Tech Reality Check Looks To Get More Real

Back a while I predicted that the Tech sector would go through a 'readjustment'. I couldn't bring myself to state the obvious about the banks, you all knew anyway. I thought that MSoft, IBM and HP would weather the storm albeit slightly worse off. I mentioned google, ebay and Visa as being inflated. Predictions of $275 for google were scoffed at. Visa at $50, ebay under $20 (perhaps $10). Time does tell.

Things are looking grim for the air stocks. I think Yahoo has been a little unfortunate, but if you are going to knock back all that Microsoft money you better have had a plan. Hopefully they'll get someone with a clue and a plan to save Yahoo. (I could lend a hand.)

I hope those who read my Finextra warning paid attention. I am not a financial advisor, I do however have an opinion occasionally when something is so obvious...

E-commerce figures are beginning to look worse than the high street spend so Visa is in for a rough ride.

HP seems to be doing well. They might be doing even better soon.

Lets hope they are all still here this time next year.

There might be a new tech player on the field by then. A new company with a boss who likes to play with FPGA's (like me) and computers has come up with a new design for supercomputers.  I can see the Risk guys and algorithmic traders drooling, and they'll come in handy throughout the whole banking sector. If they get it right (and I know it can be done) then we will see a massive increase in the number crunching power available at low cost, environmentally and monetarily. They are being backed by Intel (my favourite can't say for legal reasons) and Xilinx (my favourite FPGA supplier) to bring us this new architecture. The brains behind it is another old hippy Steven J. Wallach and his Convey Computer company.  He just might be one to watch in 2009 (like me).

ps. I can't help but remember the Silicon CEO's assuring themselves and us that the tech sector was not at risk through the Financial Fiasco, and haven't decided whether it was talking up their companies or reassuring  their shareholders. Either way most of them were either wrong, ignorant or dishonest but certainly not right. What price does that get these days?

I suppose they should be getting multi-million dollar bonuses for doing well? Perhaps they were hypnotised by their own hype of an advertising funded free ride through monitoring and selling every nuance of consumer behaviour. 

I won't mind someone studying a consumer's behaviour, so long as they can't tell if it's me. Until advertisers move towards that business model  many of theses tech-ad stocks will languish where they belong, with the failed ideas of the past.