What the experts say

PCs set to surge

This year could be a very good one “indeed” for the personal computer industry, said Eric Savitz in Barron’s. Despite high unemployment and a still-sluggish economy, several factors bode well for companies in the business of making personal computers. “With netbooks down to the $200 range, the number of PCs per household has risen,” and should continue to do so in 2010. Meanwhile, analysts believe, it’s “almost certainly a given” that companies will boost their spending on PCs this year. (It doesn’t hurt that Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system has gotten “generally positive reviews.”) But investors shouldn’t limit their search to PC makers, whose stocks are already up. An uptick in PC business would bode well for “a host of companies,” including disk-drive makers Seagate and Western Digital, microprocessor suppliers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, and memory-chip companies such as Micron and Marvell.

Destined to be obsolete

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Many technological mainstays such as iPods and flat-screen TVs “didn’t exist” a decade ago, said AnnaMaria Andriotis in SmartMoney. So you can be sure that consumer habits will see as much change in the coming decade. Take the telephone industry, for instance. Roughly one in five U.S. households now have no land lines, only cell phones. “It will probably take a while, but home land lines could become as archaic as the rotary phone.” Online calling services, such as Skype, are making it even easier to drop your home phone. That’s good news for the stocks of Internet telephony and mobile-device manufacturers, but not so good for AT&T, Verizon, and other legacy phone carriers.

Penny-pinching like an economist

Whether because of their training or a ­“fascination with money and choices,” economists tend to be cheapskates, said Justin Lahart in The Wall Street Journal. “Milton Friedman, the late Nobel laureate, routinely returned reporters’ calls collect,” and that miserly tradition lives on. Economics majors are still less likely to donate money than are students in other fields, and economists are among the most egregious “free riders”—economic parlance for those who knowingly take more than their fair share. Still, experts in efficiency and opportunity cost aren’t indiscriminately stingy. Because they also “are taught to value their own time,” they’ll pry open their wallets to hire help for menial or specialized tasks.