Como se combate o populismo? "Com eleições", responde Fukuyama

[AC]

The First 2,000 Days

By Bill Barker (TMF Lazarus)
June 16, 2005

By my count, the middle of next week marks the 2,000th day of the new millennium, or at least the new century, but let us not get bogged down again in that debate. I'm sure other media outlets are working overtime and devoting massive resources to properly commemorate this auspicious occasion -- (Time's Person of the First 2,000 Days issue, USA Channel's Top 2,000 Law & Order Episodes From the First 2,000 Days, VH-1's 100 Most Awesomely Bad Scandals of the First 2,000 Days, etc.).

Here at The Motley Fool, I'm the only one researching it, so you'll forgive me if I need to mentally reset my clock and start with an anecdote to try to remember what I was doing and what was going on in the market just as the 21st century was dawning.

Flashback: late December 1999
So, while my wife is getting ready to deliver our first child by caesarean section, her anesthetist tells me that it is his and my job to keep her distracted with conversation unrelated to anything so seemingly relevant as, say, what all the other doctors in the room might be working on. He seems like a pretty nice guy, and he's done this a few times, so I take it that he knows what he's talking about and go with it.

He asks me what I do for a living and I tell him that I work at The Motley Fool. He takes that as an invitation to talk stocks, and since all of this does seem to be successful at distracting the patient from anything that might cause her concern, I play along.

The anesthetist wants to know what stocks I like at this point. I'm really not sure what his level of sophistication is, or how much I want to potentially influence somebody given that I'm devoting approximately 0.004% of my concentration to this discussion. But I toss out Berkshire Hathaway as an attractive company. His response: "I really like JDS Uniphase (Nasdaq: JDSU)."

Except he doesn't actually say the "open parenthesis Nasdaq colon JDSU closed parenthesis" part. That's just a visual convention we use online.

My response to this is that, despite having read many articles about JDS Uniphase and knowing more than one person who was happy owning it, I really don't feel I understand its business or its competitive advantages enough to think about investing in it. If he's looking for a tech stock, I think Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) isn't too expensive, and I think I understand -- though barely -- what a computer is. The doctor's reply -- and perhaps this should have caused me some slight concern, given the amount of trust that my entire family was placing in his judgment at that moment -- is that he feels he understands JDS Uniphase pretty well, and he's confident in its business prospects.

Flash-forward: 2,000ish days later
OK, sign of the times and everything. You're probably pretty well aware that in December 1999 there was a little bit of excessive enthusiasm in technology companies whose products few understood. JDS Uniphase isn't the only example, and our anesthesiologist, who helped successfully deliver my daughter and each of her two younger siblings since, wasn't the only one who didn't accurately gauge his understanding of the company.

Jeremy Siegel, in his outstanding new book, The Future for Investors, makes the point that when the largest-capitalized company in the market makes a product that few people can name or understand (Cisco in 2000 is Siegel's example), that's probably one of his signs of a market peak. And Siegel wrote some columns about that call at the relevant time, so he's got a certain amount of credibility on this issue.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can dig up the list of high-profile "tech" companies whose stocks would enjoy an early start to the millennium. Let's see, there's eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) and, um, Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD), I guess. They each trade higher today than they did at the end of 1999. Apple, my pick that night, qualifies with an asterisk, at least as to my call. I certainly did not foresee the iPod.

[nunofaustino]

sem querer ser ave agoirenta, mas no afterhours a JDSU está a cotar a 1.521...

Vamos ver se aguenta o fecho de hoje..

Um abraço
Nuno

[cayenne]

E eu que às 20.30 comprei umas quantas (80000) a 1.50...
Realmente foi um fecho impressionante

[AC]

minuto da negociação entrou um ordem directa de 1 milhão, que fez disparar a acção dos 1.51 até aos 1.60, e fechando a 1.57.
Com este fecho o MACD passou a dar sinal de compra.

[AC]

actualizado.

[cayenne]

Boa puxada nos últimos minutos com volume.
Vamos ver amanhã.

[AC]

a fibra óptica.....

"Novo standard de ADSL promete largura de banda de 100Mbps
Chama-se VDSL2 e permite TV de alta definição, videoconferência e todas as outras coisas típicas da Internet muito rápida. A International Telecommunication Union (ITU) anunciou hoje ter completado a constituição de um novo standard de acesso à Internet por DSL ("família" de comunicações a que pertence o ADSL), que permite comunicações de 100Mbps em downstream (do servidor para casa do utilizador) e upstream (da casa do utilizador para o servidor).

VDSL2 é a sigla de Very High Bit Rate DSL 2. A nova geração de ADSL está já a ser estudada por dois grandes operadores de telecomunicações (SBC Communications e BellSouth), para futuros serviços de acesso à Internet em larguras de banda muito elevadas, que permitem comunicações por voz, TV de alta definição, vídeo a pedido, e videoconferência.
As velocidades de acesso do novo standard estão dependentes da extensão dos cabos de cobre que ligam as centrais telefónicas às casas dos clientes, pelo que alguns projectos de implantação que estão, neste momento, a ser estudados deverão implicar uma complementaridade com fibra óptica.

Não existem datas precisas para o lançamento comercial do novo standard e as companhias interessadas apenas admitem que, «dentro de pouco anos», já haverá gente a ligar-se à Internet através da VDSL2. "

......JDS

[AC]

Many telecom-equipment makers that flew high during the bubble days are still struggling to get rid of excess capacity. But one of them has an advantage: JDS Uniphase .
That’s because unlike competitors, JDS Uniphase had the sense to raise tons of cash back in the bubble, which makes restructuring easier now.

The company has a treasure chest of $1.38 billion, or enough to help it simply bite the bullet and ditch unprofitable product lines instead of nursing them along, says Needham & Co. analyst John Harmon. Another plus: There are no sacred cows in the restructuring, because JDS Uniphase is under new management.

Meanwhile, JDS Uniphase is still a leader in components used in fiber-optic telecommunications networks. True, much of the fiber-optic cable laid during the telecom bubble still lies dormant. But George Putnam, whose Turnaround Letter recommends buying JDS Uniphase shares under $4.50, thinks that will change. Google, for example, is buying dark fiber to build its own network, he says. "Whenever anyone wants to buy dark fiber chances are they will turn to JDS for the equipment to do so," says Putnam.

Because JDS Uniphase burned so many people during the bubble, Putnam doesn’t expect the stock to snap back until the company’s turnaround becomes obvious. But once profits return, "patient investors who buy the stock now will be very nicely rewarded," he predicts.