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Technology Stocks : Semi-Equips - Buy when BLOOD is running in the streets! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (9077)	12/3/2000 11:01:12 PM
From: Demosthenes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

Zeev, You mean buy before or after the BTB is out at the end of Dec? D

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (9077)	12/3/2000 11:05:45 PM
From: Gottfried	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

Zeev, >I was one of those seeing a BTB at 1.40 plus, saying, it just cannot better, sell< I just remember you getting flak.<g> Last time AMAT bottomed within a month or so of the SEMI orders bottom. I can't believe we have seen either an orders or btb bottom.But this time may be different. The last [aborted] cycle was very abrupt - thus not much time lag between orders and price bottoms. We had discussions on the AMAT thread and consensus was that stock COULD go to the high twenties. Some analyst later mentioned low thirties. Close enough. But when? I observed that during the last two bottoms the AMAT monthly low stayed about the same for 2-3 months. [the red line] Plenty of time to get in. AMAT backlog never dropped much below $1B, even in '98. AMAT vs SEMI orders geocities.com AMAT vs SEMI btb geocities.com AMAT backlog, price and SEMI 'backlog' geocities.com Or see ALL charts Message 14872591 If anyone wants the charts e-mailed, speak up. Gottfried

To: Zeev Hed who wrote (9077)	12/4/2000 5:15:10 PM
From: John Cuthbertson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

Zeev, In an earlier post, you asked "are we going to admit we are in a down cycle? If we are, the discussion should really start and move to what would be typical parameters to watch for a bottom in the current down cycle," stating that you were defining the cycle based on stock prices. Then in another post, you wrote: "Right now the BTB is at 1.17 (two months in a row), if that is the trough in the BTB, then around here is the time to buy, but I do not think that we will end this down cycle without the BTB going under 1.00" I just wanted to point out that although you are defining the cycle based on the stock prices, an underlying assumption seems to be that there will be a one-to-one correspondence between the cycle in stock prices and the cycle in business conditions, though they may be offset in time. Although this has been a good assumption in the past, as can be seen from Gottfried's charts, it is not necessarily going to hold in the future. Right now we are clearly in (or have been in) a down cycle in prices, and looking for a price bottom seems logical. However, we have NOT (yet) entered a down cycle in business conditions. The most recent month's orders were the largest ever. That up cycle may be slowing but we have not yet seen it turn down. Does the crash in prices portend that sales and profits will imminently turn down? Maybe, or then again we could see another major up-leg in prices before it happens. The point is we cannot just assume that we will have exactly one major price cycle during this semiconductor business cycle. We could have two, or 1 1/2, or pi ! Unfortunately, there is no law of nature to guarantee a one-to-one correspondence. ==John C. P.S. To Scott Jiminez: apropos of all that, I don't think it's quite right to say that "The most recent history of prognostication on SI toward business activity in the equipment industry is poor." In fact, it seems to me to have been pretty correct. I think in fact it is the prognostication of price behavior that has been poor!