John and Others,
Steven M said Capex will be down for about two more years, and would underweight technology now as a result. Niles not too long ago said Capex for Semi-Equips will not turn up until 3 years from now. I don't remember their names but some peopleeven suggested Tech stocks won't turn up for 10, 20, 25 years.
Let's see —- I hope I have more years to live to see them proven right 10, 20, 25 years from now. Steven might be proven correct in 2 years and Niles in 3 years who knows? But if the economy turns up in 3, 6 months or 1 year from now and stocks turn up 6 months before the economy turns up —- people won't even bother reminding these Guys that they were proven Wrong!
My technique of predicting the future Top price of AMAT may not be the best but I did well during the past 2 Bull markets because of it. For 1997 my Top price was 126 but although AMAT went up not more than 108 3/8 that time still it was a good year for me. In 1999 when my Top price was 120 – 130 and the stock closed for the year at 129 —- well, I did not complain… So if AMAT surpasses the All Time High of 115 during this Bull Market that could last until Apr to Oct of 2003 —- at least it would be a Good Bull Market for me again even though I was so poor a Market Timer for having chased the stock from 110 to less than 30. So? Well, the important thing is to eventually recover and make some money again! I'm Not saying these things just to impress anybody; I've been doing all my best to help everybody in this Thread to make money by telling all the things I successfully used.
Why am I Bullish? Because we as humans, with the exception of a few who prefer to be dead than alive, we don't want to quit living and we are doing all we can to continue living. So to continue living, we have to work or have a job if we don't have enough money to buy our food and needs. In this Worldwide economy of ours, people keep on moving looking for work. People around the world, notably from the Philippines, India, Pakistan, China and others are going out of their respective countries to find work so as to continue living. In the Philippines 2,500 of them daily get Contracts to work abroad; imagine 10 Airplane flights a day of 250 each flight carrying Filipinos to be deployed in more than 160 countries (one estimate is 181 countries now) around the world! And the need for Filipino workers are rising —- the estimate for this year is 1,000,000 deployment (new hires and re-hires) or 2,700 a day despite the effects of Sep 11!
The truth is many countries are finding they need people outside their own countries to work for them. Their own people can not keep up, repeat, can not keep with the work to be done.
When the Baby Boomers begin retiring at age 62 in 2008, we could see a very very Big problem of finding people to work. (Here comes CHIPs to the rescue! When they make machines that can help humans) … Still 7 years to go but we are now seeing signs of the problem emerging, here are just a few: —-
In the Medical field alone: —-
UK:—-
… needs 10,000 foreign Doctors by 2005. Got already more than 5,000 Nurses (3000+ from the Philippines and 1000+ from South Africa despite the protestations of Nelson Mandela who was accusing the UK of poaching).,,, Still need 1000 more foreign nurses this year. Meanwhile, NORWAY is training some 3,500 Filipino nurses right now to speak Norwegian. To complicate matters, Japan, Canada and California are offering Competitive salaries to entice Filipino nurses to work for them. All over the world there's acute need for Medical personnel. Even Israel are still getting Filipino caregivers because their people are getting older also… These Anthraxes, Small Poxes, Big Poxes if there are any, will only worsen the scarcity of Medics, Nurses, Med Techs, Biothechs wordwide.
Teachers: —-
UK, USA, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, New ZEALAND are all in need of teachers and instructors in the Sciences. (I wonder if the teachers who quit found their own Electronic companies)
IRELAND —- informed the Philippines that it needs 200,000 Professionals and other skilled workers for the next 6 years.
GERMANY and ITALY are relaxing their Immigration policies to lure foreign workers to their midst.
HONGKONG is a favorite destination for Filipino Service workers in hotels and household workers who also baby-sit the children of Parents who in turn work hard in Electronic Companies. Ditto to TAIWAN and SINGAPORE and MALAYSIA. But now these countries are asking for a lot of foreign IT (information tech) and Electronic workers because they can not do all the work by themselves.
By the way Muslims do not necessarily hate Christians: —- how can you explain a million Filipino Roman Catholics working in SAUDI ARABIA and thousands more in KUWAIT, UAE, OMAN, QATAR, and many more… although deployment to AFGHANISTAN, and neighboring countries like PAKISTAN, IRAQ, IRAN, UZBEKISTAN, even CHEKNYA are on hold. These Muslim countries also cherish life and are improving their lot by hiring needed foreign workers whether they are Muslims or not.
The list go on and on. The main thing is that countries all over the world need workers and workers.
(It is Ironic that the Philippines who supply the Bulk of workers abroad drive away Foreign companies. Too much Politics that is the problem —- foreign companies are scared. The fact that the country has the second highest in salaries for workers in SouthEast Asia (second only to Singapore) is not of help. The country remains at the Bottom in SouthEast Asia because the best of its people are being utilized elsewhere ... Oh Well, the Philippines' Loss is the Whole WideWorld's Gain --- fair enough ... ). |
