These Tech Stocks Will Make Me Rich

Welcome to week 15 of my stock-picking throwdown with Mr. Market. Let's get right to the numbers:

Company	Starting Price*	Recent Price***	Total Return
Akamai (Nasdaq: AKAM)	$22.23	$9.29	(58.2%)
Harris & Harris	$6.22	$3.10	(50.2%)
IBM (NYSE: IBM)	$129.05	$71.74	(44.4%)
Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL)	$22.75	$15.40	(32.3%)
Taiwan Semiconductor	$10.34	$5.85	(43.4%)
AVERAGE RETURN	--	--	(45.70%)
S&P 500 SPDR (AMEX: SPY)	$126.28**	$75.45	(40.25%)
DIFFERENCE	--	--	(5.45%)

Source: Yahoo! Finance.
*Tracking began on Aug. 7, 2008.
**Adjusted for dividends and other returns of capital.
***Yahoo! Finance at close of Nov. 20, 2008.

Anyone else feel like they just went 10 rounds with Muhammad Ali? Forget Detroit. My portfolio, down 15% in a week, needs a bailout, posthaste. I also lost ground to Mr. Market.

Bargain-hunting isn't as easy as it seems, either. Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) looks cheap, but it could be a spectacular value trap. Cisco, too -- if you're Rick Munarriz. Here are his three reasons to throw this networker away.

But not all tech news is bad news. Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) beat back the bear attack with a better-than-expected earnings report. So did cloud-computing upstart salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM). Nibbling at low-priced tech stocks like these now should lead to a feast of wealth later.

Consider history. David Gardner produced a decade of 20% returns by buying and holding the likes of Amazon.com and eBay in the real-money Rule Breaker portfolio. Tom Gardner's "simpleton portfolio" was also a market-beater. With these five tech stocks, I believe that I will achieve similar success.

Checkup time!
Now, let's move on to the rest of today's update:

• New data from researcher iSuppli suggests that Taiwan Semiconductor and its chipmaking peers are in for a very tough 2009.
• The state of Georgia awarded IBM an $873 million consulting and services contract.
• Akamai cut approximately 110 jobs, while Amazon announced a competitive, if lightweight, CDN service called CloudFront.

There's your checkup. See you back here next week for more tech stock talk.

Get your clicks with more techie Foolishness:

• Why the iPhone is poised to keep winning.
• Obama's candidacy was built on tech. Why can't his presidency be, too?
• No matter what he says today, Mr. Softy is going to learn to yodel. Bet on it.