Skipper Sees Another Year of 'Tough Sledding' for Big Tech

6. What sort of returns do you expect from the broader market this year?

We're looking at a year of tough sledding, but people who pick the right stocks are going to have a terrific year.

My guess is that the S&P 500 actually has a nice positive return -- something in the teens. I think we're due. We've had three negative years in a row, and not just a little negative -- a lot negative. Maybe it's back-end-loaded, who knows? But I think it has a pretty good year.

But I think tech doesn't do as well. The reason is so much of the resources are on the enterprise side, and the big-cap guys have already moved. So it feels to me that tech probably lags. But you know what? That doesn't mean every tech stock lags. There are going to be some tech stocks that go up 200%, 300%. If you own one of two of them, you're going to have a great year.

We've made a bunch of bets, and I'm prepared to have to change them as the year goes on. I think some new things are going to emerge.

You know when the Apollo astronauts were returning from the moon? There's a part of the Earth's atmosphere where they lose communication. We're kind of in the stock-market equivalent of that. There's a lot of stuff going on, and it's really hard to tell what it all means. Each passing month is going to tell us a lot.

For example, it's very hard to tell what the impact of Iraq and North Korea will be. I can't imagine that it'll be good. But I don't know how bad it will be or for how long. It depends on how it goes. And there's a bunch of stuff going on like that, where you look at it and say, "Don't know!"