Don't Get Sucked Into Tech Stocks

This column was originally published on RealMoney on March 8 at 8:48 a.m. EST. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers. For more information about subscribing to RealMoney, please click here.

The insistence that tech should go higher here is annoyingly palpable. This morning Morgan Stanley upgraded KLA-Tencor(KLAC Quote) and Applied Materials(AMAT Quote) and I am sure there will be the predictable excitement that comes from saying anything good about anything semi.

To which I say, "Great, in five months I am all over this upgrade." Not much in 2007 has played out the way people thought it was supposed to, except the calendar when it comes to tech, which is to say that you can't own it here. You just have to forget about it.

You can occasionally trade it; Google(GOOG Quote) at $440 seemed right for a trade. So do Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) and eBay(EBAY Quote).

But the semis? Intel(INTC Quote), Micron(MU Quote) and AMD(AMD Quote) are all pathetic.

And the softwares? Just try to get a rally going with Microsoft(MSFT Quote) and Oracle(ORCL Quote) acting so sick.

I like the networkers, but in actuality that means I like Cisco(CSCO Quote), 'cause Ciena(CIEN Quote) and Alcatel-Lucent(ALU Quote) and Tellabs(TLAB Quote) are just awful (and I know about the Ciena contract from Scott Moritz's excellent work.)

To me, a call about the semiconductor equipment with endmarkets as weak as they are, ex-Avnet(AVT Quote) and Analog Devices(ADI Quote), just seems like a giant waste of time.

There are some decent stocks in this market, but almost none involve tech. Consider Hewlett-Packard(HPQ Quote): great quarter and no real worries about Dell(DELL Quote), it turns out. But the stock is still 8% from where it reported.

I think Apple's(AAPL Quote) going to have outstanding iPhone numbers, but that stock too is rangebound.

The group just, to quote the CEO of D.R. Horton(DHI Quote), sucks.

Don't get sucked in. It won't work.

Random musings: Ah, the conundrum of what happens after a big up day. We go up 160 points, the most in ages, and we don't go up the next day. Is that bad or good? "Of course it's bad." We go up 160 points and then we go up 100 points the next day. Is that bad or good? "Of course it's bad; it's a short squeeze." I have done a lot of work on what happens after big down and big up days, and the work has revealed something startling, something downright shocking: The next day is of no significance! I sure wish it were, but sorry, the markets just won't obey.