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To: Trey McAtee who wrote (37318)	8/12/1998 6:00:00 PM
From: Thomas G. Busillo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 53903

Trey, Dan Niles? Why he's none other than "Mr. short-term DRAM price" himself. Dan Niles was the guy who helped fuel last year's August squeeze with the great insight right after the RS Conf that DRAM prices were rising. From today's Dow Jones: "Pricing continues to go up," said Dan Niles, an analyst at BancAmerica Robertson Stephens. He said prices on some memory chips are up 20% to 25% from a month ago Okay, last year when he was touting the stock right before they collapsed the 16's had "rebounded" from 6.70 to 7.10 And now those same 16's are selling for maybe around 30% of what they were back then, but the financial press acts as if he's someone with a terrific track record of predicting the short-term dynamics of DRAM pricing. He's not. The reporting on the Soundview initiation was very interesting. If you listened to CNBC you'd actually think Scott Randall had started it as a screaming buy. He started it as "short-term hold/long-term buy", (which IMHO isn't that nutty if long-term means greater than 2-3 years and you're well-diversified). IMHO, the trick is understanding the psychology of a price movement and anticipating when and why some of the built-in expectations could start to fall apart. But hey, if Dan "Mr. short-term DRAM price" Niles says DRAM prices are well on the road to a long-term sustained recovery, why even bother trying to think things out? It's not like he's ever been wrong <g> Good trading, Tom

To: Trey McAtee who wrote (37318)	8/12/1998 7:45:00 PM
From: Thomas G. Busillo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 53903

Trey, just like to point out yet another nail in the coffin of what used to be called "financial journalism." I looked at today's Dow Jones piece again and realized that almost the exact same article appeared on Dow Jones last year right around 7/30-7/31/97, only it was Dan Niles and Sandy Harriman (?) talking about how DRAM prices had risen from 6.70 to 7.10. So Dow Jones in their piece on MU today chooses to run the "expert commentary" of someone who was recommending MU @ 49 last year on the basis of DRAM prices rising up from 6.70 to 7.10 at a time when the stock is not only down over 30% from the time of publication, but the price of those same chips (which according to "Mr. short-term DRAM price" were all set to rise) were DOWN roughly 80% as of a few weeks ago from last year's memorable Niles prediction as carried by Dow Jones? What does that say about Dow Jones? They run the same story with the same "expert" and we're supposed to act as if we didn't notice the similarity of the timing, the content, and the "expert" (not to mention the fact that this same expert was wrong on the direction of DRAM prices. How wrong? Even after "recovering" back up to 2, they're still DOWN roughly 72% from the point last year when he said they were going up)? Is there some kind of unwritten rule in financial journalism that prevents these people from putting analyst comments in context? Are they afraid they'll lose their "sources"? IMHO, the only way Dow Jones, CNBC, Bloomberg, Reuters or any of the other major "news" orgs. would lose their "sources" is if they didn't pay their phone bills. It's not "conspiracy theory"... ...it's called "media relations" and IMHO the editors who play into the game it should be running hot-dog stands instead of newsrooms. Good trading, Tom