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Technology Stocks : Semi-Equips - Buy when BLOOD is running in the streets! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Clarksterh who wrote (6137)	7/1/1998 8:00:00 PM
From: Math Junkie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

I doubt if consumers are going to be willing to throw out all their analog TVs in 5 or 7 years, given that they are still being sold in large numbers, but there will probably be digital to analog decoders available. Even so, depending on what they cost, the FCC might find that forcing the entire American public to spend the money might be politically impossible.

To: Clarksterh who wrote (6137)	7/2/1998 8:28:00 AM
From: Mason Barge	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

The biggest factor driving PC sales will be the bandwidth buildout. Everybody and his brother in the cable, wireless and/ or local telephone is ramping up either ASDL or cable modem capacity right now. When it's in place, it is going to converge with the ramp-up of e-commerce and the internet is going to become an entirely new force in shopping and information, with perhaps some additional increase in entertainment as well. My point is that this is going to drive an unbelievable boom in chip sales. All the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place -- functionality, speed, ease of use, price. The low-end PC market is going to erupt; however, this will be seen partially in the higher end, since a lot of people are going to be giving their PCs to their family members to upgrade, especially with 64MB DRAM prices starting to fall. In investing you have to see a year or two down the road, and a year or two from now, chip stocks (and equipment stocks) will be back in the drivers seat. Also, I would guess, web consultants, as a million businesses try to get online. Another cause = city traffic. It is getting just unbelievable in a lot of cities, and is going to supply at least a little fuel for on-line shopping. Also availability. I just spent about four or five hours looking for a coffee grinder -- very frustrated, I looked on the web and found just what I wanted in about a half-hour. Do not doubt that this decline in chip sales and semi equipment sales is a lull preceding a storm. I think litho is going to show the bookings boom first and am buying ASMLF and CYMI. I'm very big on Asyst at these prices and am loading up -- you'll get not only new fab business, but the retrofit business should be strong as soon as credit eases in Asia (only the Taiwanese are buying right now, but this is a favorite among other Asian fabs who should be dying for some SMIF retrofit business as soon as they get some money). And AMAT, just about the surest bet to make money in the 2-3 year range that you could find. Of course, there may be a debacle in the equities market, but I'm talking comparison to the market as a whole. For the KLAC question, I don't forsee much of a drop and my prediction for today's closing price is 26 1/4. It's priced for business loss right now. I have never figured out why analysts raise/lower recommendations without changing their earnings estimates -- maybe they are more conservative about estimates because they are more accountable for the numbers. Anyway, I think the analysts already have the lowered revenues priced into their recommendations, even if the earnings estimates have remained unreasonbly high. We'll see in an hour or so.