Patrick.. makes good sense to me. Sounds like you have a good handle on the driving factors...especially the physical ones. Now if stocks would only track the actual company results, we would all have it made! <g>.. For me, buying the semi equipments has come out of the observation that they are usually WELL into the pits before the end of a cycle, but their recovery is anticipated well before any actual earnings start showing up. So I try to get in early, and out early. So TER, AMAT, NVLS, VECO were some nice runs this time around. For the next phase in the cycle I'm going to the companies that will drive the linewidths down in the DUV move -- I had DPMI from 19, and will pick it up again. CYMI, with 80% of the laser market, is my current photolithography play other than photomasks... these are the folks I see making the equipment which you have correctly pointed out will benefit from a recovery in the semis...
My own field was telecom, so I tend to favor some companies in that area, and especially like VTSS for its specialized gallium arsenide chips, and TXCC which is strongly benefitting from the trend to ATM in the WAN (and later LAN) aspects of networks. I have VLSI, but that was sort of a whim..and it is being taken out.
Finally, of course, I have been in LSI for several years...and it is nice to be on this side of the cycle again!!
Cheerful investing, and good luck to all of us with LSI!
TSO |
