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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ian@SI who wrote (32758)	10/7/1999 11:15:00 PM
From: Gottfried	Respond to of 70976

Ian, re >DRAM spot prices dropped from $20 and are expected to settle near $14.< Reminds me of crude prices going from 10 to 25 and now drifting lower. I hope they settle above 20. But the real indicator of the drilling industry's health, rig count, continues to rise and day rates should not be far behind. There are parallels between the OS and semi equipment industries. Once the end product [chips and crude] is at a profitable price, other drivers take over. Gottfried

To: Ian@SI who wrote (32758)	10/7/1999 11:22:00 PM
From: Jerome	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Your conclusions may be correct, or it may just be that AMAT has had a nice run up recently and a pull back would be in order. Even the sun which rises most days pulls back after a few hours only to rise again. Of course we would all prefer stocks that would rise endlessly until it got boring and we would be forced to move on to other challenges Jerome

To: Ian@SI who wrote (32758)	10/8/1999 6:51:00 AM
From: Duker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Ian, I realize you are just echoing what The Market is probably thinking ... ... but, what are these people thinking? The mythical spot DRAM market is about as deep as an Instinet quote on Berkshire Hathaway A ... To use Micron as an example ... 90% of their business is transacted on a contractual basis with OEMs. These contracts have a duration of more than a nanosecond and reflect the 'true' price people are willing to pay for their product ... ... I would argue that the spot market is just the pricing at the fringe (don't want to use the term margin ... because we all know that prices are determined at the margin) of the industry ... I liken it to The Antique Roadshow (on PBS) ... some appraiser looks at you grandfather's antique condom ... tells you how interesting and rare such an object is ... and assigns a value of $1000 ... that is what it could bring 'at auction' ... unfortunately, when you try to sell the two cases of them that you have in the attic ... you only get a fraction of the price ... I would also argue that the DRAM manufacturers would love $14 pricing for the rest of the year ... --Duker