10 Things You Need to Know: Weighing and Measuring the Contenders to Be the Next Microsoft

This story is part of a weeklong series that looks at the top 10 trends to help you invest in the coming year. Click on the tile at left to see other stories.

Bellwethers or bubbles? That's the question that tech investors face as they try to figure out which stocks will lead the market through the next millennium or so.

The hunt is on to find the new bellwethers, the top companies in expanding parts of the economy. These are the stocks that epitomize colossal economic trends: companies such as Microsoft (MSFT Quote), embodying the rise of desktop software; Intel (INTC Quote), the rise of the chip; and Cisco (CSCO Quote), the growth of the Internet and its emergence as a sales channel. ...