The Gurus Go Old School Tech

Are we in the midst of another tech bubble? Recent headlines proclaimed that noted bubble-caller and Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller had said so, but in his latest for Canada’s Globe and Mail, Validea CEO John Reese says that’s not the case.

While Shiller has talked about there being something of a bubble mentality in regards to certain hyped-up tech plays, Reese says that “if you dig just a little deeper, Mr. Shiller does not seem to be calling a sector-wide bubble. In fact, in another recent interview, he said that the tech sector is one of the four cheapest sectors in the market right now, based on its 10-year cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio.”

Reese says the Guru Strategies he uses to invest in stocks are also finding a lot of undervalued tech stocks right now, particularly among the ‘old school’ tech firms. “While they were once the hotshot darlings of the tech world, today many investors view these companies as old, stodgy and unexciting — and that’s just fine,” he says. “Because, while they’re not producing gangbusters growth any more, they are still running very strong businesses. They trade at very attractive valuations — unlike many of those new high flying tech stars, whose P/E ratios in some cases are more than 100 (or incalculable because they don’t actually have any earnings).”

Reese looks at a trio of attractive”old-school” tech plays his models like. Among them: Microsoft, which gets interest from his Warren Buffett-based approach.