News
Search
Software
West staff
online
Reference
|
Boom
goes on
despite warnings
By David Watts
WARNINGS flew last week, but they did nothing to slow the booming trade in
Internet-related stocks.
On the one hand:
* The world's most powerful central banker, US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan,
warned that the lure of Net stocks was creating a lottery mentality among investors who
were piling their money into companies destined to go bust.
* Wall Street's top regulator, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission,
Arthur Levitt, urged investors to take a breath and remember traditional rules.
* Charles Schwab, chief executive of the popular online traders, told clients that his
company would be limiting access "at times" to Web trading in certain stocks
because the Net-related market was so hot that demand for trading was exceeding the number
of shares available.
But on the other hand:
* News Corporation chief Rupert Murdoch shrugged off earlier much-quoted reticence about
the Net to put his company into a partnership with the Web's main search engine site,
Yahoo!. The promotional deal between the two companies was launched during the Superbowl
-- shown by Murdoch's Fox television. Yahoo! will be advertised during Fox's televised
sporting events, while Yahoo! will promote a variety of Fox properties, including Fox's
cable stations and Internet sites like Sports Net and FX, Fox TV and news, Fox Music, and
the Twentieth Century Fox film studio.
* Yahoo! announced it was buying GeoCities Inc for $US4.6 billion. The deal creates the
biggest Web gateway. Geocities, with a history of losses, reportedly has 53 million visits
to its site each day, and hosts millions of free Web pages created by average users.
* Compaq Computer triggered another round of alliances in Net business by hiving off its
AltaVista search site as a separate company, leading to a public offering that could be
worth $US2 billion. Microsoft, a long-standing Compaq ally, endorsed the deal and said it
would adopt AltaVista as the primary search engine of the Microsoft Network.
The Guardian in London reported that the DOT index of leading companies
involved in Net commerce has risen 34 per cent so far this year. By comparison, the Dow
Jones Industrial Average is unchanged and the Nasdaq composite index is up 11 per cent.
In Australia, Net-related prospects also kept the market buoyant. This level of
activity -- described by Mr Schwab as a hot market -- is reflected in visits to financial
Web sites.
The Where Did We Go list of 100 most-visited Australian sites had 17 finance
URLs in its rankings for January. Commonwealth Securities Share Direct, an offshoot from
the Commonwealth Bank site and which allows online trading, was ranked fourth in a list
topped by the Australian Open site.
One of the stronger finance performers was Perth online broking firm Sanford
Securities, which was the 38th most visited site. Sanford deputy managing director Steven
Goh says the firm is the country's second biggest Net broker.
It rated well ahead of both Macquarie and E*Trade in the January list.
"Unlike any other stockbroking firm in Australia, we've developed all the code
ourselves," Mr Goh said. "In this regard, we're unique and for this, we were a
finalist in the E-commerce category of the AFR awards, and a finalist in the 1997 AIIA
awards for technical excellence."
All articles Copyright: © West Australian Newspapers |
Sites
Yahoo!
Geocities
Where Did We Go
Sanford Securities
|
