RtS,
You have found another good article that sums up the present situation nicely. At the first of the year, the consensus was that business would be "poor" in the first half of the year, but then it would recover. Now that we are 3 weeks away from entering the second half of the year the story is changing - like maybe it will be the 4th quarter or even next year before it gets better.
In the meantime, earnings estimates are still on a downward trend. It didn't help that today DPMI and some others said they would not be meeting expectations going forward. For the foreseeable future, the First Call earnings estimates for this year and next year will continue to go down. If group prices stay roughly the same, but earnings continue to fall, the PE of the group will continue to rise from its present level of 36. That number was trimmed a little today, however, since the group value declined 4.1 percent today to finish at 823.71. Out of the group of 30 stocks, only 4, COHU, SMTL, UTEK and WFR finished in positive territory. DPMI was the big loser for the day, down 11.6 percent based on its downward estimate warnings this morning.
Don |
