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

To: Sam Citron who wrote (54242)	10/17/2001 10:39:41 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

re: terrorism as a killer app I'm just musing, thinking out loud, not committed to any viewpoint. My last big purchase was QCOM on 10/5, and I did a lot of selling on 10/10-11, got completely off margin. Nothing since then. Waiting for higher prices, to sell into (AMAT 40, TXN 38, NTAP 13, etc.), or lower prices to buy at. There will be many secondary and tertiary effects. 9/11 has affected everyone, and not in a trivial or temporary way. I was listening to the CC of a mobile home builder today. They said their business was showing definite signs of an end to the 3-year-long industry slump. But after 9/11, business came to a "complete standstill". And the risk premium demanded by lenders for higher-risk loans (difference between mortgage rates for stick-build vs. mobile homes) has soared. It's going to be hard to figure out what all the effects of 9/11 are going to be, and which ones will be the dominant effects. But, as an investor, I have to try. Yes, I think a lot of governments and corporations are going to find they need a lot more storage, and communications links, than they had previously thought. Priorities for spending will change. Will consumer spending collapse? It depends on the balance of competing tendencies: rising unemployment, rising fear and uncertainty on the one hand; lower interest rates, cash-out home refis, fiscal stimulus on the other hand. Of the countries you list, all are nuclear powers, through their own efforts. We helped France, England, and Israel get their nukes, but not the others. They are and will be well-armed, no matter what we do. China and India are "status-quo" powers. Russia is still deciding how many pieces their empire is going to dissolve into. Pakistan is a nuclear power with a "status-quo" elite, ruling a disenfranchised majority, hoping to sit on the fence. Anything could happen there. I still think the fiscal and monetary stimulus kicks in sometime in 1H02, and we get that 50% rally in the SOX (already got 38%). But I haven't decided whether it will be just a huge bear rally. So far, everything in the markets since 9/11 just looks like volatility, frantic directionless agitation. There is the cloud. And there is the silver lining. But, like you, I don't know in what proportion. Just thinking out loud.