ST trading:
I'm quite encouraged by today. No meltdown. I bought some more TXN today, now down to 5% cash, I was 40% cash at the end of August.
AMAT is down, but not setting new lows, no huge gapdown. Just a grudging, minimal decline. Same pattern with all the other techs I follow (although some are setting new lows). The only stocks who are getting really whacked are the ones whose business conditions are dramatically changed, like airlines.
I believe the Fed is going to put a floor under stocks. Fed funds rate now at a level that matches the early-1990s low. When was it lower? 1960s? And the Fed is pouring liquidity in with a fire-hose (a particularly apt image). I have no idea if this is THE bottom, but I think we are "in sight of "a" bottom".
All important events, events that affect a lot of people, have unanticipated secondary and tertiary effects. One of those effects may be a surge in demand for cell phones and data storage. Cell phones may move from the "convenience" catagory to the "necessary for personal safety" catagory, in the minds of consumers. For information systems, one lesson of the WTC is the necessity of multiple redundancy, distributed networks composed of many small nodes (not a heirarchy, as those systems have a vulnerable apex). We need to organize our information systems, the way Bin Laden organizes his terror network. And that's going to require a lot more chips. |
