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To: tom who wrote (35614)	7/5/2000 4:48:25 PM
From: Bald Man from Mars	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Tommy, is it time to sell everything ???

To: tom who wrote (35614)	7/5/2000 5:03:27 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

IT ALWAYS FEELS WRONG SELLING AT THE TOP OF THE MARKET!!! But then again it could feel wrong for the next two or three years. Just because it feels wrong does not signal a top. I would much rather listen to Barrett(INTC), Morgan(AMAT), Bagley(LRCX) and the numerous other execs who are at the forefront of technology rather than an analyst who may never have done a fab walkthrough. BK

To: tom who wrote (35614)	7/6/2000 12:08:29 AM
From: A. Edwards	Respond to of 70976

Jonathan Joseph may follow Milind Bedekar, former SSB chip equipment analyst, who has vanished since he made a similar bearish call last year on semi equipment sector. BEING EARLY AND BEING WRONG !

To: tom who wrote (35614)	7/6/2000 12:23:34 AM
From: Jeffrey D	Respond to of 70976

Tom:<<SSB's Joseph is not crazy....He's not even wrong..>> Tom, you can believe Joseph. I will believe Chase H&Q. Good luck. Jeff ** Chase H&Q Chase H&Q Chase H&Q ** Date: 7/5/00 2 of 2 Update: Health of the Semiconductor Industry * We continue to believe that the current dislocation in supply vs demand will not approach equilibrium at least through middle of next year. We continue to operate in the industry in an environment of robust demand and tight supply. Negative comments and the down grade of the whole semiconductor sector today morning by one of our competitors because of more supply coming on line such that leadtimes and ASPs are negatively getting impacted is premature, in our opinion. It is way too early to make the call that more supply has caught on already in the marketplace such that the semiconductor companies are seeing ASPs degrade and leadtimes come in. That is just not the case. * In talking to our industry sources in the recent past we find that leadtimes and ASPs for a lot of the companies products that we cover - both proprietary and non-proprietary - are holding steady and in some cases still going higher due to a lack of supply in the marketplace. Leadtimes are holding steady in the range of 6-10 weeks depending on the product. A lot of analysts label flash as a commodity product. The lower end flash is a commodity (< 4Mb) but not the higher end. By the time you factor in supply voltages down to 1.8V, access times as fast as 15nsec., device endurance as high as a couple of hundred thousand write cycles, simultaneous read-while- write capability and availability being very tight - one ends up having a high density flash device that is not available from many suppliers and thus not a commodity. AMD which is down about $7 has 30% of its business coming from flash products while 60% comes from the company's MPU business. Like we have continued to voice in the recent past, AMD is the best name to own to play flash since the company continues to lock in future flash demand as more capacity comes on line in about a year or so from now. The company's large flash exposure is one of the reasons we like AMD. The other being its MPU business. The transisiton to the new generation of Athlon remains on track in terms of unit shipments for both the Thunderbird and the Duron. Yields continue to be very robust for the company's MPU division. There really are two main suppliers in what will be a $35 billion microprocessor market this year. As we have maintained, for AMD to succeed Intel does not have to loose. We believe both companies will do extremely well during the 2H:00. * We acknowledge that more capacity has been announced in the last 6-9 months by a lot of the semiconductor companies. Do not forget that for these announcements to translate into revenues coming from these new fabs will take at least 1 1/2 to 2 years from today to get there. * We expect the companies that we cover in the microporcessor, microcontroller, ASIC, PLD, flash, and EEPROMs sectors within semiconductors to come through and deliver very robust 2Q:00 numbers with very positive guidance for the 2H:00. Our Net: Buy agressively our Strong Buy rated stocks - AMD (price target $150), ALTR ($135), and ATML ($60). We also continue to like LSI ($90) and MCHP ($75) here.

To: tom who wrote (35614)	7/6/2000 2:07:44 AM
From: Jack Decker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

