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

To: Demosthenes who wrote (40296)	12/1/2000 10:22:23 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

D, AZ, CEO of UTEK has been saying litho would be the bottleneck in the industry since at least a year and a half ago, maybe 2 years. UTEK's BTB, as of the end of Oct. is greater than 1.6. And, as you posted, ASML is smoking through next year with steppers. To me, this adds up to the "digestion phase" that has been mentioned by Infrastructure and others. This view argues for a pause in the cycle and then for it to resume for at least another 18 months This is exactly the line of ratiocination I was using for holding and adding to my investments in the equipment sector. However, recently there has been anecdotal evidence that a confluence of factors may indeed be putting the brakes on chip spending. The election is uncertain; many will not want to make capital investments in this type of environment. This only exacerbates the problem of already high real interest rates which have been having a negative impact on the economy. Add to this formula high oil prices and we are presented with an ugly trifecta in which our digestion period is now put into question. We need some leadership now more than ever. This means AG needs to cut interest rates at least once and Gore needs to put this election mess behind us by stepping down. That will not guarantee that we don't fall into a recession, but it certainly is a start. FWIW, I sold some of my EGLS today and bough AMAT. BK