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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (127306)	2/13/2001 6:16:26 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

re: "Add J. Cramer, surprisingly, to my list of people calling for Barrett's head." Do you have a link, I would like to see that. John, Thought you would never ask. ;~)) ____________________________________________________________ Down With the Intel Downgrade! By James J. Cramer 2/13/01 10:18 AM ET The Intel (INTC:Nasdaq - news - boards) downgrade is just plain wrong. No, I am being too kind. It is stupid and wrong. Here is why. The only reason why you would downgrade Intel here is because you know there is going to be a shortfall this quarter. And if you know that, what the heck were you doing recommending the stock all the way down here? Look, business is terrible at Intel. It has an aggressive Advanced Micro Devices (AMD:NYSE - news - boards) taking share. It has a hole in the lineup waiting for the Pentium 4. It has weak leadership. Oops, not supposed to say that, but under Grove, AMD never caught up. Under Barrett, they have. That's a disgrace for Intel. But stocks talk, and if the First Boston analyst had been listening, he would have heard the sound of a bottom in formation. Same thing if you listen to Micron (MU:NYSE - news - boards). These are stocks that are in the abyss, but when the abyss ends -- and they all do -- you have to be willing to buy them. Stocks bottom well ahead of the fundamentals. Don't agree with me? Take a look at these cyclicals! They bottomed well in advance of the rate cuts that are going to boost earnings down the road. Stocks like Ford (F:NYSE - news - boards)and Alcoa (AA:NYSE - news - boards) and International Paper (IP:NYSE - news - boards) put in bottoms a while ago. So did retail, ahead of the cuts. These stocks bottomed well before the same-store sales numbers hit bottom. Which they have. The semiconductors will be no different. They will bottom while the fundamentals suck. They always do. I caught the bottom in Applied Materials (AMAT:Nasdaq - news - boards) and Cymer (CYMI:Nasdaq - news - boards) (which we always called Cymer Rouge) well in advance of the bottom in earnings. Well in advance. Heck, I caught the bottom in Micron against all my own wishes. Tom Kurlak, the legendary Merrill Lynch analyst practically pummeled me into buying it, by using one of those $2-loss-goes-to-$10-gain-in-estimates tricks that the great showman of chips would do at the bottom. Heck, I miss Kurlak. Man was larger than life. Taught me the notion of the bottom. Said he found the bottom on psychology alone and then let the numbers just kind of happen. Often they never "happened" as big as Tom thought they would, but he used estimates the way a conductor uses a baton, to get the orchestra moving in the right direction. I disputed his Micron upgrade before the last big run. I railed and ranted that pricing was falling off a cliff, that inventories were too high, that Kurlak didn't know what he was talking about. He told me to shut up and buy. I did and I made a !@#$%! fortune. Look, it is no secret that tech sucks here. I ain't no genius. I do recognize that at the bottom things stink to high heaven, just like they stink now. And it may not be the perfect moment to upgrade down-and-out tech. There might be a moment out further in time where it is more right. But is sure is just plain wrong and stupid to downgrade it here. That's just the wrong direction. The wrong direction entirely. Random musings: Read this turnaround article by Arne Alsin. He's the best and he will save you and make you a lot of money. Of course, no sooner had my Intel trade filled then the stock dropped a half point. Nothing personal, right?! ted