Mark Cavallone Quotations

There are a lot of companies that go through seasonally strong and weak periods, but (their stocks) don't necessarily perform better or worse during these peaks and valleys.

Maybe Netscape comes up as a loser, but they've been over for a few years. Being bought by AOL is the culmination of that. Their future before they were bought wasn't bright at all.

I'd like to think long-term fundamentals will hold.

Certainly if you look at the list in partners ... you're looking at some pretty prominent names there. They sense that there's demand for this kind of information over the Internet.

I think it has to change. You're going to see more attention to tie corporate strategy to the Internet. If that happens, not every stock is going to go up.

I think we're going to see some more deals of this sort in future months, as AOL expands its presence in the broadband market.

Unlike Amazon, AOL does not have to worry about shipping (or similar logistics). They have a lot of success shuffling people to sites and they'll get a cut of the transaction or they'll just get rental fees. Either way, they'll benefit from e-commerce with high margins in the big picture.

CompuServe hasn't been in a huge growth mode since AOL acquired it. AOL is looking for more advertising and trying to bring in more customers.

The results for a lot of these (Internet) companies will be good from a top-line view. But I don't know that it follows that the stock will necessarily perform better.

It will help because it separates the services area from the other businesses. Lucent always says their services are doing well, but it's been hard to say how well. From a carrier perspective -- which is where most of Lucent's sales are -- they're demanding more services to maintain their networks.

It makes sense that these companies will perform well. This is growth they haven't had in the past.

It's been a matter of lack of supply. At the beginning of the year, there were not a lot of pure Internet stocks. By the end of the year, with more companies going public, that pushed up the supply. Next year we'll see more companies go public. But it will be tough to distinguish the real Internet companies.

The Internet has emerged as a mass medium. The Ken Starr report was a big event. It points to the Internet as a mass medium more than ever before.

Interest rates will be the prevailing factor over the next couple of months. A rate hike has already been figured into valuations, but if we get an indication from the Fed that a few more rate hikes could be down the road, this rally could be very short lived.

Higher interest rates tend to make higher-value stocks look less attractive.

I don't think everyone will bounce back. Investors are clearly more discriminating about the stocks they buy. They're looking at the top-tier names, not just Internet names.