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To: akidron who wrote (18597)	4/6/1998 9:36:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

Intel Plans $5 Billion In Capital Spending (04/06/98; 4:30 p.m. EST) By Andy Patrizio, TechWeb The price of competition is expensive for Intel, which plans to spend about $5 billion this year on capital expenses, such as upgrades to its existing fabrication facilities plug building new ones. While on a tour of Asia last week, president and chief operating officer Craig Barrett said more than $1 billion will be spent on its existing facilities in China, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and that's just to keep them up and running. "It's in line with what we've spent historically in that region," said Robert Manette, an Intel spokesman. Other plants are also due for facelifts, including two fabs in Arizona and one in Ireland that are being upgraded. Many of the upgrades are to convert central processing unit manufacturing from the .35-micron die to .25 micron, the die size for Pentium II CPUs above 333 MHz, Manetta said.0 Intel is also building new facilities in Ireland, Portland, Ore., Israel, and Fort Worth, Texas. By moving to the smaller die, Intel is trying to increase manufacturing efficiency while lowering costs, said Mario Morales, director of semiconductor research for International Data Corp., in Mountain View, Calif. "They need to continue driving technology bringing price points down to something more realistic," he said. Many people on this and many other threads are professing the overbought condition of this market. I agree, to an extent. IMO, there are sectors such as the equips trading in what I consider to be pure bargain territory. The 300mm upgrade is not in question, only when it will begin in earnest. Bet against this sector at your own risk. That bet becomes much more dangerous after the sector has been at the bottom of the Relative Strength index as it has for several months. Once the MMs begin to see this group move up, there will be a feeding-frenzy like accumulation of these issues. Be careful out there. Regards, Brian

To: akidron who wrote (18597)	4/6/1998 9:39:00 PM
From: Steve Byers	Respond to of 70976

have to admit, having put on a sizable short position for me... and have the stock run up nearly 3 points away from me was a "little" unnerving, but feeling VERY good right now with the dow at another record , or nearly so and amat now below my short price... feeling pretty darn good... so now we'll see if there are a few more warnings in the techs and some realistic news on slowdown/retrenchment in Japan... and we could have another October runoff/correction to levels more akin to the uncertainty that should exist right now... we'll see, maybe I'll be wrong, but a little sanity here could be costly in an inflated environment... when does Greenspan testify again in Humphrey/Hawkins? any time soon? and does he really need a forum like that anyway, or just a dinner to divine his wisdom? good luck

To: akidron who wrote (18597)	4/7/1998 3:26:00 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 70976

Imagine it's the 1980s, and you are Japanese...... You invest in Japanese stocks because those are the companies you understand, and it's hard to get information about foreign companies, and you don't want to take the currency risk. I won't tell you whether it's 1984 or 1989 because that would spoil the thought experiment. Imagine that you are smart enough to realize that asset prices have become disconnected from real worth. How do you invest? One solution might be to go to cash. But there might be years of further asset inflation ahead, before the crash. You think about shorting the most absurdly overvalued stocks, the ones that are most hyped and at the highest PEs, but those are exactly the ones that keep on becoming even more absurdly overvalued. What do you do? In retrospect, the correct strategy was to be very selective: buy the highest quality companies, the globally competitive multinationals (like Toyota). Buy only companies with pristine balance sheets and unassailable franchises. Buy only when the PE was at or below the expected growth rate. Sell as soon as the asset became overvalued, and search for whatever quality companies are still available at a reasonable price. Don't try to make money, don't do what the crowd is doing, ignore the most widely followed experts. Just try to avoid losing money, that's Rule Number One. Make sure there isn't too much air underneath the stocks you buy. Imagine the worst possible future, and ask. "can this company survive it?" If the answer is no, or even maybe, look elsewhere. Don't worry about diversifying, because by 1989 there will be very very very few companies that meet the above criteria. OK. Imagine it's 1998, and you are American......What do you invest in?