Two interesting perspectives on the Asian situation:
First, from a long Dow Jones article this morning:
<<The worst situation is to be heavily dependent on Asian markets, but make products in the U.S. or, even worse, high-cost Europe. For such companies, the Asian turmoil is a resounding negative. Chief among them are suppliers of the equipment used to make semiconductors, a $28 billion industry dominated by U.S. suppliers like Applied Materials Inc. and LAM Research Corp. The market leader, Applied Materials, gets about 10% of its revenue from South Korean chip makers and up to 25% from Japanese manufacturers. The downturns in Asia have hammered the shares of the equipment makers' stock. Analysts say the chip-equipment sector is one case where the market isn't overreacting. >>
<<The main driver of the U.S. technology boom has been the huge PC industry. International Data Corp., a market-research firm, expects the Asian crisis to shave 1.3 percentage points off 1997 PC unit-shipment growth, to an estimated 14.2%, and about 1.4 percentage points in 1998, to about 13.5%. Dataquest, another research firm, is making similar forecasts. >>
Second, today's interview on IBD:
aol://4344:504.p1ac57kq.517324.566448056 |
