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

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (19566)	5/19/1998 5:37:00 PM
From: Henry Eichorszt	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Falling Chip Equip Index Suggests Bottom May Be Close (05/19/98; 12:06 p.m. ET) By Staff, Semiconductor Business News Orders for chip production systems continued to plunge last month, driving down the book-to-bill index for North American suppliers of semiconductor equipment to its lowest point in 18 months, according to new market data. The book-to-bill index fell to 0.79 for April, compared with a revised 0.82 figure for March, based on data released by the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International trade group, in Mountain View, Calif., SEMI's index shows for every $100 worth of products being shipped to chip makers, equipment suppliers were only getting $79 of new orders. "This month's results suggest the bottom may be close," said Dick Greene, principal analyst with SEMI. "The decelerating month-over-month decline in orders and the modest increase in shipments point to a leveling off of the current cycle." SEMI's three-month average shipments increased in April to $1.353 billion compared with $1,343 billion in March. That represented a 1 percent increase over March's billings figure, and it was 23 percent higher than a year ago, according to SEMI. Meanwhile, three-month average for bookings decreased 2.5 percent to $1.074 billion in April compared with $1.102 billion in March. April's shipment total was 13 percent lower than it was in the same month last year.

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (19566)	5/19/1998 6:05:00 PM
From: Justa Werkenstiff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Brian: Well since we are on the topic of institutional buy/sell habits in this sector, review this quote from Andrew Kaplan, Portfolio Manager for Fidelity Select Electronics: Re his biggest disappointment for the last 12 months: "The inability to liquidate many of the fund's holdings in semiconductor capital equipment companies when conditions began to change in September. As I said, this group of stocks was hardest hit by the Asian downturn. I did begin reducing the fund's positions in these stocks in the summer, but many of them had poor liquidity -- or relatively few shares outstanding -- and were difficult to buy and sell." Now what did he hold in August, 1997? Try those low liquidity names like LRCX, AMAT, KLAC and NVLS. Give me a break. Assuming he is being entirely truthful, he must have gotten sucked into some lower cap names in the interim between reports. But there is one lesson to be learned. When the big boys come back to buy, they will be coming to buy the big caps at least at first. The reports for each one of the three funds for the two time periods clearly shows this. They only carried LRCX, NVLS, KLAC, TER and AMAT. One had some SVGI in one report. All others need not apply.