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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (38706)	4/11/2001 2:25:50 PM
From: Stoctrash	Respond to of 50167

I like your guys thinking, me gots RIMMjob yesterday <GGG> Who said MOT was looking good? ...their own CEO says this: "We see a continuing downturn in the U.S. economy beginning to spill over to the rest of the world," said Motorola chairman and chief executive Christopher B. Galvin. "The high-tech sector, which has been hard hit, is already in a recession. These issues, plus interest rate policy or energy prices, cannot be controlled by Motorola." Get off the wacky Kool-Aid!!

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (38706)	4/11/2001 2:29:24 PM
From: Jerry Olson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

futures break to the downside..tighen up stops or exit all longs....2.30 reversal is here... buyitbuyitsellitsellit.com

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (38706)	4/12/2001 6:36:28 AM
From: 2MAR$	Respond to of 50167

The Chip Slump Just How Bad And for How Long? By Duncan Martell SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Everyone in the boom-and-bust semiconductor industry knows it's in one of its worst-ever slumps, but industry chieftains and analysts are divided over the questions of just how bad the downturn is and how long it will last. As what's become earnings-profit-warning season comes to a close and so-called ``earnings'' season gets under way, investors should soon have a better idea of just how much faith is still out there that the personal computer and chip industries will see some sort of rebound in the second half. The reasoning, at least among some executives and analysts goes something like this: Either, it's never been this bad before, so it can't get any worse and that means it'll get better. The other side of the coin is: It's never been this bad, but that doesn't mean it can't get even worse and if that happens, it's going to take a lot longer than most think for the chip industry to bounce back. ``It's hard for me to believe that we are not at or near the bottom,'' chip equipment maker Lam Research Corp. (Nasdaq:LRCX - news) Chairman James Bagley said on a Wednesday conference call to discuss its quarterly results. ``It may not improve very dramatically, but I have a hard time believing that it's going to continue to decline.'' WORST-EVER CHIP SLUMP? The current downturn -- which could well be the worst since 1986, when chip sales tumbled 17 percent -- springs from a slowing U.S. economy, customers such as Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO - news) over-ordering semiconductors and, to a lesser extent, the ongoing dot-com implosion. No. 1 chipmaker Intel Corp.(Nasdaq:INTC - news), for example, warned Jan. 16 that first-quarter sales will likely fall 15 percent -- roughly triple the average decline -- from the $8.70 billion it had in the fourth quarter. ``We believe it took nine to 12 months to create this supply/demand imbalance and that it will take a minimum of another six to nine months to hit bottom,'' wrote Lehman Bros. semiconductor analyst Dan Niles earlier this week in a grim note to clients. Niles added that even though in terms of comparisons, the industry could hit bottom in August for chip revenues, low demand could quite possibly persist for several more quarters depending on economic conditions. Bad News Could Be Good News But in a twist on the bad news, Salomon Smith Barney analyst Jonathan Joseph argued in a note on Wednesday that, it's because the industry is in such bad shape that it's hit a bottom. He wrote that industry order rates peaked nine months ago and would likely hit bottom in July before starting to improve in the second half of 2001. ``We are upgrading the semiconductor sector from 'neutral' to 'outperform' based upon anecdotal order and shipment data that is so bad it cannot continue for long and sector data that suggests a fundamental bottom is only months away,'' he wrote. The bad news was actually good news, Joseph argued, because it meant that excess capacity was in the final stages of being wrong out of the global industry, setting the stage for a new cycle of growth. The last pronounced downturn in the semiconductor industry came in 1996 and was the result of the Asian economic crisis and this one, Niles argued, portends to be far worse. In 1996, only the personal computer industry was hurt while wireless and networking industries lunged ahead with strong growth. The U.S. economy was also expanding at a rapid clip at the time. Not so now. Virtually every area of the semiconductor industry -- from PCs to wireless to networking -- is slowing, initially hampered by overcapacity and now damped by the slowing U.S. economy. Moreover, executives have said they see signs of the slowness spreading to certain Asian markets and parts of Europe. Worst Part Of The Downturn ``We are right now sitting at the worst part in this inventory correction and semiconductor downturn in terms of the speed of the decline,'' said W.R. Hambrecht analyst Jim Liang, who believes that after three very rough quarters, the chip industry could start seeing some sequential sales growth again in the September quarter. Of course, much of the glass-half-full argument that demand will still pick up in the second half depends, analysts said, on aggressive interest rate cuts by the U.S. Federal Reserve (news - web sites) and an avoidance of the United States dipping into recession. And even if the country does slip into recession, investors can always seek solace in one of Intel Chairman and business icon Andy Grove's more well-known remarks: The one thing about recessions is that they always end. It just won't be a fun wait.