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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ian@SI who wrote (54040)	10/10/2001 2:54:56 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 70976

2002 semi-equip prospects: I recently dissed a post pointing out the relative weakness of AMAT, compared to other techs. But, after reflection, I think there may be something there. I'm hearing some very encouraging noises from the semis, especially wireless-related. TXN is now up enough that I have started selling my higher-cost lots. There are, daily, more indications of supply/demand coming back into balance. Now, a bottom for semi's business conditions usually leads, quickly, to an upsurge in capacity buys for semi-equip, and the semi-equip stocks take off. But.......this time may be different. There is, IMO, a profound retrenchment going on, in business decision-makers' willingness to take risks. This is going on throughout the entire economy. And it will, IMO, affect the semi industry more than most other industries. Committing to a multi-billion-$ 300mm fab, based on assumptions about market size years from now, is a risk for any company. So, I think, this time, there may be a lag, perhaps a significant lag, between an upturn in semi demand, and an upturn in demand for semi-equip. That lag will make the upturn, when it happens, very strong. If the market goes up, AMAT will go up with it. But, IMO, for the next 6 months, I'm thinking that the semis and the highest-quality big cap techs, will go up more than AMAT in that time frame. I think the buying opportunity for AMAT may last longer than for the others on my buy-list. We may see a strong rally, when signs of a rebound in semi demand is clearer. Then, semi-equips will retrace, when, for several months thereafter, semi-equip bookings fail to take off. I'm still looking for a retest of 40 from below. And then a retest of the October lows (which I think we've seen). And then we'll see.