In the Philippines, however, the market no longer considers index heavyweights like Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. and Benpres Holdings Corp. as tech stocks although their businesses are related to the Internet. Nowadays, the label belongs to companies that have shifted to Internet-related commerce like Philweb. Electronics and semiconductor firms Ionics Circuits Inc., Music Corp., Psi Technologies Inc. and Solid Group Inc. are also regarded as tech stocks. No hype When foreign investors started dumping Philippine stocks last year over an insider trading scandal involving gambling firm BW Resources Corp., local tech stocks provided some form of relief. Philweb, Island Mining and Imperial Resources gave investors sizable returns at a time when even blue-chip companies like PLDT and San Miguel Corp. were faltering.
Believers refuse to call the sudden popularity of tech stocks in the country a mere hype.
They call it a new ballgame that they believe is here to stay. Forget gold, forget dollar, forget diamond. The Intel Pentium chip is more valuable per weight than gold. It's not so much the raw materials that went with it. It's the intellectual property.