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We at The Intelligent Investor think that many blue chip companies and established second liners have been left behind in the scramble to get a piece of action in the new economy - you know, where you don't need to make a profit! Some analysts see this as a justified shift away from sectors that have had their day. While we don't disagree that some of the new technologies being commercialised will emerge ahead of the pack, trying to pick which ones and which company is anybody's guess. As a result, many tech stocks are soaking up investors' funds and trading at enormous multiples of sales, let alone earnings - in fact, most of them don't have earnings. All this while our old-economy friends languish. Trends in the US, where jitters on NASDAQ (the main technology market in the US) have tended to coincide with a resurgence of the Dow Jones, show that it's more a matter of when, not if, old economy stocks return to favour.