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

To: Road Walker who wrote (127926)	2/20/2001 4:29:34 PM
From: Tony Viola	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

John, I meant to post this to the Intel thread but it ended up over on MSFT. Either I'm crazy or INSP/GO2NET/SI has put everyone on furlough. CPI tomorrow. Better be in line with consensus or Greenspan might get stuck in a stagflation dilemma. Date ET Release For Briefing.com Consensus Prior Feb 21 08:30 CPI Jan 0.5% 0.3% 0.2% Feb 21 08:30 Core CPI Jan 0.4% 0.2% 0.1%

To: Road Walker who wrote (127926)	2/20/2001 4:41:05 PM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Hi John, RE: "This market sure could use some good news, " The CPI report is released tomorrow. We get to see exactly how much inflation was passed to the consumer. The PPI reported the other week, would indicate the CPI will be up more than usual. I'm wondering how productive companies have been at absorbing the increased energy costs - will they simply operate more efficiently (and thus effectively aborb the increased costs) or do they pass it off to the consumer (inflationary)? Here's some news on one indicator of consumer sales, Wal-Mart: 02/20 16:17 Wal-Mart's 4th-Qtr Net Up 4.5%; Home Depot's Drops New York, Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said fiscal fourth-quarter profit rose by the smallest amount in almost five years...the slowest pace since the first quarter of 1996. Home Depot, the No. 1 home-improvement chain, said net income dropped 20 percent, its first decline in 15 years. (Wow) ... ``We do not see any indication that spending will slow further from its current levels,'' Wal-Mart Chief Executive H. Lee Scott said on a conference call. ... ``You'd rather own retail today, which has some positive catalysts, than a sector that's being beaten down every day,'' said portfolio manager Angela Auchey at Federated Investors, which held 3.1 million Wal-Mart shares (Guess she doesn't own INTC) Regards, Amy J

To: Road Walker who wrote (127926)	2/20/2001 4:46:20 PM
From: fingolfen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

It's not just retail sales, it's also IT budgets, which hurt Intel more than AMD. The areas that help Intel are servers and notebooks, which are still growing (I hope), and where Intel doesn't have a lot of competition. Agreed on all counts (including the "I hope!"). It's hard to get a good handle on IT spending, whereas retail sales data is released more frequently. This market sure could use some good news, and it looks like the only guy that could come up with that is Mr. Greenspan, and he's not due on stage until March 20th (?). Agreed again... It's going to be an interesting economic puzzle at this point to sort out... and I don't envy the policy makers. In a year we've gone from a booming economy with a surplus (okay, be fair, they were borrowing out of medicare... but still) to an economy that is teetering on the brink of recession or worse, stagflation. It's hard to sort out all of the contributing factors, but I think in the long-run the following will have contributed most to the reversal (though, of course, none of them are independent): 1) Greenspan slamming the brakes on a run away stock market. The dow has been essentially flat since May of 1999, and the NAS is back down to April 1999 values after shedding 50% off of its highs. 2) Collapse of the dot com's. People finally realized profit potential does not equal profit, and all of the unprofitable companies got weeded out... Unfortunately most of them were on the NAS... unfortunately most of the big high-tech players had a stake in them... unfortunately a lot of people lost their shirt... 3) Increase in energy prices. Skyrocketing oil costs put a bite in everyone's budget... Every time it happens, everyone says "we've got to decrease our dependence on foreign oil." Unfortunately there's no easy way to do that... so nothing gets solved... prices normalize... and it's business as usual. 4) California energy crunch. The biggest market in the state has been lights out off-and-on for two months... Anything I've missed????

To: Road Walker who wrote (127926)	2/20/2001 6:02:10 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 186894

This market sure could use some good news, and it looks like the only guy that could come up with that is Mr. Greenspan, and he's not due on stage until March 20th (?) John, I think its telling that Intel is not doing layoffs but rather letting normal attrition reduce their labor force. In spite of very little visibility, it sounds to me like most companies to do not want to do layoffs until its absolutely necessary. I think there is still the hope that this slowdown will be relatively short lived. ted