Tech Investment Funds

The resurgence in some technology stocks recently has many investors thinking of revisiting the sector or jumping on board for the first time. Michael Wilson reviews the stocks’ tempestuous history and finds that investors still need to keep one step ahead

So the news we’ve all been waiting for is finally coming through. The US economy is set for a soft landing, the outlook for interest rates is better than expected, the consumer boom is set to last for many years yet, and the euro is being tipped to regain its rightful position as the main counterbalance to the mighty dollar by the end of the year. All of a sudden, a rosy glow of reassurance is spreading across the stock markets of the world and consumers are in the mood for a little risk-taking once again.

Tech Investment Funds & Telecommunications

Which, in an important sense, they were. If it’s true that technology stocks are too risky and volatile for your core investment portfolio (and quite unsuitable for anyone who’s managing money on behalf of a minor or an elderly dependant), it’s also true that the markets are quite right to think the technology companies will inherit the earth one day. The decline in manufacturing and the growth of the service industry as a whole leave us in no doubt that there are perfectly good sources of wealth coming from things that we can’t see or touch. But the snag, from your point of view as an investor, is that you’ll have to work out in advance which ones will survive and which ones will get trampled underfoot - or, less depressingly, bought up by their competitors. And to do that you’ll need to be capable of thinking several steps ahead.

Tech Investment Funds & High Tech Markets

High tech markets are now springing up even in such unlikely places as China, where a string of specialist venture capital companies have been formed and floated in the last few weeks. Indeed, geography is becoming largely irrelevant in many places: wholly-electronic markets, like North America’s Nasdaq, are already planning a move into Europe (possibly through some variant of the abandoned London/Frankfurt stock market axis), which will almost certainly usher in the age of the 24-hour trading day.

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