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

To: Math Junkie who wrote (9726)	4/17/2001 8:43:38 AM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

Richard, Yes, P/E as a standalone number is meaningless. P/E with Growth has a little more meaning. And P/E on the NASDAQ tends to be irrelevant as a valuation factor for many if not most of the 8-9000 stocks that trade regularly. e.g. Try using P/E to value a biotech that's about to get FDA approval for its first new Drug Application. I'd tend to agree with Gottfried, P/E, especially on NASDAQ, is an exercise that would be done only because PCs make it easy to do such a task irrespective of its value. IMHO, Ian.

To: Math Junkie who wrote (9726)	4/17/2001 9:07:16 AM
From: Jerome	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10921

Richard, we all have seen posts where the P.E. is the major metric used in attaching value to a stock. This often goes no where because a stock like COHU had a very low P.E. and the P.E. stayed low for years. And the same goes for P/S or P/B. or ROI, or cash flow or free cash, or debt, or headcount or any other metric.Metrics follow the stock like a shadow, and do not influence the stock either up or down. Investor sentiment (buy or sell) based on company news, or market sentiment, based on interest rates, or some fabricated crises (energy shortage) has a much greater impact. Like now the investor sentiment for tech stocks is very negative regardless of what the metric used for measurement. For now investors don't care if CSCO's P.E. is 50 or 5. They want out of tech stocks. In John's article I did find the interpretation of negative P.E.'s very interesting and informative. Jerome Jerome