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Technology Stocks : Applied Micro Circuits Corp (AMCC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: techanalyst1 who wrote (1406)	3/2/2001 12:26:22 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1805

Plus, there are alot of companies that announce stock buybacks that never go through with it. The article I read yesterday pointed out that only about 60% of all announced buybacks are effectuated. The idea is simply to get the press release out to support the stock price in the open market. The announcements of lay-offs has a similar track record of being dissembling for the sake of placating the public markets. In the past, I loved the fact that Rickey aligned the interests of the public shareholder with that of company managers who's options vested when the price of the stock rose. In complete contradistinction to the method of Henry Nicholas at BRCM. Today, I'm not quite sure I understand the options policy at AMCC. Best, Ray :)

To: techanalyst1 who wrote (1406)	3/4/2001 5:26:00 PM
From: Thai Chung	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1805

NY Times,March 4, 2001 Market Watch: A Year Later, Time to Think About Buying Again By ALEX BERENSON -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Related Articles • Business Home • Technology Home Audio • AP Business Report, Updated Twice Each Hour GET QUOTES Look Up Symbol Enter Multiple Symbols Portfolio \| Stock Markets \| Mutual Funds \| Bonds \| Currencies \| Bank Rates \| Industries -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ime to be greedy. A year ago, investors were wise to be afraid. Between October 1998 and March 2000, the technology-fattened Nasdaq composite index had more than tripled. After a decade of gains, information technology stocks were extraordinarily expensive. Cisco Systems, then the world's most valuable company, traded at almost 200 times earnings. Newer companies had multibillion-dollar valuations, though they had no profits — and in some cases almost no sales. The broader stock market was also overvalued. One year ago, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index traded at almost 30 times its expected earnings for 2000, offering investors an earnings yield of barely 3 percent. At the time, long-term bonds were paying more than 6 percent. Usually, earnings yields are much more closely linked to interest rates. The gap indicated investors were overpaying for stocks. So March 2000 was a time for fear. But greed ruled the markets. Investors, even professional money managers and analysts, worried more about the risk of not making money than the risk of losing it. "I certainly became trained to always ask the question, `What am I missing on the upside?' " said Henry Blodget, the Internet analyst at Merrill Lynch. Now everything has changed. The Nasdaq has fallen 58 percent from its peak, and many technology companies are down much more. The S.& P. 500 is off almost 20 percent, the not-so-magic number that defines a bear market. Wall Street seems locked in a never-ending stream of earnings warnings and layoff announcements. Just this week, Oracle, Gap and Nike said their profits would fall short of forecasts, JDS Uniphase announced the layoff of 3,000 workers, and eToys said it would file for bankruptcy. The debate over whether the economy is slowing has turned into a debate over whether the current slowdown is more likely to resemble a "V," with a quick turn by the summer, or a "U," with a rough bottom that does not end until at least year-end. Wall Street's mood is ugly. Everything has changed. Except nothing has changed. As last year's euphoria has turned to this year's depression, it is easy to forget that the technological advances that drove the 1990's bull market are happening faster than ever. Do you own a cell phone? A personal computer? Do you have Internet access? Did you have any of those a decade ago? How many of the prescription drugs that you take were created in the last decade? Did you ever imagine that gene therapy would be anything other than science fiction? These are more than theoretical questions. Gains in technology have fueled the fastest-growing companies in history. In 1990, Microsoft, Dell Computer and Cisco had combined sales of $2 billion. Last year, their sales were $80 billion. If you are an investor with a reasonably long time horizon — five years or more — stop worrying about the "V" or "U" debate. The only way you will lose money in stocks is if the markets head into an "L," a bottom that lasts for years. Anything is possible, of course, as investors in Japanese stocks are still finding out — to their chagrin. But believing in an "L" means believing that the technological gains of the last decade were illusory. Stocks, meanwhile, have become more reasonably valued, because they have fallen so much and long-term interest rates have fallen, too. The forward earnings yield on the S.& P. 500 is now just under 5 percent, close to the yield on long-term bonds. Cisco trades at just 33 times earnings. The risk of a short-term recession is high. But help for the economy is on the way. Monetary and fiscal policy, so tight during the last year, are being loosened. And inflation remains only a distant threat. The biggest driver of inflation over the last six months has been the price of energy, especially natural gas, and gas prices have fallen by half since their peak in December. This may not be absolute bottom, since the bad news will not end for at least a couple of months. But it is too late to be afraid, too late to sell at the peak. Stocks are much cheaper than they were a year ago. It is time to be greedy.