investmenttool.com Cover Story

2001 Scorecard

There were more losers than winners in 2001 for our portfolios. Even in defeat, there are many lessons for investors to learn from.

We had many losers in our portfolios in 2001. This is to be expected in the worst year the market has had since 2000. The biggest loser on a percentage basis was 82% of its market capitalization. This was closely followed by JDS Uniphase, which dropped lots of corporate goodwill and 79% of its shareholder value. PMCS was a contender at 73%. CMGI also made the big leagues in losers with a 71% drop.

There was a second string in bad stocks to own in 2001. That was led by players such as Lucent, Oracle, and Cisco, which took hits greater than 50%. Yahoo weighed in as a value play in the big loser parade with a 40% drop.

There were lots of bright spots in 2001, even in the technology sector. Microsoft had its trouble in 2000 and turned in a 53% rebound. The court case kind of got that one. IBM was friendly to investors, never being hit very hard and finishing up 42%. Dell computer helped drive the Technology Portfolio to a meager gain with a 56% rise.

The technology portfolio was the winner and champion last year with an increase. Surprise surprise! Who said all technology funds were losers. This portfolio was up 1.7% for 2001. Its's still 15% in the red since its inception in 1999. Still, in a lousy environment capital was preserved.

Our biggest individual winner as far as stocks go was the famous Earthlink. It rose 141% from $5 to $12 a share. Certainly not out of trouble, but a winner is a winner. I wouldn't have put any of my own money into that one. Still too much competition in the field.

Investors in AOL (down 7.8%), Intel (up 4.6%) and Banc one (up 6.6%) can at least claim they beat the mighty S&P 500 (down around 12%).

If you wanted a loser portfolio, the Band Width portfolio turned in a 77% loss. This was due to the collapse of the bandwidth sector. Too much capacity came on line as everyone from Enron to Montana Electric tried getting into the sector.

Our next worst portfolio was Internet, down 18%. Our 21st Century mutual fund did the 16% dive, followed by the S&P, down 12%.

What conclusions do we have here? Simple, stay away from the trendy. The Bandwidth portfolio as created by an acquaintance first met on the Dell Yahoo message board. He insisted his sector would outperform Dell. It did, for a while, but never delivered on profits and did a swan dive this year.

We are expecting better results in 2002. So are a lot of investors.

For our front page, click here.

Shmuel Protter
investmenttool.com

Send this page to a friend

Friends Email (Required):
Your Email (Required)    :
Your Name (Required)    :

Enter your message to your friend (optional):

Return Email receipt: Yes No
Join Stockwatch Alert Mailing list: Yes No

---

Join Stockwatch Alert mailing list.

---

---