My Tech Portfolio Will Crush the Market

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2

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Welcome to Week Seven of my stock-picking throwdown with Mr. Market. Let's get right to the numbers:

Company

Starting Price

Recent Price

Total Return

Akamai (Nasdaq: AKAM)

$22.23

$17.00

(23.5%)

Harris & Harris (Nasdaq: TINY)

$6.22

$8.00

28.6%

IBM (NYSE: IBM)

$129.05

$111.47

(13.6%)

Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL)

$22.75

$18.75

(17.6%)

Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE: TSM)

$10.34

$9.37

(9.4%)

AVERAGE RETURN

--

--

(7.10%)

S&P 500 SPDR (AMEX: SPY)

$126.73

$119.37

(5.81%)

DIFFERENCE

--

--

(1.29%)

Source: Yahoo! Finance.

Can you believe it? In a week where Lehman Brothers failed, AIG needed a bailout, and Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch, my tech portfolio was up. And not only up -- it vastly outperformed the S&P 500.

Could tech be a safe haven? I'm not sure I'd go that far. But we Rule Breakers investors have seen this sort of carnage before, and we know that we'll see it again. All I can do is be patient and take comfort in knowing that it's durable gains that matter most -- like when David Gardner produced a decade of 20% returns by buying and holding the likes of Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and eBay in the real-money Rule Breaker portfolio, or when Tom Gardner selected a "simpleton portfolio" to hold for a decade, with market-crushing results. I think these five tech stocks will produce plenty of durable gains.

This week's checkup
Now, let's move on to the rest of this week's update:

  • Akamai saw Amazon invade its market this week, but the consequences are very unlikely to be as dire as investors appear to think. Amazon won't offer as many features as Akamai does, nor will it support streaming, industry watcher Dan Rayburn reports.
  • Oracle last night reported outstanding fiscal-first quarter results. Revenue improved 18%, while per-share GAAP earnings rose 28%. Nice.

There's your checkup. See you back here next week for more tech-stock talk.

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Amazon and eBay are Stock Advisor selections. Akamai and Harris & Harris are Rule Breakers recommendations. Try either of these market-beating services free for 30 days. There's no obligation to subscribe.

Fool contributor Tim Beyers, who is ranked 19,561 out of more than 115,000 participants in CAPS, also writes for Rule Breakers. Tim had positions in Akamai, Harris & Harris, IBM, Oracle, and Taiwan Semiconductor at the time of publication. Bank of America is an Income Investor pick. The Motley Fool owns shares of S&P 500 depository receipts and has a tech-tastic disclosure policy.

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Related Tickers

11/24/2009 4:00 PM
ORCL $22.14 Down -0.46 -2.04%
Oracle Corp. CAPS Rating: ****
SPY $110.99 Up +0.17 +0.15%
S&P DEP RECEIPTS CAPS Rating: No stars
IBM $127.93 Down -0.27 -0.21%
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AMZN $132.94 Down -0.06 -0.05%
Amazon.com, Inc. CAPS Rating: **
AKAM $24.27 Down -0.32 -1.30%
Akamai Technologie… CAPS Rating: *****
TINY $4.32 Down -0.08 -1.82%
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TSM $10.41 Down -0.10 -0.95%
Taiwan Semiconduct… CAPS Rating: *****

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