Heard on the street: Momentum investors hurtle into Dell stock, but what happens if they hurtle out again?
Care to guess what has been the highest-flying of the larger technology stocks in the past year?</br></br>It isn't Intel, Microsoft or even Iomega. Of stocks with more than $1 billion in market value, the biggest percentage gainer is Dell Computer, a company that does nothing more complicated than assemble computers and mail them to customers.</br></br>In the past 12 months, Dell's stock price has more than quadrupled. Intel is up 146%, Microsoft has doubled, and data-storage darling Iomega, after a dramatic rise and fall, is up 55%. As many tech stocks have sagged in the past few weeks, Dell has proved surprisingly robust, losing just 7.4% off its Feb. 26 high. It closed Friday at 70 1/8, down 2 1/8.</br></br>What explains Dell's startling stock-market success? Two things -- one good and another more worrisome.</br></br>The good news is that Dell has been firing on all cylinders amid strong double-digit unit growth for world-wide personal computer sales. Dell's once-controversial formula -- skipping middlemen by selling direct, and building machines only once they are ordered -- has become the envy of the industry.