Joe,
Your "sort of positive" reference had some good news. One of the parts I liked the best was:
"Intel issued a Sept. 10 advisory that sales, initially expected to be
flat for the quarter, would be up by as much as 10 percent."
The key here is the implication of a trend changing from going nowhere, to an upward trend of 10 percent. Ten percent for Intel is big bucks!! Some of that money will "spill over" to other companies. Also, a quarter is a relatively small time frame. Straight-lining that for a year (no real justification for doing that, but please don't call me on it) is at an approximate rate of 40 percent per year. That's a nice round number!
The market news today was excellent on the high tech front. The high tech indexes reported on by DailyStocks did extremely well. Out of the 29 indexes reported on, the three high tech indexes were among the biggest gainers and were up as follows:
$SOX - Semiconductor Index - up 4.5 percent
$MSH - Morgan Stanley High Tech Index - up 5.0 percent
$IXCO - NASDAQ High Technology Index - up 4.5 percent
Going to SI then and looking at the "Semis" grouping, the following was the results for the day:
+4.65% Broad Product Line - Only The Big Ones
+4.51% Memory - RAM, DRAM, SRAM, and Flash
+4.35% Microprocessors (CPU's) - Includes Computer Manufacturers
+3.98% Specialized - High Software Content
+3.97% Multimedia - 3D, Video, Sound
+3.90% Semiconductors (ALL) - Everything but Equipment Manf
+1.89% Equipment/Materials - Some Very High Tech Metal
I think these results are about the best I have seen in quite awhile. I realize the market was "flying" today, but the DOW was up 3.3 percent while technology was up 4.5 to 5 percent, and the semis group about 4 percent on the average.
Having said all this, I am not predicting any great things in the near future. It may be quite some time before a sustained uptrend will develop, but I do have the sense that the worst may be over. We may even have a little more downside, and it may be several months until the "rally" gets underway, but I am beginning to feel a little better about the overall situation. Unless the bottom falls out tomorrow or Friday, this should be a positive week for the semi- equips and technology in general. |
