Super Techs!

But the incredible story of the week has to be Multiactive Software (TSE - E). I first added Multiactive to our index on July 25, 1999. Then, after re-organizing the index, Multiactive fell off it on Oct. 24 after trading below a dollar a share for three consecutive weeks. I was reluctant to take it off as I believed it was a temporary decline. And I noted at the time that it had been "recommended by Stock Picker's Digest as a speculative buy for aggressive investors".

Pat McKeough was right in spades. On Nov. 18th, the company's Entice! 1.5 software won the Best Enterprise Productivity Software award at COMDEX and was a finalist for Best of Show. That sent the stock up from $0.80 to $1.25 on Nov. 19th. This week the stock shot up even more, closing Friday at $3.38, up 170% for the week, the largest single week's gain since I started doing my Movers & Shakers updates.

After such a meteoric rise, is the stock still a buy? The company went so far as to issue a press release saying it could not explain the sudden rise other than its success at COMDEX. Nevertheless, Stock Picker's Digest still sees it as a buy as of Friday, but only for aggressive investors.

The next big gainer for the week is Calgary's Wi-Lan (TSE - WIN) which jumped on rumours of a possible deal between Wi-Lan and Cisco Systems, "either a licensing agreement or a takeover of Wi-Lan by Cisco". That sent the stock to $26.05 at Wednesday's close. But it didn't stop there. After an announcement that the company was hosting a gathering of wireless companies next week to form a consortium built around its technology, the stock skyrocketed 30% on Friday alone to close at $43.60, up almost 115% for the week.

The meeting will be held in Santa Clara, California on December 2 and has attracted interest from major industry players. Part of the Cisco speculation revolves around the fact that the two companies have developed similar technologies and it may be simpler for Cisco to simply buy Wi-Lan than face a possible patent infringement lawsuit. Cisco and its partners will be among the attendees at Wi-Lan's conference.

Third on the list is new addition to our list, MGI Software (TSE - MGI). The stock had already jumped 44% the previous week and was recommended as a "Strong Buy" by Canaccord Capital in its Morning Letter on Monday Nov. 19th. Canaccord was right. The stock soared 98% for the week after it announced that Hitachi Ltd. of Japan had licensed MGI's Pure DIVA software which enables a personal computer to act like a television set.

Whereas current convergence technologies are based on hardware add-ons to your computer, Pure DIVA is a software solution which allows greater flexibility and is generally cheaper.

In September MGI Software's PhotoSuite II became the best selling software package in the U.S.. It's the first time photography software has led the top ten list outselling such popular items as Norton AntiVirus 5.0 and Microsoft's Windows 98 Upgrade package. (Be sure to visit their website just to check out their Zoom graphics. It's wild!)

The company recently acquired digital imaging specialist Live Picture and also licenses its own imaging technology to firms such as The Learning Company which makes Reader Rabbit and has put the National Geographic on CD-ROM.

Stock Pickers Digest first recommended the stock at $1.87 in July 1998 and now recommends taking some profits though they still view it as a buy for "highly aggressive investors".

The next two companies on our Movers & Shakers list both jumped over 50% for the week. E-Dispatch.com Wireless Data (VSE - EWD), which has been mentioned on these pages a few times recently, continues to surge in price. This is my twentieth Movers & Shakers Report and e-Dispatch has been on it eight times, only one of those a decline. Here is a brief summary of its appearance here.

E-Dispatch.com on our Movers & Shakers List

As noted in our Movers & Shakers Report of Oct. 25th, Canaccord Capital's David Wong recommended the stock as a speculative buy on Sept. 9th. Refer back to that report for more details. He hasn't commented on the stock since. It traded as low as $0.80 at the beginning of July and is now at $7.10, a gain of 787.5%.

The other stock to jump over 50% is Travelbyus.com (TSE - TBU). The company, which also trades on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange as TVB, ascribed the sudden increase "to an article appearing in the German newspaper Euro AM Sonntag on Sunday, November 21, 1999, which referenced the Company's recent acquisition activity and its business prospects" which caused a surge in price before the TSE opened on the 22nd.

Of the others on my list, Certicom is in its third consecutive week of double digit gains, as is Axia NetMedia, Cyberplex and Corel. In their second week of double digit gains are Infowave Software, long a favourite of the Inner Circle's Bill Ridley, as well as Microforum and Mortice Kern Systems. On the downside, EM-Net Corporation is in its second week of major decline.