Tom,
You must be bored today - so many posts :) I am with you - waiting for more red tag sales :)
You are right, I could ask my brother about China. Actually my other brother here in Austin, TX, works for IBM in its business development area and travels to China on a monthly basis. He is not that optimistic on China's currency situation. He feels the potentials of devaluation are there - if they need to stay competitive among the region. On the other hand, China's economy is doing OK still, especially for enterpreneurs. Things in China are not cheap either :)
He just came back before Thanksgiving, bought himself 4 (!) pairs of shoes because they fit well - costed him over $50.00 a pair - now that is expensive if you consider China's per capita income !
The currency issue is not just what you mention that would affect the financial assets of these countries - more critically it affects their buying power, specifically, buying technology from us.
Told OJ at least a month ago about possible Korean impact on KLIC - no cancellation of orders at that time does not mean we wont see it in near future, had Won not stabilized.
I will look into PHYC more closely.
On the other hand, one doesn't need to buy well beaten down stocks to get the good return in next 2 years.
DELL has not been a beaten down stock since 1996 - just to give an example.
TRV gained 75% year to date, on the top of back to back 50% gain in last 2 years. Has never been a beaten down stock, increased its dividend every year, split once a year 5 years in a row ...
My point is, we need to look at the underlying business, the future prospects of the industry it is in, the business model, and most importantly, the management. Top tier companies seldom become beaten down unless the prospects of the industry it is in are temporary in questions, like networkers in spring. Then, we need to gauge when these prospects will turn around, like semi/ semi equipment now.
Here are 2 stocks I think good for year 2000 plays if you believe this will truly be a problem and corporates need to divert funds to fix it.
On the hardware side, EMC. Storage needs will be tremendous because virtually almost everything needs to be duplicated.
On the software side, CPWR. This is an old line mainframe software firm existing over 10 years. Not those yound high fly year 2000 software solution companies. CPWR has the expertise on COBAL programming running on mainframe. They just receive a contract from a power company in Minneapolis, MN as project manager for their year 2000 compliance project.
These 2 are not beaten down stocks. May be Judy can give us her TA to find proper entries - especially on EMC - she trades EMC.
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