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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (10100)	6/3/2004 7:15:32 PM
From: Bookdon	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 25522

He is absolutely correct. Sales forecasts (and I was an AMAT sales manager for nearly 20 years) mean almost nothing. With the "granularity" of this kind of product (big ticket items in relatively small volumes) it is impossible to accurately forecast. Often a shift in a single large order (or a in a delivery, which might be caused by a facilities problem) by one week can change the results by 10% or more. Feeding the Wall Street lust for "visability" (even when the Bay Area fog is ALWAYS evident in semiconductor results) leads to increasing the volatility in a roller coaster market.