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

To: Stefan who wrote (11199)	11/15/1997 11:39:00 PM
From: akidron	Respond to of 70976

100% right..... last year some large fabs decided to try opec-ize the market by reducing production... all that happened is they lost market share.... the future belongs to those who reap the greatest economies of scale... the fabs that have the highest yield and can produce cheapest.

To: Stefan who wrote (11199)	11/16/1997 1:58:00 AM
From: Gottfried	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

Stefan, you pointed out the obvious - which some of us didn't see. I guess we're so used to rising prices elsewhere, that we think there must be something wrong when prices in high-tech items fall. And yet it is all around us. The PC I bought for $1500 in May is now $995. The floppy drive that cost $200 ten years ago is now $20. And somebody still profits. Thanks for the reminder! GM

To: Stefan who wrote (11199)	11/16/1997 12:50:00 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 70976

Stefan: You're right, of course. Over the long term, prices per meg of memory steadily decline. So do prices for microprocessors and disc drives. However, superimposed on top of that long-term trend is a shorter-term cyclical pattern. AMAT's stock price, and Applied Mateirial's backlog, has a long-term upward trend with a shorter-term cyclical pattern. I'm wondering if possibly that cyclical pattern in DRAM prices can be used as a leading indicator to anticipate the peaks and troughs of AMAT's stock price. I don't know, because I haven't seen the data yet.