Roxane Googin
Editor, High Tech Observer

Roxane Googin is editor of the High Tech Observer, a subscription service for portfolio managers focusing on the technology sector. The High Tech Observer focuses on fundamental trends throughout the sector that have the potential to radically alter group economics, and shift market capitalizations by tens of billions of dollars. These trends tend not to be clear to the observer of incremental change, but since they are based on marginal advances in R&D, they are very deterministic. The assumption behind the service is that once these macro trends are identified understood, optimal asset allocation becomes a function of timing their manifestation.

The High Tech Observer frequently focuses on inter-modal competition between economic models, as these tend to be the most disruptive. While timing always remains an issue, the success rate of this model is almost 100%. Since 1997, the main error has been to be too conservative on the Y2k software impact, although we spotted a number of software blow-ups in time to avoid losses. Success highlights include predicting the Internet boom during the depths of the LTCM credit crisis in 1998, as well as predicting the bubble's demise in September 2000. For the purposes of the Telecosm, this model is most noteworthy for its 2000 prediction that the current network revolution would result not in economic nirvana, but rather in economic Armageddon.

Roxane Googin has a BS-EE from the University of Tennessee, and an MBA from the University of Virginia. In addition to engineering experience in development and manufacturing, Roxane has experienced finance from the cradle to the grave: from venture capital, through equity analysis, to term lending and finally to asset-based lending.