Bill, >The one thing I still do not understand is how INTC and the rest of the big companies could miss their revenue forecasts by 25% ? With just in time to control inventories and costs how come the food chain did provide INTC with a much faster indication that the market place was disappearing so fast .?
A couple of things: first, Q1 is always down from Q4 for Intel, by 6 - 8% or so because of all the Christmas buying in Q4. Then, at the January earnings CC, Intel said business had gotten worse in the overall economy slowdown, to the point of making that 6 - 8 go to 15%, they thought. Then, it got worse again. I can speak from experience that, so far this year, companies, big and small, are not buying anything to speak of. A convenient excuse is the new yearly budget: "well, the 2001 budget doesn't have final approval yet, so we'll wait on those new departmental PCs/servers/routers until Q2 when it should be approved." I mean, you don't have to upgrade in the area of IT products like those I mentioned when you'd planned. They can always wait. I think that's what happened, i.e., loss of confidence, then the new year and the fact that budgets are tied to calendar years. Hopefully Q2 does see some pickup because of the budget phenomenon. Then, both consumer and corporate confidence hopefully starts to pick up.
As far as having cash to take advantage of the market, do you think we're at or near bottom? I've got some, but have been listening to Bob Brinker more lately. He thinks the MOABO (mother of all buying opportunities) is out to 2002 now.
Tony |
