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

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (15025)	1/25/1998 11:02:00 AM
From: Teri Skogerboe	Respond to of 70976

John and Gene, Thanks for your good comments on this issue. I agree fully that stock-picking (and AMAT, specifically) is much preferred over the "basket of stocks" or worrying about the overall market environment. I would feel more comfortable going VERY long AMAT if James Morgan had already told Wall Street/the analysts that '98 may not be a very good year, IOW, if the bad news were already out. The reason for this is that MANY times in the past the analysts wait to adjust their numbers under they are "told" to do so on the Conference Call by the CEO and CFO. Sounds like a damn-easy job to be paid a million plus $$/year, huh? My understanding is that the mututal fund managers are "graded" on their performance almost quarter-to-quarter. The Fidelity Magellan manager resigned recently because he had 2 down quarters. Under those conditions of needing to have performance "now", I don't see a compelling reason to buy AMAT. Long-term (2-3 years out) I love it. regards, TS

To: John Stichnoth who wrote (15025)	1/25/1998 11:58:00 AM
From: 16yearcycle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

John, Thanks for the correction on the post war era, I see now that was a very low pe, low interest rate environment.The difference appears to be the enormous debt and lack of growth that existed at that time. I can't confirm the late 80's information.The lowest the pe appears to have been is 12 in 1990, and then corporate profits collapsed driving the pe on the dow to record levels. In any case, the early 50's period does give one pause.