Legg Mason's Miller Sees Blue Skies for Tech in 2001

While marquee stock picker Bill Miller was predicting bluer skies for tech stocks next year at a Midtown Manhattan press lunch Wednesday, data from Fidelity illustrate that firm's tepid attitude toward the sector.

The skipper of the (LMVTX Quote)Legg Mason Value, which is down 6.1% in the year to date, said he wasn't going to make any predictions, but in a hurried presentation he divulged what he sees down the road. The upshot: The price of oil will drop, the euro will rise, high-yield bonds look attractive and the tech-laden Nasdaq Composite Index will recover from its 28% loss this year. Gazing up at a slide detailing the losses of the Nasdaq and its sibling exchanges overseas, Miller simply said, "That's where we think the opportunity will be next year."

That same morning, the December issue of Fidelity's Mutual Fund Guide arrived, and it doesn't look like the titanic shop's managers are all that jazzed about tech stocks. Of the 34 nonindexed diversified stock funds, 20 dropped their tech weighting in October. And half of those funds had a smaller weighting in the tech sector than their benchmark -- growth fund managers usually underweight sectors they think aren't particularly strong at a given time. While much of this fall was probably due to sagging stock prices in the tech sector, it doesn't look like managers were rushing out to buy more shares. ...