Weekly Commentary

2004 was a curious year for Gilder stocks.
For every one of them that was up, there
were two that were down. Yet the GTI
eked out a 2.5% gain.

Essentially, a few great performers
drowned out a much larger number of
poor performers.

If you held the right companies, you
had a great year. But if you had the
wrong ones, you got murdered.

If you owned a broad mixture, like the
GTI, then you pretty much broke even.

Stocks worthy of special mention:

Sprint (FON), Essex (KEYW), and
Synaptics (SYNA) all more than doubled.

Qualcomm (QCOM) was up 57%, pretty
good for a large cap. It saved many a
Gilderite's hide this year.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) was up
48% for the full year, even though the
Philadelphia chip index (SOXX) fell 15%.
Not one of our other chip stocks
managed a gain for the full year. 

The table below gives the 2004 return for
each of the GTI stocks. For companies
that were not in the GTI for the full year,
the return is for the GTI portion only.
 

Returns for Week Ended December 31

Gilder Technology Index (GTI):  + 1.2%
Nasdaq Composite Index (NSD):  + 0.7%
S&P 500 Index (S&P):  + 0.1%