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Technology Stocks : QUANTUM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Richard Grenier who wrote (5562)	11/23/1997 1:03:00 AM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9124

Welcome back, Richard. Glad to see you survived :-). Quantum will be getting cheaper this coming week. (IMO)

To: Richard Grenier who wrote (5562)	11/23/1997 8:23:00 AM
From: Pierre-X	Respond to of 9124

Re: Goldbaum article She says: And once the major disk-drive manufacturers cut production to be more in line with demand, prices can start rising again... When all the chief producers get together and agree to restrict supply in order to bring up prices, we call it a cartel. The last famous cartel was OPEC. In the U.S., explicit cartels are considered anti-competitive collusion and generally illegal. In any case, for a cartel to work, ALL the major companies have to play the game. Well it sure doesn't look like Fujitsu and Samsung are going to play by the rules. I'd be surprised to see that kind of collusion in the drive business. She says: Western Digital's Haggerty claims that disk-drive manufacturers already have cut back on production by 17% this quarter, easing overcapacity considerably. This statement is wrong. Current production and industry capacity are two different things entirely. Production cutbacks have no effect on excess capacity which hovers around like a vulture, waiting to swoop down on any hint of rising prices. Meanwhile the technology level marches onward, obsoleting capital resources dedicated to older programs. Producers will instead prefer to operate such obsolescent plant if they can cover variable costs. What do y'all think? PX

To: Richard Grenier who wrote (5562)	11/23/1997 7:22:00 PM
From: Gottfried	Respond to of 9124

Richard, thanks for the link to the WSJ article! Some of it is nonsense: >>disk drives are hardly proprietary products -- to say the least -- and relatively low barriers to entry have allowed cash-rich powerhouses like IBM and Fujitsu to jump in with both feet. We don't see many new entrants into the business - the opposite is true (remember Micropolis?). And IBM is hardly an entrant - they invented disk drives. When an article presents such drivel in one part, I tend to disregard the rest of it, too. Regards Gottfried