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Technology Stocks : KLA-Tencor Corporation (KLAC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cuemaster who wrote (870)	1/3/1998 9:33:00 PM
From: Bill Martin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1779

Re: ... the question is, is the downtrend over? any thoughts??? The one fly in the soup is that it fell for months on heavy volume. Now it's been rising for a couple weeks, but on very faint volume. This is not reassuring, though not conclusive either. Bill

To: cuemaster who wrote (870)	1/4/1998 6:59:00 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1779

It's a pennant, not a saucer. The key difference, as has been pointed out, is the declining volume. This might be the holiday effect. We'll know tomorrow. If volume isn't way up, then the recent chart pattern is bearish. This pattern can be seen for all the semi-equips. Pennants (ASMLF, AMAT, KLAC), flags (KLIC, NVLS). Fundamentals are still bad. With the Korea debacle, governments (or if not them, then the IMF) are not going to let banks lend money to semi companies to buy equipment to pursue market share regardless of cost. The semi industry has to re-establish positive cash flow before capital equipment purchases turn up. The commodity side of the industry is the most sensitive indicator of this. When DRAM prices stop their freefall, it will be time to buy semi-equips. Every company in the industry moves in lock-step, so the important thing is to pick the right time to buy. The particular company you buy is a far less important decision. I'm very long AMAT, and thinking of adding KLAC when the bottom finally happens, sometime in 1998.

To: cuemaster who wrote (870)	1/9/1998 5:23:00 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1779

Re: is the downtrend over? No. I'm guessing the bottom will be sometime after January earnings reporting, after DRAM prices stop their free-fall, after semi-equips warn of an order slowdown, after a few more fab pushouts. I don't quite understand what moves the market. KLAC, along with the rest of the industry, is down sharply. The reason given is that Indonesia is back-pedalling on their commitments to the IMF. What's the connection? That country has no fabs, and consumers there are end-users of very few chips. Korea, which does have a lot of fabs, is looking better in the last few days. The market seems to sell off all high-techs on any bad Asian news. This seems irrational to me. I'm going to keep watching, and buy later. This is not the bottom.