>Fact 1. IT spending in the US is at a record high. >Spending on IT must be paid for. As the dot com bubble has >burst and no one will lend to shite companies anymore. IT >spending (ie semiconductors) must be paid for by profits. >Only problem is....there aren't any. True, the majority of dot coms will die. There will be massive consolidation and few survivors. But those that do survive will have huge volumes of online sales of goods and services. Do you really think 5 years from now fewer $$$ will flow thru online transactions? To keep up with increased order flow, the survivors will have to invest heavily in servers and network infrastructure. >Fact 2. Taiwan, Korea and UK have seen massive >disappointment in cell phone sales. Korea saw a 770,000 >REDUCTION in subscribers in June. Forget growth. BT >Cellnet in the UK got 125,000 WAP subs in 2Q00 but it was >forecasting 500,000. Korean cell phone rates have fallen off recently because subsidies by the government have dried up. For now WAP is a boondoggle because of slow access speeds, limited web sites, and first generation equipment. Are you really serious, though, in suggesting that cell phone sales have peaked and will now dwindle to nothing? Even in countries with almost universal adoption, users trade in their models every 3 years or less. What about China, Africa, and South America where cell ownership rates are currently 3%? Do you think these people will ignore cellular technology and use tin cans with string? >Fact 3. Volume growth in semiconductors HAS PEAKED!! >Anyone investing on the assumption that volume growth will >go higher than 30-35% is dreaming. It has never beaten >that figure before. The only way semi revenues are going >higher is by price inflation. I hope you're not seriously arguing that semi revenues have hit an all time high. They will undoubtedly reach higher levels at some point, perhaps not in this cycle, but in the not too distant future. Unless some catastrophe occurs that profoundly affects human civilization, the world will continue to produce more computational, communication, and memory devices. Guess what building-block they all use? Still skeptical? Draw a line starting at zero in the 1950's that corresponds to the $$ value of semis in the world. Make a plot of each year up to the present and connect the dots. You will see the familiar hockey stick pattern marketers love to talk about. Now ask yourself what technological trends will stop this progression. Answer: none that we have to worry about for at least 5-10 years. A more rational argument could be made that semi revenue has peaked for this cycle. If so, just wait a while and AMAT will come back. Over the last 12 years, there has only been one 36 month period where investors have had a negative return on equity. If you stretch that to 42 months, no one would have lost money over the last 12 years. The best 36 month return was 706%--the average was 271%. Not such a bad deal if you got in at the peak of a cycle and had to wait 3 years for a turnaround. >Fact 4. Everyone is bullish. Just like they were at the >peak of the last cycle. Utilisation is high, everyone is >adding capacity. Anyone see the problem? See above point. No one can predict when the cycle has peaked but even in a worse case situation, historical data demonstrates that the next wave will be higher and AMAT's price will rise correspondingly.

To: tom who wrote (35614)	7/7/2000 3:31:10 PM
From: w0z	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

"SSB's Joseph is not crazy....He's not even wrong.." Just for the record: Message 12728463 Salomon Smith Barney's Jon Joseph published the following on Saturday, January 29: "DRAM spot prices in a free fall. "DRAM spot prices continued to fall as manufacturers built inventory. Prices for mainstream 64Mbs fell over $1.00 to below $7.00, while prices for mainstream 128Mbs fell to the low $16 range, down from $18.00 the previous week. Broker sentiment grows increasingly negative. Volumes remain light and prices are falling so fast now that brokers are taking losses if they hold onto any inventory whatsoever. Anecdote last week suggested that large DRAM makers were peddling several hundred thousand 64Mb parts at a $0.20-0.30 discount to spot. Clearly, inventories are overflowing as yields on 0.18-micron and 0.21-micron shrinks improve faster than the market is able to absorb. Micron (MU, 3S) and Samsung product, relatively rare in the spot market over the last few quarters, historically sold for a slight premium. We are now finding ample supply from these vendors, selling at spot market price. We believe contract pricing is heading lower, with most estimates suggesting $7.25-7.50 for the first half of February, down from the current $8.00 range. In addition, one large maker anticipated contract falling to $6.00 by the end of February, while another estimated $4.00 prices by summer." MU's price since the end of January: siliconinvestor.com Maybe he's "not wrong"...just a good contrarian indicator! <VBG>

To: tom who wrote (35614)	7/7/2000 3:45:11 PM
From: Tony Viola	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Tom, >SSB's Joseph is not crazy....He's not even wrong.. Fact 1. IT spending in the US is at a record high. Spending on IT must be paid for. As the dot com bubble has burst and no one will lend to shite companies anymore. IT spending (ie semiconductors) must be paid for by profits. Only problem is....there aren't any. Your # 1 reason is a don't care. The dot coms are miniscule in their IT spending compared with the GMs, Exxons, IBMs, Intels, Dells, etc. of the world that have, in some cases, MILLIONS of web pages each. The web pages get hits, which cause hubs, routers, switches, servers, storage, all of which use lots of semiconductors, to go into motion. Semiconductors to the moon for the foreseeable future. T