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Technology Stocks : Cymer (CYMI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stanley L Brown who wrote (16227)	4/2/1998 12:27:00 AM
From: AJM	Respond to of 25960

BA Rbrtsn Stphns sure was busy today: 30 upgrades incl AMAT. I would think that so many upgrades on the same day (in differing sectors) may negate any positive impact an upgrade would usually have on a stock. Comments? biz.yahoo.com AJM

To: Stanley L Brown who wrote (16227)	4/2/1998 1:17:00 AM
From: donnie lee	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 25960

Speaking of light bulbs, from the mouth of Fleck himself ( I know, I know, sometimes it's hard to tell which end that is with this guy..) This is from today's Worth e-mail newsletter.. He is, in his own words " very sick and tired of this nonsense " <<VBG>> Thursday, April 2, 1998 To short sellers, this market is a "madhouse" Despite poor fundamentals, they say, stocks continue to surge forward - and it's costing them a fortune By Michael Brush It's not easy being short these days - in the market, that is. Talk to just about any professional investor who shorts stocks -- or makes bets that they will go down in value -- and you can feel the sense of frustration. With stocks reaching new highs each day, often regardless of underlying business trends, short sellers are throwing up their hands in despair. Their main gripes: Investors have tossed out the basics, like researching fundamentals, to make room for a "nothing can go wrong" mentality that has them throwing money at the market in a speculative frenzy. Hubris factor of 12 on a scale of one to ten, they say. Completely idiotic and manic. Like being in a madhouse. "I've been doing this for three years, and never has it been this insane," says William Fleckenstein, of Fleckenstein Capital in Seattle. "The facts have nothing to do with anything anymore. Being right does not count very much. You have to be right when people are not in the mood to come up with 15 reasons why serious problems are only temporary." Case in point: Fleckenstein thought he had a lay-up Wednesday morning after semiconductor equipment maker KLA-Tencor Corp. (NASDAQ: KLAC) announced sales for the first quarter will fall 17% because of a slowdown in the sector. Wrong. The stock closed up $2 3/4 to finish at $41. "They announced horrible results, and it went up anyway." It has been the same story with other stocks he has shorted like Ultratech Stepper Inc (NASDAQ: UTEK) PRI Automation (NASDAQ: PRIA) and Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT). "Virtually every company in the semiconductor capital equipment making business is terrible and getting worse. Announcing bad news. But most of the big ones are up." Same thing with companies like Motorola (NYSE: MOT) and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC). Both of them have preannounced bad earnings news in recent weeks, but fared fairly well anyway, instead of suffering the kinds of big losses short sellers say they would have under different market conditions. "Intel is in its worst business position in ten years," says Fleckenstein. "But it is trading sideways. And that is a moral victory. I am very sick and tired of this nonsense." You can understand why. After turning in three excellent years shorting against bull markets, Fleckenstein is down so far this year "in the teens." But he is not alone. The five short sellers tracked by Evaluation Associates in Connecticut are down 9.8% as of the end of February. That loss is probably a lot higher now, given the strong market performance of March. Part of the reason that stocks keep going up even though their fundamentals suggest they should be going down is that mutual fund managers want to be fully invested to beat their competitors, short sellers believe. "They are buying this stuff because it looks good on the chart. No one is doing their homework," says Fleckenstein. And that is causing a speculative buying frenzy, he says. "I talk to a lot of people who don't know anything about the businesses they are invested in. I am not saying they are stupid. They just don't know anything about the businesses. And when you buy something you don't know anything about, that is 100% speculation." SORRY FLECK -- SPECULATE CYMI FOR A WHILE...