Rule Breaker Portfolio

Livin' on Internet Time
Plus, the original dot-com

By David Gardner

ALEXANDRIA, VA (Dec. 8, 1999) -- The Rule Breaker portfolio had a nothing special day on a nothing special day. Scroll down below this report, as always, for the numbers.

Quick report tonight. Let's just flip through our electronic pages together and trawl for news on BreakerPort companies.

Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) rose $2 1/2 to $88 9/16 today. The company was listed as a "Stock to Watch" by Reuters this morning, following its announcement yesterday of a partnership with Sprint PCS to make buying from Amazon possible over Internet-ready Sprint PCS phones.

OK, so Amazon closed at $88 and change. Quick quiz. You are NOT allowed to look this up and you must answer within three seconds:

Within $4 either way, what is Amazon's 52-week high?

Page down to the bottom of this page where you'll find the answer printed in upside-down font. Just kidding. The answer is $110 5/8. Did you get it right? I'm not sure whether to reward you for knowing your stocks, or chastise you for following too closely. All things considered, though, the world needs more knowledge, not less... so you're a winner.

(What's the 52-week low, within $4?)

(You could look it up. Anyway, not a bad year, eh?)

Let us digress.

Was Amazon the original public "dot-com" company? I'm not sure I remember any prominent company that went public before Amazon.com started a revolution with its name. Speaking from today, December 8, 1999, it is now in fact a revolution turned toward cynicism. The old saw now runs that if you just put "dot-com" on the end of your name, you'll double your company's market cap within one trading day. Those things said, take the Internet's two biggest success stories -- America Online and Yahoo! -- and note that neither one of them has "dot-com" in their names.

So while we can joke about "dot-com" names, market value is ultimately conferred to businesses, not just the names they bear.

In other news, Amgen's (Nasdaq: AMGN) CEO Gordon Binder will be retiring, the company reported, come this May. Who's taking over? The company's chief operating officer. Amgen rose 1% today.

Excite@Home (Nasdaq: ATHM) surrendered some more shareholder value today, selling off another 3%. The public markets did not like power broker AT&T's move to voluntarily open up its cable lines to other Internet service providers. Frankly, I didn't either -- who ever wants to give away a big advantage? My own hands loosened ever so slightly from the tight grip I normally maintain on my investments. Given that context, I found Jeff's recap from Monday night to be quite a contrary bullish take -- one that I do find pretty compelling. Consider that Excite@Home does retain exclusivity as Internet cable service provider for AT&T until June 2002, and think what that means in "Internet time."

The phenomenon of Internet time is real. The idea, for anyone whose head has been buried in the sand, goes like this: That the growth and adoption of the Internet as a broadcast, communications, and transactions medium has been so unprecedentedly humongous that the passage of time as regards to Internet activity runs at a much faster pace than the "real" passage of time. Years worth of growth are packed into one year. Days worth of retail transactions occur in minutes.

We're going to talk about Excite@Home on our radio show this weekend, and we'd love to take a call from you. If you'd like to be on the air, hit this link to contact our radio show producer Mac Greer. Not only that, but we take a broad range of questions or comments, so if you have something even more interesting to discuss, don't be bashful. In fact, you can't be: The Motley Fool radio show broadcasts to 1.6 million listeners every weekend. So get ready to be a star and shine.

Finally, Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) announced its continued efforts to raise money for literacy with Garry Trudeau, the Doonesbury cartoonist. Could this have been what sank the stock 5% today? Say it ain't so, Trudeau.

Which opens up an opportunity to mention The Motley Fool's charity drive, Foolanthropy '99. Select one or more of our five Foolish charitable winners and give to some of the best causes in the world. In fact, learn on that page how to give stock -- the most Foolish way to give of all.

And remember that every single post on our message boards this month induces us to give 2 cents to the charitable fund. It gives new meaning to "Here's my two cents," eh? Strike a blow for freedom -- freedom here, for others -- as you use The Motley Fool. That's a sufficiently unWise note to end on.

Fool on!