syndrome,
I wrote on page 93: "As we embark on the 21st
century, we are witnessing a disruption and transformation taking
place in the telecommunications industry. This disruption is
unlike any change the industry has faced since its inception in
the 19th century. The resulting metamorphosis will be as
significant as what the computer industry faced in the 1980's as
the result of the PC and the Xerox PARC innovations."
More |
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Wednesday,
05 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
A new survey of 877 CIOs by Forrester
supplies more evidence that the "good
enough computing" phenomenon is gaining acceptance in the
corporate world. Forrester is now forecasting a 1.9% growth in
information technology spending for 2003, which is even more
pessimistic than other forecasts reported here
on December 12. It is also a reduction from 2002
(which was a meager 2.3%). The survey did find a few areas
in which the CIOs are expecting to increase spending.
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Tuesday,
04 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
For someone like me who has been tracking for
years how much high tech companies spend on R&D, the spreadsheet
recently published by CBSMarketwatch
was fascinating. It collected in one place the 2001 and 2002
R&D spending as a percentage of revenue of the 100 largest US
technology companies, exhibiting both interesting patterns and
enormous variances between companies.
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Monday,
03 March 2003 8:30 am
by Reid Watts
These are interesting times. We are right at
the turning point of some very historic changes in the world, both
in the political and economic realms. In the political realm, we
are starting the transition to a "new world order" based
on different principals, alliances, and assumptions than what we
have become used in the last 50 years. What is not clear at all is
what the actual new world order will be, how it will work, and how
peaceful or bloody the transition will be.
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