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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: VICTORIA GATE, MD who wrote (42898)	12/19/1997 5:59:00 PM
From: MONACO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Anybody have any thoughts on this major tech reversal in the Nasdaq today [-30 to +1.5]?? Victoria, just keep on calling them!..M

To: VICTORIA GATE, MD who wrote (42898)	12/19/1997 6:17:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 186894

Hey Doc,ever heard of garbage Index? I am not kidding',it's for real. Victoria & thread: Here is little something to placate your fears. ------------------------------------------------------------------- "Worried About High-Tech Stocks? Check Garbage Index By Christopher Grimes AUSTIN, Texas (Dow Jones)--Peak International Ltd. (PEAKF) makes little plastic containers that semiconducter makers use to ship their chips to manufacturers of everything from computers to cell phones to new cars. But Peak's hottest product is its Garbage Index. More than 500 manufacturers, including all the powerhouses - Compaq Computer Corp. (CPQ), Dell Computer Corp. (DELL), Motorola Corp. (MOT) and others - receive chips they put into their products in Peak's containers. The containers look like shallow black ice-cube trays and cost a few dollars each, so after they take out the chips, the companies toss them into special recycling bins. Peak collects the empties and sells them again to chip makers like Intel Corp. (INTC) and Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN). That's how Peak came to create its Garbage Index. The process provides a pretty clear picture of how many chips are going into computers, cell phones, modems, auto-navigation devices and other high-tech products. With 40% of the market for the chip containers, Peak has recycled more than 100 million trays by now, enough to make the trash count a pretty fair industry yardstick. It's a "sanity check" for analysts trying to cope with the wild market swings of high-technology stocks, says Richard Brook, father of the Garbage Index and chief investment officer of Peak. "We get good information on the health of the business," he says. Brook giggles when he talks about the Garbage Index, which he originated to track his own business. It grew beyond that when Wall Street analysts and tech investors discovered its bottom-line relevance to other companies. The Garbage Index "gives us a very good indicator of the level of year-over-year unit volume in the semiconductor industry," says Brook. Krishna Shankar, an analyst at Donaldson Lufkin Jenrette, concurs. "It's a humorous indicator, but it's a real-time indicator that gives a real sense of how chips are actually being used," says Shankar. The index isn't nearly as useful as analysts would like it to be. Brook won't tell them the nitty-gritty, who's-up-who's-down scoop the trash shows him each month. If Peak ever gave out the skinny on an individual company's orders, "we'd get killed" by customers, says Brook. "I just tell them if the garbage index is going up or down." Peak's stock price lately has has fallen as technology stocks have taken a beating. Brook says when shareholders ask him about Peak's price, they invariably feign innocence and ask about the index. They ask, "Oh, and by the way, should I be worried about holding any of these other tech stocks?" says Brook. How is the Garbage Index doing? "It's up - way up," says Brook. "We collected 3.5 million units last month and 3.3 million the month before that," he says. -By Christopher Grimes; 201-938-5253