From the inside this is what I have to say.
Please - I have no interest in an argument with people who don't have any basis but media hype and guys like Yardeni for their Y2K opining.
This is likely to be my last post.
Real simple. For a company like AMAT to say they have an initiative is a requirement on such a call. If they said they did not, what with all the media flapping they could be open to a lawsuit. So they say what they have to. In any case, they have IT and they therefore have Y2K work. So it's not a lie. But it *is* a "required statement". (Like our company. Just to be on the safe side, we set up an entire separate network to dup our stuff on. And guess what? Nada. Zippo.)
The Y2K stocks are going to go nowhere for exactly the following reasons. In the real world, inside IT Y2K is very old news. So old it's a goddam groaner. Companies have been working on this and testing it for a long time. There were no ripples when all automobile loans went into post Y2K a few years ago, now were there?
And - A minimum DP services contract for anything sizeable runs 18 months. With a 6 month lead time on the sale to a corporation, these guys are already out the window headed for the asphalt. (BTW - I know those figures cold based on running a factory automation tech startup company in Michigan back in the mid 1980's. That was another hype-fest BTW. But that is another story.)
Very, very few corporations are going to hire on for any new business related to Y2K from this point out. Its a tank sector. Forget it.
And be really leery of economists who get heavy into speculations in fields that they don't really know anything about that require some real experience and technical expertise. There are some big mouths out there who are plain old cynically interested in getting wealthy from predictions like you are seeing. Take a look at where they make their money. Hell, if I was hungry enough, I'd do it myself. I could paint you a picture that would scare the bejeezus out of you.
So - my advice to any investor is - bet against a Y2K trainwreck. There will not be one. Isolated glitches here and there with a few crashes in the 2nd and 3rd world. And don't bet on any Y2K company.
As I said in the lead in. I ain't gonna argue with anyone who is convinced that they know.
BTW - if you want a *REAL* scare that the industry is trying to keep quiet, I can tell you one. Java. For the first time in history we have a computer language in which the executable object is complete reverse-engineerable. It is trivial to get useable source code out of a Java application. So what is the problem?
This - If someone breaks in via physical or network means to a site running a conventionally compiled language, all they can do is damage. But with Java, they can quietly copy the application, study it at their leisure, and then *replace it* with one that does what they want.
For this reason, I believe that it should be made illegal to have any commercial application in any financial sector running Java applications on the Java virtual machine. It is the biggest invitation to computer crime ever invented. And *EVERYBODY* that is involved wants to keep it quiet. Sun? They have bet their ass on it. You think the Java pundits who make all their bread from pushing it are going to say so? Do you think they will even agree that there is a problem? No.
THAT is something that Yardeni *should* be screaming about. Java is the ultimate "Trojan Horse". The language *itself* is a trojan horse folks. The design of the language itself creates the ultimate trojan horse. |
