Every Investor's Guide to High-Tech Stocks and Mutual Funds: Proven Strategies for Picking High - Hardcover

Peter Lynch, who became a Wall Street legend by leading the Fidelity Magellan fund to top-notch returns over many years, is famous for advising investors to "Buy what you know." Sounds like common sense, right? Well, Michael Murphy disagrees. That's not to say he believes in ignorance. Murphy is one of the investment world's leading experts on technology stocks-- meaning computers and other electronics, software, and biotechnology. Murphy believes that every long-term investor should own some tech stocks--more, in fact, than we typically do.

Lynch, in contrast, avoided tech stocks, preferring shares in Taco Bell and Dunkin' Donuts over businesses more difficult to understand. Murphy retorts: "That's a bus ticket up a dead-end road." Times have changed. "We are in the midst of a once-in-a-century revolution in the basis of our economy," he writes. Its basis is the constant advance of ever cheaper computing power. While other sectors of the economy limp along, barely keeping pace with inflation, 20 percent average annual growth is the norm in technology industries, which will come to dominate the U.S. economy. Murphy foresees a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average will include Microsoft and Intel.

These companies may have lofty market valuations already, but Murphy believes that many investors still share Lynch's wariness. Most Wall Street analysts still follow the old-line industries. Few mutual funds specialise in technology. As a result, most tech stocks are undervalued, but only until more investors awaken to the revolution. These are "the best of times to be a technology investor," Murphy concludes.

But how to begin? Which of today's young tech stocks are the Microsofts and Intels of the future, and which are the KayPros and Commodores? Murphy provides useful background on the trends in the major technology industries. He also details his strategy for picking winners.

The key is to evaluate a company's stock price relative not just to earnings or recent earnings growth but to its long-term growth potential. This is determined most of all by its commitment to research and development, the wellspring of future products and profits. Wall Street tends to knock down stocks of companies spending heavily on R&D, because it diminishes earnings in the short term. To Murphy, such stocks are all the more attractive. To identify them, he uses a financial yardstick of his own devising, which he calls growth flow--earnings per share plus R&D spending per share. "This is the true source of wealth for shareholders," he writes. Instead of using price/earnings ratios to assess whether stocks are under- or over-valued, Murphy looks at price relative to growth flow, factoring in the long-term importance of R&D.

Every Investor's Guide explains the additional criteria Murphy uses to single out truly great technology stocks. The book provides details on 30 stocks that the author believes will be the blue chips of the year 2010. There's also useful advice on moderating the riskiness of technology investing through diversification and other means. For those disinclined to do their own stock picking, the book provides comparative data on 20 technology mutual funds. A useful appendix lists other sources of information, including three books that, like Every Investor's Guide, should be mandatory reading for any would-be technology investor. They are Shifting Gears: Thriving in the New Economy by Nuala Beck. Bionomics: Economy as Ecosystem by Michael Rothschild, and The Great Boom Ahead by Harry S. Dent, Jr.