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Non-Tech : Kirk's Market Thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kirk © who wrote (1872)	9/5/2014 12:49:41 PM
From: robert b furman	1 Recommendation Recommended By Kirk © Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 26605

A lot of Greenbay's drafts went to beefing up the offensive line. Rookie center linsley started and did well for the no count hurry up offense. Green Bay has a solid core and I hope they grow into the end of the season. If so they will be another NFL team where anything can go on any weekend. Makes watching football so addictive. Bob

To: Kirk © who wrote (1872)	9/9/2014 7:36:37 PM
From: Jerome	1 Recommendation Recommended By phlegmish Respond to of 26605

Selling without thinking......today we saw a good example of foolish trading in the stock of GT Advanced Technology. The stock ended down about 12%, at 14.94 a share. My guess is that investors panicked when they saw that only Apple's new watch will have a sapphire screen. Not the new phones. Here is what the investors missed. Apple has loaned GT Advanced technology $670 million dollars to make sapphire for them at an Apple facility in Arizona. owned by Apple. The business relationship with Apple will continue on for many years because there is no other company that has the capacity or expertise to make sapphire in the quantities that Apple will need. It takes only a few minutes for INTC to make a thousand computer chips. It takes about six weeks of high temperature baking to make one sapphire boule. Making sapphire is not something you can do at home with a convection oven or a pressure cooker. There is a very high technology barrier for any company to enter this market Along with a very expensive learning curve. My guess is that Apple has some big plans for Sapphire in the near future, and that was not mentioned today. For those interested in how sapphire is made....the following article is from the Boston Globe about the process. Behind every high-intensity LED is a precious gem - a sapphire that comes not from a jeweler but from a laboratory, grown as a synthetic gem that has almost the exact chemical and physical properties as the natural specimen. It’s Bob McGlone’s job at GT Advanced Technologies to oversee the production of the synthetic gems, the material from which LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, are made. As LEDs have expanded into a variety of electronics as well as lighting, manufacturers are seeking more efficient ways to make synthetic sapphires. At the GT Advanced Technologies plant in Salem, giant sapphires weighing 220 pounds are pulled glowing hot from furnaces, then cooled, sometimes up to dozens of times. “The challenge comes in consistently creating sapphires that are pure and free of defects,’’ said McGlone, 49, who has worked at the company for 18 years. How long does it take to create a sapphire? You have to grow crystals slowly. We use extreme temperatures and pressure to take powdered aluminum oxide, which is sapphire in its raw form, heat it to a molten state then cool it to solidify in a crystal form. The sapphire expands over three weeks in a huge 6-by-6-foot furnace, then the cooling process makes or breaks the crystal. What is your role in sapphire production? Sapphire production requires very controlled conditions because the boules, or single-crystal ingots, can crack. If you were to walk into our facility, you would see high vacuum chambers with monitors; high tech helium pumps, computers, and alarm systems that all work together to create the perfect growing conditions. What sort of safety hazards do you have to be aware of? Sapphire is razor sharp and very dense and heavy. When removing it from the furnace, it has to be handled with care because of the heat. How do you check the sapphires for impurities? A block of sapphire will go to quality control, where it is put under high-intensity, polarized lighting to check for defects in the crystal structure, which can affect the electrical and thermal qualities. A synthetic crystal isn’t blue but clear, because it has no impurities. How does it feel to pull a perfect crystal out? I’m in awe. It is round, 15 inches in diameter, 11 inches tall. It looks like a big piece of glass. Do you have any crystals of your own? Employees were given a gift of cut gemstones from manufacturing byproducts, so my wife has a 4-carat piece. It’s still sitting in her jewelry box since she isn’t sure how she wants to mount it. © Copyright 2012 Globe Newspaper Company