What is it "they" say - "Hope springs eternal"? This David Wong seems to have a lot of "hope".:) Perhaps he kept the SOX above the zero gain mark today?:)
<<Analyst sees chips rebound 'a few months away'
4:15 PM ET 1/5/09
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Semiconductor stocks rose Monday after a Wachovia analyst said that an industry rebound was "a few months away."
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index $SOX rose 0.6% after analyst David Wong upgraded the sector to overweight from market weight, saying the industry may be poised for a rebound.
"As more data becomes available, allowing us to quantify the impact of the current downturn on various technology segments, we grow more hopeful that an inflection point in fundamentals may be relatively close, a few months away," Wong said in a research note.
Major chip makers, led by Intel Corp. (INTC), Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) and Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN), have scaled back their targets over the past months, citing the steep drop in demand.
The outlook for the sector is so grim that Gartner Inc. has predicted that the industry is poised to suffer back-to-back years of lower revenue for the first time in 2009. Read more.
However, Wong said, "we are hopeful that aggressive action to control inventory in the electronic supply chain in recent months has paved the way for some improvement in inventory levels, perhaps beginning in the June 2009 quarter."
Still, Wong also noted that he expected overall sales of chips, personal computers and wireless handsets to drop this year compared to 2008.
"We are current projecting a 5-15% drop in worldwide semiconductor sales in 2009, a 0-5% drop in worldwide PC unit shipments [excluding netbooks] and a 0-10% drop in worldwide handset units shipments in 2009," Wong wrote.>>
Wow! This sounds like a real winner of a year! Better get into the semis now.:) With this kind of a year ahead of us, the top is really going to "blow off" the semi area. I just can't wait to "dive in" before it is too late!!:)
Don |
