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Tech fund manager bullish
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May 25, 2000: 4:13 p.m. ET
Amerindo manager sees buying opportunity; plans new tech funds
By Staff Writer Mark Gongloff
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Alberto Vilar, manager of the Amerindo Technology Fund that soared nearly 250 percent in 1999, spoke bullishly Thursday about the Internet sector while defending Amerindo's launch of two new technology funds in the middle of a bearish market.
 "Despite the fact that the market has corrected dramatically, we don't see any letting up of the explosion in the adoption of Internet technology," Vilar said. "We think the Net is going to be the largest business and investment opportunity in history by a substantial margin, bigger than the Industrial Revolution itself."
Strong words. But Amerindo, with more than $7 billion in funds, has produced strong results as an early investor in Microsoft (MSFT: Research, Estimates), Oracle (ORCL: Research, Estimates), Yahoo (YHOO: Research, Estimates) and other tech pioneers. It will launch Amerindo Internet B2B Fund and Amerindo Health & Biotechnology Fund on May 30. One fund will focus on business-to-business stocks, while the other will concentrate on biotech companies.
Vilar, who spoke about the market during a telephone conference call Thursday, defended creating new funds during a market correction. "You have to be early in technology," he said. "You have to have conviction, and you can't be a market-timer."
The Nasdaq is down 36 percent from its March 10 record high and on Tuesday closed at its lowest level of the year.
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He predicted e-commerce would grow from being a scant 2 percent of a $9 trillion U.S. economy to being 20 percent of a $12 trillion-to-$13 trillion economy in the next several years. B2B business will make up a large part of that e-commerce, he said.
He said tech stocks are "screamingly cheap" now, and he thinks the bulk of the market correction is over.
"We will have a major, powerful rally from here," he said. "It's not unreasonable to expect part of that to be dissipated over the summer, but by the end of the year we'll hopefully have another major breakout with a two-year cycle."
Vilar said Amerindo has a broader definition of B2B than some analysts, lumping infrastructure and telecom companies in with plain B2B providers.
His favorite B2Bstock is Ariba (ARBA: Research, Estimates), the top holding of Amerindo Technology Fund as of March 31. Vilar called Ariba the "No. 1 B2B company."
Among infrastructure companies, his favorites include Sycamore Networks (SCMR: Research, Estimates), Exodus Communications (EXDS: Research, Estimates) and Inktomi (INKT: Research, Estimates). Vilar said he also likes business-to-consumer providers such as homestore.com (HOMS: Research, Estimates) and Priceline.com (PCLN: Research, Estimates).
Vilar said the biotech/health care sector should recover from its long dog days of the 1990s, riding on Internet health care companies and advances in genomics. 
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