Stock market performance reaches a high that most bank tech stocks would love to copy

By Art Gillis

There are hundreds of checks and balances I use in the selection of the best core apps solution for a client. The price of a vendor's stock is not one of them. And what I know about the stock market is like what a pharmacist knows about brain surgery. "Whadya got for a headache?" "Let me open your skull to see what's wrong."

But I confess to keeping track of bank tech stocks in my report "Automation in Banking." Prices are tracked from April to April. Having noticed the Dow Jones news item last week about an all-time high, I looked at the performance since April 2006 of 17 public companies in the report whose revenue is almost entirely from bank technology. Only three companies had stock price increases. They were Open Solutions Inc., Fiserv and TSYS. OPEN scored a 31% gain during the period thanks to a private investor takeover. FISV made a gain of 19% doing just what comes naturally for this giant. And TSS got back on a recovery track with a 19% gain. The rest of the list of public companies is not breaking stock market records either because the companies have leveled off, they are a small part of a public company and thus not a factor in the price of the stock, and some are marking time while looking for acquirers. If there's one thing the stock market and I agree on, it's the content of my blog posted at www.banktech.com/blog on August 21, 2006 - "This is a Pretty Dull Time for Bank Technology." Maybe I should add, "except for M&A activity." Disclaimer: Art Gillis relies on his bank for investment advice and portfolio management.