Shipping is a commodity Leroy, that is the problem. There is very little loyalty to shipping, after all there are hundreds of postal services out there that compete and can move into the overnight markets should they choose. Most significant customers will change their shippers in an instant if it means price savings. Besides shipping is very cyclical and heavily dependent on huge upfront capital outlays that means debt that the market focuses on for a long time. Lastly its a commodity as I say. Whether Fedex or USPS deliver your package on time, do you really care who did it?


Most of the hot sectors are intellectually based because that prevents competition. Internet was one of those things where people saw "killer aps" and bid up stock prices. All the hot IPOs were for a technology or business model that was different than others. Simply put, if a company can't temporarily monopolize or dominate a particular niche, its too exposed to competition and erosion of profits. The only way you can have a commodity that you dominate is if you make it impossible to do the business elsewhere. This is what makes E-Bay compelling. Other auctions exist and anyone can start up an auction site, but if you don't have a market built-in, forget it. E-Bay has that built in market.


Something I think might make some hay is PayPal or something like it. There are a lot of competitors now, but if one could become super-sized, so to speak, they might leave the others in the dust. The current shake-up and going under of some of the offshore betting world could be a good catalyst. I have long suggested what was needed isn't a payment system, but a bankroll system. In other words instead of having to deposit $1000 here and there just to be able to bet into certain sites, why not have $3000 as a bankroll with one site and have that be portable. If you go into casino A, you buy-in $200 to play poker today and they take it out of your account. That same day you can shop the offshore sports books and put in $500 in action, each time having your bet amount deducted from your account. If this system was big enough, they could force a lot of books to take your action. Right now books don't want you to do this because its competitors getting your action and they lose the float. If a couple of reliable and financially solid companies took this role, they could make a vast amount of money and it would be among my growth industries because they would earn a ton of float and could charge a small fee to each book or casino for each transaction. Further it could act as an end-around to all the silly legislation being proposed this year. So add online-payments as another potential growth sector and PayPal is kicking it off.