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

To: Big Bucks who wrote (14770)	5/5/2005 1:12:41 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 25522

Re: Not the time to be adding new money to the markets or chip equip stocks, IMO If not now, then when? Message 21280700

To: Big Bucks who wrote (14770)	5/5/2005 2:47:46 PM
From: Kirk ©	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25522

Check out this chart home.comcast.net I wonder if Gotfried could overlay a 12 month set of parallel lines with the zero on the Jan03 low? If I do that myself by hand, I see we just passed the first month in an uptrend that should run for 9 months before we get the slowdown after the holiday season. That is I think chips are built to build inventor that is sold over the Holiday season (Christmas through Chinese New Year.) From all accounts I can tell, economies will continue to grow just workers might have to leave their GM and Ford US jobs and move to Toyota and Honda US jobs where they will have to save more for their retirement or work longer than planned since they will probably see pension reductions. People are addicted to spending so I expect many will have to work well past when they hoped to retire if they want to continue their standard of living. As for a Global slowdown, I'm not sure. Europe has too high a tax structure and costs are too high for workers. It is a BIG reason I won't buy ASML despite what Cary tells me about how good the technology is. IBM is making cuts there just like GM and Ford will have to make in the US. I'm not convinced that people having to work longer is a bad thing because they consume much more when they work which will delay Dent's demographic collapse. Kirk out

To: Big Bucks who wrote (14770)	5/5/2005 3:20:49 PM
From: etchmeister	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25522

My point was that Q1 2005 is being touted as a downturn; as Cary once pointed out even in 2001 there was still unit growth - hence I believe the swings (IC sales) are a function of ASP's and ASP's are a function of supply and demand. Though global growth might have an impact I believe the large swings are mainly a function of ASP (IC sales= unitsxASP) Back in 2001 TSMC's u-rate tanked all the way to 41%. Take a good look at UMC's and TSMC's capex back in 2004 and than compare the topline of TSMC and UMC and you will get a better understanding why UMC's u-rates are so low. Overall u-rates on a global base notched up to 85% in March up fron 79% in Jan and 82% in Feb according to VLSI. IC are proliferated to a greater extend with regards to end markets (by application as well as region) and the applications as well the different regional markets do not move in synch compared to 10 years ago when DRAM and CPU were the key driver. Flash in particular NAND (though smaller compared to DRAM) is doing much better than DRAM. Though DRAM pricing took a huge hit in Q1 2005 other segments must have done better because global IC sales did not tank - they probably would have tanked if there would be only DRAM and CPU.